Grammar, Rhubarb, Squash and Potkin

We rarely get un-announced visitors anymore. When I grew up, on farms, every visitor was un-announced. No one phoned through first on their tin can.

The old mate from up the road would pop in and drop off a basket of almost warm eggs (due to an over abundance from the hens that week), or an Uncle would call in for a cuppa, brandishing a home grown grammar and a bright, candy, crimson bunch of rhubarb. My Aunty, Norma, would bake a sponge drizzling in passionfruit icing and sliced full of fresh cream and Mum would "put the jug on" for a cup of tea.

Have these days gone, in the semi-metropolitan area where I now live? The practice still lives on at Wingham, the friendly rural town, where Mum and Dad still live.

My cousin Lisa called in the other day (announced -via phone call and then confirmed via text message) and brought with her (from my Uncle's farm) a home grown squash and a bowl full of sweet and tiny Bantam eggs, still laced in dirt and feathers. I marvelled at these offerings as if I was looking at father time himself.

We buttered and salted the squash after it had been boiled and Paul served it with a fillet of baked salmon and roasted potatoes (or in contemporary terms, 'smashed' potatoes). I used the rest of the eggs up in a zucchini slice as well as in several meals of boiled eggs with soldiers.

It felt good to use fresh produce. It felt good to use every last drop. These days if we go on holidays we try to eat the fridge down to its bearest bones, even so, when I see a half a bag of beans and a nub of broccoli in the crisper on the day before we leave- I don't give them to the neighbours - I shake my head, feel bad and close the fridge.

Times have changed. Then again - the man in our house does the sewing - not all is for the worst is it?!