Facing Farming Problems

I grew up on a sheep farm in the Adelaide Hills. During WWII, while dad was away in the army, my mother, brother and I lived with her parents on their sheep farm. We had pet sheep. They were rescued, bottle fed and then for months hung around the place. Even later they would run up to you when they had been placed back in the flock, treating you like their brother! Dipping, shearing, crutching, tailing, castrating the little males was all part of the richness of growing up on the farm.

Life took us into a different stream when Dad came home from the war and my parents moved into a country store and post office that they purchased. It was in the same district as my grandparents so I had times of helping on the farm until education and then job situations took me away from the store, the farm and the area.

Later I had bought a little farm of my own for one of our sons to live on and look after. It was small and was an after hours job for him and his family. When I retired from Ethiopia, aged 78, we moved onto the farm. Now we are trying to make it work as a small sheep farm. That son still lives on the farm as does our youngest adopted son. So, due to a few problems of aging I’m really a watcher as my wife and the boys make things work. Both the boys have other jobs but we manage somehow. We have chosen to have dorper sheep as they don’t need to be shorn which for our small crop would be financially a major loss. So we are into the market for meat. Now we come to the problems: –

Dingoes – protected animals – live in the area. They can dig and jump but don’t do so often, and we have scores of wallabies that they can chew on. Nevertheless we have put in high quality fences both in an attempt to stop them getting in and the sheep, which sometimes think like goats, from getting out! So far we have not had problems although we have seen dingoes in the area.
Sadly we have had to have our two beautiful dogs put down as they developed a taste for meat and killed one lamb. Having developed the taste we couldn’t take the risk.
Eagles look and are majestic. We have, besides the fellow pictured at the bottom of the page, a couple of wedge tail eagles living in a tree overlooking the sheep. We have lost one lamb that we suspect as being taken by them.
One lamb was still born.
So from 12 ewes we’ve had 10 lambs but only 7 are surviving.

The sheep shed(verb) their wool and they don’t look very pretty.

They used to love sitting at the window watching for a chance, so I guess it was going to happen. But I miss them heaps.

Dominic Cartier.

I need a restful break!

For several weeks now I have been working on thousands of slides which I’ve taken over the years and never got around to cataloging properly. I need a break, so I thought that I would show you a few sun scenes from where we live. The one which I always put at the top is from Ethiopia but the following are all from around our property where we live now in a place called Oak Valley. There is no touching up applied. Just as they were.

I could go on with more but I think that’s enough for today. I think the Creator is a Master Painter!

Dominic Cartier

Walking Down Memory Lane

African sunset

I try not to just live on memories. But I sleep a lot; walk slowly with a stick; or if the family goes out together they take me in a wheelchair to speed things up. I still can think clearly (or so I think) and I don’t find it easy to hand over all the control to a son who does almost everything about the place. He’s gracious and I’m trying – maybe in two senses of the word!

But memory lane is mostly pleasant to walk down. I’ve been transferring slides and photographs onto my computer and it has been a bit tedious but full of memories. Here are a few of them.

OV dams from hill copy

I used to own much of the land seen in this photo, but most of it is now sold. Some of the money enables us to live, but much has been invested in lives in Ethiopia. Those lives are very pleasant to remember and the memories give great joy. Some were sick; some were destitute; some needed education, but all were real people, and needed loving. Not always emotional love, but rather helping love. Some are dead already, I guess, but the money and effort was not wasted.

OV house 1 copy — When I was in Australia for several years, about 35 years ago, I bought this old house for $3,000 and we had it transported. It still stands today looking much better and surrounded by trees.

My computer collection of pictures begins from over sixty five years ago. I didn’t get a camera until I was in my older teens, so although there are a few photos of even great grandparents, mostly the photos start from when I met an amazingly beautiful young teenager. I started to ‘chase’ her from the day I first met her! We will have been married for fifty eight years come December. I’ve got about two thousand more slides and many photos to go through. What a lot of memories still to come!

street huts copy — Sorry about the focus, but these are the street huts people were living in on the street opposite the main government hospital in Addis Ababa.

Eth OR 01 copy — And this was one of the operating rooms that first greeted me in 1994

a day's operating copy — This is a list of one day’s emergency surgical admissions. The writing is terrible, but listed below it reads disease-wise ….

appendicitis; intestinal obstruction; intestinal obstruction, volvulus; acute appendicitis; Peritonitis from perforated duodenal ulcer; appendiceal abscess; stab wound to the abdomen; rectal fistula; oesophageal cancer; penetrating abdominal knife wound. Most of these would have needed surgery the same day except the oesophageal cancer which would need work up and time.

Yakob copy — As a baby I found him, deserted, being swept around on the floor of the paediatric ward.

Now he has a tertiary education and this should mean a satisfying life.

Money is useful if you use it wisely. Memories are more precious!

Dominic Cartier

Tom is Alive

None of us men could even begin to imagine what it would be like. Maybe you ladies could. Try to imagine living in a family; being the first of four wives all living in the same compound; there are plenty of kids from babies to teenagers; you’ve delivered fourteen babies and they’re all dead.

M family home — Usually the husband had the largest house and each wife with her children had a smaller one.

Now you’re pregnant again and your heart is so full of hope!

Your husband loves you, but you share that love with three other wives. The months go past, your belly fattens, the kicks start coming, your hope and your fears grow and jostle in your mind. Seven months gone, only two more to go. A few days pass and your waters break. Oh, no, surely not another so tiny that it won’t survive,

But your husband loves you, so, although babies are usually born at home, he gets a horse and cart and takes you to the nearby infidel’s hospital so that maybe you’ll get a live one at last. He does really love you.

They have funny customs, but they look after you and you deliver a scrap that when you see him you can’t believe that he can live, and he certainly wouldn’t have in your home. They take him away from you. Not to say they are nasty, they care for you, express your breasts (both of them) and feed him through a little tube down his nose. They make another uterus for him out of a card-board box lined with cotton wool. They put an electric light in the end to keep his new home warm. They run oxygen into the box at first but after a few weeks decide he doesn’t need it any more.

IMG_2937 copy 2 — About this size he was taken home.

One of the foreign women takes him to her house each night because she explains that she wants to make sure he gets his 2-hourly feeds at night. You can see she loves both of us and wants him to live. You learn her name is ‘Hirut’ but lots call her ‘Ruth’. Her own two boys love to come and watch him with you. They love him, you can see, like a brother.

Gradually they teach you to sponge him down, and to feed your own milk down the little tube. Eventually you’re allowed to hold him for a while. He holds your finger; he pees into your face as only little boys can; he takes your heart in his hands and your hope grows. But then goes back into his box.

Then your breasts dry up and they start to feed him in a powder from a tin which they mixed with boiled water and let him drink from a bottle with a breast slipped over the end. They teach you to test the warmth of the milk substitute by dropping a bit onto your wrist. They always clean up the bottle and the little ’breast’. They explain this is necessary and teach you how to do it properly. They explain it is very necessary to do all this.

He’s soon no longer living in his box. They teach you to do it all so well. He grows so beautiful. You see Hirut would love to keep him, she has spent so many nights and so much effort, but she just encourages you and gives him lots of little clothes that her own boys wore. All the hospital love and they call him Tom. He kicks, he laughs, he cries, He’s beautiful. It’s time to take him home. The nurses give you a little party and then your loving man takes you home. Everyone there is excited for you and they love him.

Five days later, he’s running a temperature; another two days later little Tom is dead.

No one at home boiled bottles and their water came from the creek in which people bathed and near which they did their ‘business’. He got diarrhoea, started vomiting and died.

Later you got the courage to go back to the hospital and told them the news – they cried with you, and hugged you and loved you. As you left you missed hearing them say to one another ‘It was all our fault. We should never have been so clean.’

But sadly, Tom is dead.