MORROWS WORLD
MORROWS WORLD
WE are a camping family – it started 10 years ago as a necessary escape route from the open farm and now we cant imagine summer without canvas. Our original big trailer tent is now up for sale as we have moved into the luxury camping category and bought ourselves a two-year-old folding camper.
With two teenagers in the family we have to move with the times and realise that weekends in the forest parks are not what the girls are looking for – unless there are a few Scouts about. This new camper allows us to be more flexible and maybe even get away just ourselves on our weekends off. We are quite disciplined about time off and work a "one on/one off" weekend system with Jennifer our right-hand woman. However, living in the middle of a farm which doubles as a tourist attraction means that if you are at home you are available, and it is great to get away, put the canvas up and feel really free.
There seems to be an Australian invasion just about to happen in this part of the world, with at least five visitors due to arrive in the next month or two. The first is my brothers son, Jim, who in true Aussie fashion will be with us until he feels like moving on. I cant wait to see him, he was eight when he was last here and now he is 17 and 6ft 1in. Like most people with family on the other side of the world I always feel not quite complete and Jims arrival will fill a big hole. However a teenage boy is quite a scary responsibility so we plan to work him so hard that he will just want food and bed at the end of the day.
Its quite a good time for him to arrive because the fruit season is just around the corner. We grow strawberries purely for the pick- your-own market, which works well with our open farm as we are already set up for visitors. Every year we debate if it is worth it; we fall into a trap of being too small to afford the modern systems but it is certainly big enough to give us plenty of hard work. Also we are getting less money for strawberries now than when we opened 12 years ago. So well give it another go this year when we have Jim to crawl up and down the rows pulling all the weeds out!
I am going to use the rest of my space as a soap box to demand better working clothes for female farm workers. We want boiler suits that fit our bottoms. I am not fat but I am certainly not the shape of a teenage boy on which Im sure the manufacturers must be basing their measurements. I can get a suit which is wide enough but the crotch hangs down to my knees and I have an extra 18" of leg to tuck down my boot. The alternative is the right length but then it will not zip up over my chest (which is not ample) and is so tight over my rear end (which I confess is more generous) that I cant bend down. There are at least three women who work here who have this problem – so come on suppliers can we have a "ladies cut" boiler suit?