🎄 When we sat down to Christmas lunch, did you pause to reflect that a farmer, actually many farmers, made that meal and every other meal possible.
🦃 That turkey that you gobbled – well someone watched that bird hatch from an egg, fed it, monitored its health, possibly chased it around and stopped it from drowning itself in the only bucket of water it drinks from (turkeys are crazy and prone to self-sabotage).
🍞 That bread you break – a grain grower extended his or her bank overdraft early in the year to buy the seed, diesel and fertiliser to plant the annual wheat crop which, if you were in many parts of South Australia in 2024, probably didn’t even grow. The farmer waited for rain that didn’t come, but kept pouring money into the paddock and eventually harvested the tiniest amount, if they were lucky. Many grain growers will this year have worked 60 – 80 hours a week but earned less, way less, than they invested in their crop.
🍷 That wine you drunk – a grape grower in the Barossa or the Riverland or the Hunter or Yarra Valleys has planted, waited 5 years for a crop, pruned and weeded and watered and, in the dead of night when the air is coolest and the sugars perfect, picked the grapes. They’ve weathered fluctuating fortunes because wine is more a fashion item than a commodity. So growers and winemakers are at the whim of our tastes and international squabbles.
🍒 The cherries in a bowl, or draped over your ears (come on admit it, you’ve done the cherry ear-rings thing) – a horticulturalist has planted the tree (probably 5-7 years ago), fought off marauding parrots and slugs, fruit-splitting rain, hail and searing sun. They’ve spent hundreds of thousands to net their orchard to prevent all of the above. The cherry grower has worked around the clock in the lead up to Christmas as this is their time to shine. By Boxing Day, the price of cherries fell through the floor. One day of the year can make or break the cherry grower.
🥔 Those spuds that you baked, 🍓 the berries on your pavlova, the custard on your Christmas Pudding. A potato farmer battled water restrictions and soil-borne pathogens and labour shortages, a raspberry grower competed with cheaper frozen imports and the dairy farmer rose every morning .. every single morning (a lactating 🐄 cow waits for no man or woman) to provide the milk to make the custard we pour over our Christmas desserts. No. The custard was not born in that cardboard carton.
And so it goes on. The ham we carve. The tomatoes we throw in the salad. The king prawns we serve. 🐷 🍅 🍤
A farmer, a fisher, a grower has toiled to bring it to us.
🎄 🎁 We can live without almost every present under our Christmas tree, but we can’t get by without food and fibre. 🥕 🥝 🥗 🥑 🥜 🦀
🥂 Here’s cheers to all farmers that provided for us, not only at Christmas but throughout the year.
We literally can’t live without you.
- Austen’s of Rochester – 92 High St, The Precinct, Rochester ME1 1JT Tel: 01634 838775
- Court Farm Butchery & Country Larder – Pilgrims Rd, Upper Halling, Rochester ME2 1HR Tel: 01634 240547
- Farm View Butchers – 94 Delce Rd, Rochester ME1 2DH Tel: 01634 402731
- Mockbeggar Farm Shop – Town Road, Cliffe Woods, Rochester, ME3 8EU Tel: 01634 725664
- The Farm Shop Grange Rd, Gillingham ME7 2UD, Tel: 01634 855568