Olive

Following on from the death of my parents there was a general malaise that pervaded the valley. Old Bill Monroe, the patriarch of the only other remaining family from the Groupie Scheme in Karabup had moved into a retirement home in town several years earlier, and had slowly succumbed to the fog of dementia. To make a coarse analogy, people were dropping like flies. People withdrew into themselves and wandered the paddocks within their own psyches, as though contemplating their own inevitable demise and the parts they had played in the grand scheme of life. A lot of soul searching was undertaken- looking back, looking forward- and tough decisions and resolutions made.

Oscar and Felicity still lived in the old house near the lake, but it was now unrecognisable from the original building that had stood there decades before. Renovations were an ever-present reality in the Monroe house, with rooms extended, wings added, and the interior nearly always undergoing some adaptation or other. Their eldest son Tim, a confirmed bachelor- lived alone over the back of the hill and was largely responsible for the day-to-day running of the farm, while Ian, an engineer, lived with his wife and kids way off in the city and had no inclination towards farming aside from it being a convenient and cheap place to holiday.

It came time in Oscar and Felicity’s mind for them to retire, but in order for them to retire they needed money in order to buy the block of their idyll down near the mouth of the river on which we lived. Tim was initially against their plans of selling, but in time was worn down with guilt and finally agreed to give up the farm on the proviso that the buyer would be willing to let him stay in his house with a couple of acres of land with which to keep himself occupied. It was an unusual deal, but one that all parties were content with so who are we to judge.

Finally the opportunity arose for the Spring’s to take control of the entire valley, and after brief negotiations with the Monroe’s a price was settled upon. With all their common history the negotiations were surprisingly hot, and yet both parties walked away thinking that they had bested their opponent.

So after all these years, all the time, effort and heartache invested into the soul of the valley, the responsibility for its future life and sustainability rested on my family’s shoulders. An honour yes, but not one that would be taken lightly.

Olive had followed in the footsteps of the men in he family before her. In the same way they had, Olive was given a couple of acres of land to do with what she will, to learn the ropes of farming, to make mistakes and learn from them what she would. Like her forebears, she took to it like a duck to water, spending the bulk of her days after school tending to her field of pumpkin, corn and tomatoes. But as had been the case with Phillip, she really had to work at it in order to produce the bet possible product. Even more so. With Albert it had come instantaneously; he had that raw and natural flair- the green fingers- so important in farming. Phillip had inherited much of that instinct, but had had to work hard in order to maintain the same level as his father. It was as though the green fingers were being diluted with each progressive generation. So when she finished school, Olive took leave of the farm to go to University and study Agribusiness. In between semesters she would return home and put what she had learned over the past few months into practise, and once she had finished her degree she came back for good, building a house for herself tucked away from the world near the Karri grove at the back corner of the original block. It was her slice of serenity, her refuge from the maddening world of her kin.

Between coming home and finished her house Olive took complete charge of the business side of the farm. Until then the accounts had been split between her father and grandfather’s activities, so she took on the responsibility of pooling the books, sorting out who had bought what and when. It was fair to say that they had been completely disordered. Receipts and invoices were loosely slotted between pages, often in not only the wrong year but also the wrong decade. She scolded the men and sat down to work bringing some much needed order and logic to their affairs.