The People in your Neighborhood

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day

Sesame Street song lyrics

I love cruising around the blogosphere, following links to discover new blogs. I like to think of it as a massive, global community which provides me with the opportunity to learn more about people we may never have otherwise had the pleasure of ‘meeting.’ To me, the parenting sector of this community often feels like a neighborhood. There are all sorts of people to chat to and share ideas and war stories with.

Recently, I was cruising when I came upon a relatively new blog, Bush Belles, written by an Australian Mum, Julia, about her busy life raising four children in rural Australia. I was fascinated by Julia’s images of her rural retreat and interested to read some of her reflections about raising kids on a farm. I was curious to know more and contacted her, asking if she would like to share more about life on the farm and her philosophy of raising children away from the bright lights of a big city. I find her responses fascinating, so grab a cuppa and enjoy reading more about Julia’s journey as a woman, wife and mum.

Tell us a little about you and your family
There are 6 of us in our family. My husband and I and our 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls ranging in age from 1-6 which means there are 6 very different personalities. My husband and I are both from the land originally, met in outback Queensland on a cattle station where he was working as head stockman, I was the cook and we fell in love. I had left Sydney after working in law, for a new adventure. I call it my outback romance. We moved back to NSW to raise our children and be nearer to family. We currently live on a sheep/cattle property not too far out of town but in an isolated region.

We are a typical country family; my children attend the local Catholic school, we holiday at the beach every year and are both active members of several community committees. We believe we have the best of both worlds. We are able to live our peaceful existence but still have many friends who live in cities and overseas whom we keep in regular touch with. We are a busy, noisy, happy family and try to deal with the everyday issues that are thrown at us with humour and knowledge.

Tell us a little about your farm
Our farm runs sheep and cattle and a bit of cropping, my husband also loves horses. He is a typical “stockman.” The farm runs like you would expect most farms to run. We are of the adage “early to bed, early to rise”. I cannot be too hands on at the moment with young babes running around and a lot of school and sport commitments to keep me busy. My husband takes care of most the physical work on the place while I take care of things in the home and most issues with our children. We are currently in drought. We have stock on agistment at the moment which means they have been sent to greener pastures while we wait for rain. Feeding and agistment are very expensive and most families can only do this for so long. Our mail is delivered three times a week, we have fantastic neighbours and my parents are only 45 minutes away. The children have their chores and love helping out. We like them to know what is going on and why and they are very interested in all the jobs.

How do you spend family time?
We are lucky because the children get to spend a lot of time with their father throughout the day as his “office” is basically their backyard. On days they cannot go with him (fencing, cleaning troughs, feeding stock etc) he will often comes in for “smoko” and lunch. They take it for granted that they will see him most days as that is how it is. He is sometimes also able to take them to activities in the day (school assemblies, sport) if need be as he keeps his own hours. So for us family time happens in abundance every day and we love it. The children get to spend alone time with their father when they are mustering or doing jobs with him or even when he takes them to catch the school bus and he tells me some of the most interesting conversations happen at these times. We do love BBQ’s in summer and roasts in winter and the children love helping prepare for these. I guess our gift to our children is our time, we may miss out on huge incomes and overseas holidays and many material elements but they know they have our full attention 24/7 and really its just not much of an issue because we do not make it one. We feel they are only with us for a few years so we will give them whatever time and knowledge we can now. We are also very lucky to live near my family and my children love spending time with their grandparents on their farm. It’s a special treat and one that nobody ever gets tired of.

How would you describe yourself as a parent?
I worked in childcare for a time just before I had my own children and it was an excellent learning curve. I was so lucky to have that experience as I learnt small gems such as, when you leave your children at daycare, leave, don’t keep consoling them as it only makes it worse. Also having worked with babies, I was very relaxed when I had my first baby, who was also a very relaxed baby. I definitely believe that a relaxed, happy mother means a relaxed happy baby and to do whatever works for you.

I have a fairly relaxed, patient type of personality so that helps when things get crazy, which they so often do. My husband and I try to agree on courses of action to take regarding discipline, this works some of the time!

I have recently had to acknowledge my inability to keep the house tidy with 4 children. I clean one room and its a mess again in 5 minutes, I guess that’s just part of motherhood.

I spend as much time as I can with all 4 and acknowledge that all 4 are quite different little personalities and I love watching them grow. All of them have their own issues, my son has speech difficulties and is being bullied, one daughter was born with a heart condition (all fixed now) and the other has just been tested for one along with her anemia problem. My youngest son is the rogue. Each problem and issue we face head on and do the best we can with as much information and advice as I can obtain. Some issues I let sort out by themselves others I step in.

I am a fairly involved parent and do the P&F secretary thing as a way to keep my brain active, and I can honestly say that sometimes a few hours away from the chaos at a meeting is my sanity. We are also trying to raise our children to be as independent as possible. I have never been the type of mother who does everything for her children. From a young age my kids were able to put their own shoes, make a sandwich, turn a tap on and get their own things, within reason. I guess because I was raised this way and am very independent that I see that as one important quality. I am loving the journey and the learning. I try not to do the guilt thing too much or be told by the media what I should be doing. I try to do what feels right and what works for my family, then everything just seems to fall into place.

Pop back tomorrow to find out more about family life on the farm, when Julia shares more about the challenges and benefits of raising children in the country.