A Story of Seven Summers

by Hilary Burden

  Early autumn was in the air and I spent the morning in the garden collecting baskets of twigs from around the wattle and gum trees ready for the first evening fire. I remember Elma, one of Audrey’s friends, had called them ‘morning sticks’. She was in her nineties and told me how collecting twigs and branches used to be one of the children’s jobs when she was growing up on a farm in Longford; her particular chore had been to polish the lamps and keep them filled with oil.

  Barney decided to open up a hobby nursery and had propagated some plants and picked up others from trips to nurseries near and far. I helped him move the old chicken coop and loved how he transformed it into a potting shed, complete with a stained-glass window. A shade house was added, followed by two long polytunnels. He laid old house bricks in different shapes under the shade of trees, and plants and trees were lined up on them in orderly rows. There was running postman, grevillea, callistemon, silver birch, lavender, Japanese maples, blackwood trees, populous and pin oak, stone pine, dawn redwood, shelves of pretty miniature cyclamen, ferns and box hedge, and conifers of all description. What sold was what survived in his hobby nursery, in natural conditions, and nurtured with the utmost care. One or several of each variety were planted in the paddock, then mulched, manured and watered in a methodical way, so that visitors to the nursery could see how their garden might grow.

  We came to know the corner where we lived as ‘Karoola Corner’. The hard bend that opened up onto a mile-long straight was a joy for drivers. Barney could tell the sound of a Ducati even before he saw it, and often we’d stop to watch a motorbike or car of particular note slow for the bend, and then accelerate. I liked living on the road, but the corner was not the safest place to stop and nursery sales relying on passing trade proved slow. The signs would go up at nine in the morning and come in again at six. Sometimes, for many days in a row, no one stopped. I could tell Barney was despondent but he kept watering, potting and repotting, and the plants and trees at Karoola Hobby Nursery looked stronger every day.

  Like me, he wanted to be able to make a living where he lived, not commute to offices that wasted time and took you away from where you wanted to be. We reminded each other this was a virtue that we hoped would bring about good things; it might just take time. ‘It is what it is,’ I would say. ‘It is what it is,’ echoed Barn.

  When the Lilydale market first opened the following spring, Barney decided to take along his plants to sell. If there hadn’t been a town crisis, the market may never have happened. When plans became known for a new forestry plantation to be established on the edge of the town, through the sale of private farmland to forest investors, it was a bridge too far for many residents who felt the tranquillity and safety of the village would be threatened. Signs were posted around the district, and many community meetings were held in the memorial hall. Logging families filled the back rows and others turned up just wanting to have their say or to hear more about plans that concerned them. A village green meeting was held in Lilydale. There were speeches and songs but some workers at the sawmill behind the green chose to fire up their chainsaws in an attempt to drown out proceedings. They even made it onto the TV news.

  In the end, the sale to forest enterprises for plantation purposes didn’t happen. Instead, the land was purchased privately and the battle lines stood down. But for some a bitter aftertaste remained. The community met and opted for mediation to come up with positive ways of coming together. One of the suggestions that came out of these sessions was to hold a fortnightly village market.

  Barney and I were keen to support the market and adapted his ute with removable shelves for the purposes of carrying as many plants as possible. The nursery was Barney’s, and although I was happy to join him I was keen not to blur the lines or step on his territory. So I decided to do my own thing with seeds and herbs. I collected a few seeds from the garden and sorted them into small brown paper bags, which I stamped with a gold butterfly and labelled as ‘The Nuns’ House Seeds’. There were sunflowers, Italian parsley, calendula, love-in-a-mist and my favourite, old-fashioned fragrant sweet peas that I’d first bought in a small packet from an elderly couple at the annual Longford Flower Show. I potted up a few herbs and, early on market morning, cut, tied and labelled bunches of fresh herbs from the garden and put them in mini tin buckets. Les had given me a black moleskin book to write in, and I opened it up for the first time to record Barney’s and my first trip to market. Inside, on the first page, I wrote:

  Sage

  Mustard Cress

  Basil

  Sweet Pea (seeds)

  Coriander

  Italian Parsley

  Love a Sunflower (seeds & potted)

  We set off early for the first Lilydale Village Sunday Market when the day was still cool. It was hard work loading all the plants into the ute, and just as hard taking them all out again at the market. Barn arranged his plants in a sweeping semicircle and his retail brain made him conscious of things like traffic flow and space for prams, concepts I hadn’t really considered. At the end of the day we counted up our takings and I made a note in the little black book:

  Herbs/Seeds $65

  Plants: $400

  The stallholders agreed that the market had been a great success but the lack of fresh produce needed to be addressed. After all, how could you have a market without produce?

  ‘Why don’t you sell produce, Hil?’ pressed Libby, who was there selling homemade preserves and her mountain spring–water. ‘Instead of your produce hall, you could bring it to market. I know a farmer you can buy some veg from. I’ll have a word with him, get you together, and you can go from there. What do you reckon?’

  Two weeks later, in time for the next market, we sourced potatoes, onions, pumpkin, rhubarb and carrots from a farmer in Scottsdale. We gathered apples and apricots from orchards in the Tamar Valley and strawberries from the pick-your-own farm at Hillwood, and had harvested spinach and lettuce from our own gardens. Inspired by French village markets, we used wicker baskets and second-hand basketware for the produce. Together we cut up small boards and painted them with blackboard paint to chalk on our prices. We bought a gazebo to keep the sun off the produce, and made a rustic table out of recycled fence palings to place and arrange baskets of cherries, berries and apricots. Any money we made from fruit and veg went into a tin and became our fund for sparkling wine.

  With plants as well as produce the stall looked abundant and full of life. You could tell that Barn had run a fruit and veg stall before, and I loved the way he reached for a peach or a tomato when customers stopped to browse: ‘Here,’ he’d say, ‘try this.’

  ‘Would that be a Moorpark apricot?’ asked one customer. ‘Oh, I don’t know exactly,’ I replied. Stupidly, I believed an apricot was an apricot. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing the specific variety mentioned on labels in the supermarket. I vowed to have the answer next time and to know the difference. There was always so much to do in preparation that the need to know what I was doing was preceded by the actual doing of it. Of course, that was no excuse.

  With a cup of tea in hand on the Nuns’ House veranda later that day I found the space occurred for idle thoughts, where there were no distractions, when doing slipped back to being, and the time was spare to have a different slant on the day. So I thought about the slightly imperious woman with a wide-brimmed hat who stood and asked me to serve her two kilos of potatoes in a bag.

  ‘I’m selling vegetables now,’ I remarked to Barney over a meal that night. ‘That lady. That was the moment I realised— I’m selling vegetables!’ In my head, I felt good about reaching this point on this day, doing these things, with this man who said he loved me as well as us. But all that the customer in front of me could see was a woman with potato dirt under her fingernails selling fruit and veg. I felt discomfited by her expression— she seemed to look down her nose at me—and yet I had no compulsion to explain what I had done in my life before this moment. Just like the wardrobe of jackets still s
itting in plastic bags in my bedroom, destined for the op shop, that path might have brought me here, but no longer mattered. What mattered was that the stall looked wonderful, we sold out of produce, took $180 for fruit, veg and herbs, and $390 in plants. Between the two of us, after costs, we made $175 on the day—which, naturally, we spent on bubbles. ‘What I’m doing,’ I thought, ‘is who I am.’

  None of this was planned. It happened organically. When we got to share the day like this, what we did with our time was our way of life and that was precious. It wasn’t about having your own desk, knowing your place, playing a role, leading a team, paying off bills, saving up for holidays or tying down a relationship. It wasn’t any of this. It was a philosophy lived rather than discussed and dissected and we felt no need to rush. The Nuns’ House had taught me to sit back, see what presented itself, and leave space for the future to happen. Preparing for the market was exhausting work, though, and I wondered how farmers could find the time to take their produce to market when they were so busy growing it. It took two of us a day to get it together, to pack and prepare; to weigh then bunch rhubarb with rubber bands or carrots with thick string; to polish apples; to weigh and arrange strawberries lovingly into punnets (start with four large ones in each corner then fill up the centre with smaller fruit) . . .U p early to pick delicate herbs before setting off to market and when you arrived home it still wasn’t over—there was always more to do. But a sense of fulfilment nuzzled up to the dusty exhaustion we both felt at the end of each market day.

  The blueberry season had started and one blue-sky Sunday I headed off to Crestview orchard in Lebrina, not far from Lilydale. I now ranked picking blueberries at Crestview, alongside a swim at Lulworth Beach, as one of the highlights of my north-eastern summer. Crestview’s paddock looked almost as full of vehicles as a Woolworths car park. And there was so much fruit that each branch looked weighed down like a giant eyebrow touching the ground. This was something families did together and it was hard not to listen in to their conversations across the blueberry hedgerows. Nothing really important was said—just the little irks and joys of life shared along with a love of blueberries. Some picked in one place leaning over the bushes; others sat on their haunches and picked their way up through the branches. Whichever, buckets were soon filled to the brim, and children ran back to get more. The loveliest thing was realising not every blueberry needed to be picked, and how you could only see this in times of abundance. It felt good to be able to leave the not-so-ripe for someone else to pluck. The truly blue, silver-coated plump berries nearly bursting at the seam were the ones to prize, ready for eating, not keeping. I packed eight kilos, picked in ninety minutes; 7.5 made it home . . .

  Throughout summer we continued to go to market every fortnight. We sourced produce from other growers, too, and got to know the locals, who came to support us. Many older people liked to stop and chat and asked about where things came from and how things were grown. Like Clair and Bob, a retired couple from Underwood. She would hand-select their fruit and veg for the week, while he trailed behind her with a carry bag and a wicked sense of humour. Suzanne from Lalla liked to look for particular plants for certain spots in her garden. I remembered her as ‘the lovage lady’, because one Sunday she came especially with her husband to give us a small pot of lovage they’d dug up from their garden. I only knew the name of it from a play I’d once seen in London’s West End, Lettice and Lovage starring Maggie Smith. It felt connected now that I had the actual plant in my garden and could appreciate its strong taste and elegant lime leaves.

  I decided we needed a practical shopper bag for customers, along with our biodegradable plastic bags. After much futile research online, we decided to make them, sourcing hessian potato sacks from the local rural supplier. Cut in half, each sack made two carrier bags. Barn had a roll of upholsterer’s hessian that made excellent handles, and the final touch was a machine-stitched label made out of stiff brown paper. I used an ink pen to hand-write the inscription. I tried the words ‘Fruit & Veg’ but decided ‘The Nuns’ House’ had more warmth.

  My friend Vivienne had come to visit from Italy on her self-styled ‘grey gap year’. This was the year she retired, sold her flat in London and was travelling to see friends around the world before settling in . . .? She knew not where. She would make that decision when the time came. Originally from the Shetland Islands, it was no accident that she had fallen in love with Tasmania. Pity they were as far apart as they could be.

  Viv spoke fluent Italian and was the kind of retiree who wore bikinis, scarlet polish on her toenails and went bungee-jumping off bridges. She had freedom because she had chosen it and that meant she could be here, now, adding this masterful touch, sewing up the top edge of our market bag in big woolly blanket stitches. Both of us remembered learning blanket stitch in our childhood, probably in the Brownies, and it took a few goes to remember that the stitch went backwards. We sat on the back veranda bathed in February sunshine, sipping wine and making bags together ready to take to market. Viv stuffed one with newspaper and modelled it while I took photos. We stitched and sewed into the evening and Viv decided a put-tanesca supper was the way to go. She explained puttanesca came from the word puttana, which is Italian for prostitute, and roughly translated means ‘prostitute style’: being so quick and easy to assemble they allegedly used to make it between clients. It was pure Mediterranean sunshine. As she spooned it into the bowl, Viv said it never looked like enough but, cooked properly and with a handful of parmesan tossed over it, it was richer than you thought. And she was right.

  On market day, we priced the bags at six dollars and hung them from the gazebo roof. When a young woman bought one I watched with pride as she hooked the hessian handles over her shoulder and strolled casually around the market with our handiwork on show.

  Simon, an accredited green plumber and renewable energy design consultant, ran the market with his partner Carmencita. She came from Sicily, had a PhD in Asian Studies and taught tango dancing. Together they baked wood-fired pizzas on market day, and there was always a queue at their stall. Gina was there from Yondover Dairy in Tunnel with her artisan goats’ cheeses; she hoped to open a cheese-tasting room on her farm next year. Tanya sold organic blueberries and raspberries harvested from Honeywood, the Strongs’ family farm in North Lilydale, and Libby Macbeth, a medical herbalist, was lining up her homemade pots of native flora ointments and creams. Jillian and Ian sold Jilly’s homemade preserves, and brought their alpaca to show. The Honeychurchs from Pipers River sold golden pots of leatherwood and bush honey, and Stella, who was Argentinian, had baked fresh ciabatta. We encouraged Crabtree to come along with his wine, which he did, and it was a great success, if only because the stallholders could have a glass of his pinot noir or chardonnay while going about their business.

  Barn liked to take a break and wander off, but always returned with pizza or fresh cheese and we’d sit in the shade of the ute and think about how lucky we were to have such riches on our doorstep. We were amazed by the variety of stallholders within our neighbourhood—hardworking, multicultural and creative. It was a colourful site on a Sunday and the village came to life. Both sides of the road were lined with vehicles and all the businesses seemed to benefit from the extra visitors the market attracted. The usual politics applied when people were required to rub along together: there was tough competition for stall sites and the staking out of territory was fierce. The next-door stall quibbled over the space we were taking up and by next market we noticed the lines on the ground were painted a little more sharply. One stallholder played country music far too loudly, and there was a united plea to change the tune and turn it down.

  One day in April, the market was cancelled due to heavy rain, which left us wondering what to do with kilos of fresh potatoes, carrots, onions, rhubarb, pumpkin, parsnips, plus capsicum, cherry tomatoes, sweetcorn, silverbeet, apples and spring onions. We wanted to try to cover the cost of produce and decided our best option was to box it up and ta
ke it to town. While the rain pelted down on Sunday afternoon, we set off to Jansz to collect recycled Vintage cartons, and made up six boxes to look as fresh and overflowing as possible. We did this by feel. What would we like to see in a box of fresh fruit and veg? We took a photograph of the contents of one arranged in a basket, sitting on Barn’s back veranda next to a bottle of our local sauvignon blanc. If you didn’t know the view overlooking the Pipers River valley it could almost be Tuscany. After emailing family and friends with the image and a message, we managed to sell all six boxes and covered our costs within a day. We were happy not to have wasted good produce, and happy too that people seemed impressed by the freshness.

  In late May the market closed for winter so we decided to continue with our ‘rainy day business model’ for fresh produce boxes. We wanted produce to be as ‘just-picked’ and local as it could be, which meant we collected it on the weekend ourselves direct from farmers, packed it on Sunday night, and delivered on Monday morning. Above all, we wanted our venture to pay for itself. We decided to call ourselves ‘hilbarn’. When an academic friend asked if we’d chosen it as a take on ‘Barnhill’— ‘You know,’ he said, ‘the remote house in west Scotland where George Orwell wrote his novel 1984’—we had to confess that no, we weren’t that clever. We chose it because it was a combination of our names.

  Within a couple of months, we’d more than doubled our customers, to fourteen box subscribers, and could no longer fit the boxes into the car. On the way home from one of our delivery runs we spotted an old Ford Transit van for sale in a pub car park and decided to take it for a test run. It was a 1978 model and reminded me of the van in The Italian Job.