Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Farming the old way

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
-
Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
ant this post, farming the old way
-
This is similar harvester machine that we were using when I was young
 
This is a small trashing machine, compared to the trashing machine that we would hire to trash our wheat and other cereals.








Farming the old way

Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our previous post; farming today compared to the old way; in order to explain how farming was done at the time when I was young, what we are going to write here-under is the way of farm life that was going on then, we know that things have changed for the better since then, as we have already written in our previous post, because of the tractor and new farming machinery that have come out since then, all this progress has been due to the modern industrial progress, but when I was young these advanced machinery were not available yet, of course there were some, but they were a lot less advanced farming machine that could make farming easy, so we had to do most things the old ways, so let me tell you how life was in the farms of southern Italy in the early fifties and earlier.

It is a well-known fact that in those times and even now, there were/are two times during the year, when in the farms everybody would be really working hard and working very long hours; one of this was/is sowing time and the other is harvest time, let us start with sowing times. When I was young the working day at sowing time would start two hours before dawn, because we had to make the horses, mules and other animals ready for working in the fields, we had to feed them and water them as well, it had to be done in such a way that everything should be made ready in order to go into the fields at daybreak.

At that time of the year in the morning it would be very cold and there are lots of frosty days, so in the morning the outside temperature could be around zero or below, it is very hard then to harness the horses to the plough as everything one touches is so cold; but then when one gets going it is not so bad, because walking in the fields holding the plough in one hand and guiding the horses with the other hand is hard work and it makes one warm. This type of very hard work at sowing time goes on for about a month if the weather is good and perhaps it could be longer than a month. When the sowing is done then everything slows down again, but we had still to look after the farms’ animals and do other farming chores; see this article My farm life continues, in this hub, in a sub article we describe what we did after sowing our wheat and during the winter.

Anyhow, now that we have said what we did in the farms at sowing time, let us talk about harvest time, since this is the busiest time in the farms, because harvest time is when the farmers collect the fruits of their hard labour that they have done during the year, so there is no time to waste at harvest time, therefore this was and still is the most hectic time of the year for all the farmers, and it is a very worrying time too for the farmers as well, you see if something goes wrong all their work goes down the drain for the whole year, so to speak. Here we are talking about mostly how things were run in the farms when I was young.

Now let us say a few things about today farming, especially about wheat farming, because wheat is one of the main important produce that we need from farming, as we have already said at the beginning of this article. With wheat we make bread and pasta and other bakery products, therefore it is perhaps the most important farm produce that we use. So, let us compare what is changed in wheat farming since I was young:

---------------------------

Wheat harvest in the fifties

The following description is the way of wheat harvest time in the fifties when I was young. When I was young we had already a horse drawn harvester that was helping us, this early harvester was able to cut the wheat plants and tie them in bundles, so we were already half way down the track of progress, as this machine saved us a lot of work, because we did not have to harvest by hand. Anyhow, at this time of the year everybody in the farm works hard and for very long hours, it is very hot at this time of the year and everything is very dry. We get up very early in the morning, we get the horses ready for working by feeding them and watering them, then we harness the horses and set them to pull the harvester, and off we go in the fields for another day of hard work, if everything goes well, we might be able to go over a ten acre field just in one day with this harvester. The harvester needs two people to get it working, one drives the horses and another regulate the harvester, the harvester goes around the field and leaves these bundles of wheat or other cereal, whatever has been sown in the field. Now these bundles of wheat will be collected in hips around the field from other people as soon as possible, the hips of these bundles of wheat are made is such a way that if it rains the rain would run off easily, these hips of wheat will be collected later on when we finish with the harvester, perhaps in a week or two, we will go back to the fields with a cart to take everything on a special plot near the farm house, where the trashing machine will be hired and set.

When we collect and cart everything to the farm house, we work very long days, we get up before 4 am, but we have a break of two or three hours at lunchtime because it is too hot to do anything, then we go back to work and between real work and looking after the animals we finish at dusk around 8 pm, after that we only have to feed the horses: this sort of work goes on for more than a month and sometimes up to two months, with no breaks at all seven days a week. Everybody in the farm works to their maximum and they are very tired, they are also very worried about the possible fire hazard, and also of any thunder storms at this time of the year, since anyone of these happenings can destroy the whole crop, and a whole year of hard work could go up in smoke. So we all would be waiting for the trashing machine to come and finish our harvest.

When some famer did not have a lot of wheat to trash, they could use a place in common with other farmers, so that, the trashing machine would not have to be set several times. The trashing machine that were around and we would hire together with other farmers came with a large crew, because it was a much larger machine than the one shown in this post, it had a crew of about twenty people, it was a very interesting time when we were trashing our own wheat, oats, barley, etc. Because we were anxious to see how much wheat and other product we had made.    

Now there were many other things that I would be able to tell you, but I better not just to make it short; but here I would like to say that when one goes through these life experiences in the farm one knows that it is really hard life farming, but since this is the only way to grow these things for food, we the farmers keep working in our farms to feed the rest of the community.

So we feel that it would be right if the rest of the community should be thanking us for all the hard work that we have done, but it does not happen that way because, even when we are working our guts out, and while we are doing that we are becoming dull, the rest of the community does not care and they label us as dull people, just because we are farm people, but we did our part of hard work for our own benefit and also for the benefit of the entire town community.

This is how life was then in the small farms of Southern Italy. Now this town people attitude as I have said above, plus some very lean years when we hardly could survive and also because we had only a very small farm and it would have been hard to expand was one of the reasons why I migrated to Australia. But anyhow let us continue and describe how harvesting was done the very old way, so that we could compare it to today’s living.

------------------------------------------------
Genzano it story
Farming the old way
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, framing the very old way
------------------------------ 
Some useful links


Some hub links

-

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Farming today compared to the old way

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
-
Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and our post, farming today compared to the old way
-
Wheat farming the modern way
With these combined harvester machines to collect wheat is easy these days. anyhow we have to point out that in this photo there are just too many machine, just to make an impressive photo.



By using a tractor and plough or other devises to cultivate the soil today is also a lot easier than it used to be; well, not only it is easier but it is also better, because the soils is better prepared, when the time comes for sowing whatever one needs to sow.



Farming today compared to the old way
Wheat farming the modern way
Dear readers, starting with this post we are going to write a few posts, where we would like to show you that overall we are better off today than we were in the past, one of these improvement has been happening because of the new machines that have been invented in the last century or so, but perhaps to understand this progress we need to describe one of the main improvements that I have witnessed myself personally, so I would like to talk about; Farming today compared to the old ways.
First of all let us acknowledge that modern wheat farming in Australia and in many other parts of the world as well has been able to slash the present cost of living a lot; today modern farming thanks to the many new farming machine available and also the many new fertilises available are able to produce wheat and other produce a lot cheaper than in the past, so, food for most of us people has become a lot cheaper, therefore we are better off today in many ways.
In this post including another couple of post that we are going to post later, we would like to invite our readers to compare how different farming and farming life was at the time when I was young in the fifties, and also, how hard was life then because most of us had to work hard just to earn enough to feed ourselves and our families, as you will become aware by the time you finish reading this articles.
This difference that we are talking about would apply to the farmers and the general public as well, because today it affects both of them in a beneficial way. So there is a lot to be said about this great difference in cost and also hardship or easiness and it all has happened during my life time, so, there are good reasons to believe that our standard of living has improving a lot, at least in the sense of being able to feed ourselves with wheat and other farm products, because the cost of farm products are more affordable today than in the past; so let us compare the cost of living and some of the reasons why this has happened and also talk about the farming life that we used to live, at the same time, perhaps just for the sake of seeing where we have come from.
Today we often wonder how easy it is to grow and harvest wheat, at least it seems so when we look at a video that shows harvest time in the wheat farms, we see a few harvester machines in a field collect the wheat in no time at all, and because of this speed of these wonderful combine harvester machine food is a lot cheaper today than it used to be; of course these machines are only part of the machinery that helps the farmers produce the wheat, because there are many more machines required, so, just to inform the general public a bit more, because some of them we guess would not know what is involved at all, let us talk about and show here under a few more machines that are required to work the fields and produce wheat today.
---------------------------------------

Some farmers' machinery

We could say that the most important machine in the farms is the tractor, as this machine could be used in all sorts of farming, in wheat farming the tractor is followed by the harvester machine and other devices to till the soil and to sow the seeds, and all these machines put together make farming a lot easier today, and therefore wheat can be produced a lot cheaper, this of course helps keep the price of bread and other wheat made products down, since wheat is the main food elements required in the western world to prepare food, therefore, this new way of farming helps a great deal just about everybody, since wheat would be one of the main ingredients to make foods for us to eat and we require lots of it.
Of course if we want to talk about farming in general there is more to say than just wheat farming, because there are many other things that the bloke on the land would produce, see this link here-under how Wikipedia explains farming.
Dear readers, now let us continue to talk about wheat farming and the great benefit that we get from it; we should be really happy about what is happening here because it is good for us all, so, today while we are writing this article, we would like to point out that there is a great difference in the ways of living and definitely we are a lot better off today than we were, when I was young:
Now, for comparison sake let me explain this to you, today here in Australia there are a few places that a 600g loaf of bread costs you just one dollar, we know that this bread is sold at a very special price from these supermarket, in order to get the customers to the shop, but we often wonder and we do not know how it could be done so cheap but they do it anyhow, this very low price of bread is possible only because the farmer can produce the wheat cheap for a start.
Then, because the wheat is cheap the price of bread could also be cheap, the supermarkets make it even cheaper to attract customers, because the supermarkets have a price war to attract customers on bread and also on milk, so, we can buy a loaf of bread for one dollar and we can buy a two litre bottled milk for two dollars, that works out at one dollar per litre, again how they can do it I do not know, but they do it anyhow; so there is plenty of cheap wholesome food around for us to enjoy, thanks to the farmers and the supermarkets.
But even though bread and milk is cheap beyond compare, there are people that still complain about the cost of living today, I know that what I am talking about here are only a few items and a lot more are needed to live well. But just for comparison sake let us show you how easily we can afford to buy bread and milk to day, you see today most people on the government old age pension in Australia would receive about 700 dollars per fortnight, which would be about 50 dollars per day, they could very easily afford to buy bread and milk and other food items.
Now that we have said how easy it is to buy bread and other staple food today, let us leave behind this affordability of food today and let us see how things were done in the past. You see, when I was young things were a lot harder than today, for sure we could not buy bread and milk as easy as we buy them today, because to produce these things took a lot more physical work than today and therefore they were a lot more expensive, they were so because the way of producing them was different, in order to show you what we mean, hereunder we are going to describe how wheat farming was done at the time when I was young and also how hard it was for some people just to have something to eat, even if it was just a piece of bread and butter, or bread and tomatoes or other basic things that one could find in the fields if you were in the farms. Anyhow, to start with let me describe how farming was done then, in this following article, farming the old ways, so that we could have a better understanding of the whole issue and be able to compare the past with the present way of farming. Anyhow how I said at the beginning of this post, we are going to write a few posts about this subject and this post is becoming too long, so we will write about ‘farming the old way’ in our next post. 
Do not forget that this is only the first post and to understand what we want to convey you need to read our next to post at least.  
See you soon.
----------------------------------------------------------- 

Some hub links

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Midway love life story

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
-
Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Midway love story
-
Midway love story is a painful love story with no love happening.
-
Love is a bitter sweet experience that most of us will go through during our lives, so here I am writing one of these experiences.
These is how we usually feel when we are in love with someone.











Midway love life story
Wanting to become a writer for love,
Welcome to my article, midway love life story of my unwanted love story
Dear readers be warned that this post is going to be longer than usual, because it is going to cover an entire chapter of my life; but before I start telling you about my story of unwanted love, I have to point it out to you that what has happened to me, it has happened because the woman I was married to was not interested in me, she was interested in anything else in life accept me, so much so that one could start thinking that if she had the chance she would go with somebody else as long as she would get what she wanted, which was to live her life as she was living it before she got married; so, when something happens that makes you think that you might have a better chance to be happy with another woman that chance and hope becomes so strong that is it hard to ignore. Well that is only one way, but in reality I think that there is also another reason why this has happened to me, which will be explained as you read what I have to say, So, This is what I was thinking at the time this event happened: 
We all very well know that to succeed and do anything well, one must be well prepared in order to be able to do it well. So, if it happens that the person that wants to achieve any goals during their lives have been lucky in their early life, and have had a good education in their youth, then in their lives they should be able to hold a good job, and they can do things in such a way that they could be above the average person, therefore any person that has been lucky and has been trained in their early life would be a lucky person indeed, because whatsoever that person wants to achieve in their lives will be easy for such a person to achieve, or at least easier than if he had not been trained.
But there are some people that did not have the chance to learn when they were young, so, they might feel as if they are in a dreadful position, and this is just what has happened to me because now I would like to become a writer, you see I would like to do that for my own personal reasons, but because I lack that training it is going to be a lot harder for me to achieve my goal. You see I have a dream of becoming a writer in my old age and write many things including my own painful love life story that never happened, because I was not well prepared to reach her heart, so I have started to dream to become a writer, in the hope of being able to reach her heart later on.
Now because I have not been trained in my case my dream of becoming a writer seems much bigger than my ability to achieve it, so I have to try my best hoping that somehow I will be able to reach my goal, this is one of the reasons why I am writing the story of my life and my unwanted love story. You sometimes all these love emotions become so crowded that one could say that it is all a psychological game that we play during our lives.
----------------------------------------------- 
Our psychological mind sometimes plays tricks on us and make us believe that we would be able to reach the person that we have fallen in love with; the result of this predisposition is that we will experience psychological pains of unwanted love.  


Dear readers, although this is a personal love story; I would like to ask you if you believe that love really exists, here we mean those love emotions that go through our mind when we fall in love; you see being in love with one of the opposite sex is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world, because from this sort of love that we feel with one another one day another human being is going to be born, so, I suppose that nothing could be more natural than that, but love emotions have many twists and they show in many ways, so everyone of us has had experience with that, but let me tell you, sometimes those love experiences may have the opposite result that we would like to have, as I have had one of those strange love experience I would like to tell you what did happen, in my unwanted midway love story here under.
 This Midway love story is a psychological and painful story of my love life, which I am going to write some of it here, because it is part of my life. I have chosen to write them here in my life story writings, because this is between the first part of my life story and my second part that is going to start with my leaving Italy to migrate to Australia; of course I am also writing it here because people fall in love during their lives, they do not fall in love when they are very young or very old, but it is a midway happening and they may bring happiness or pain, depending on the outcome of your love life.
You see dear readers what we are talking about here are these psychological love things that happen to us, and they are usually those things that have accumulated within our system and they will drive us to do unusual things, or feel that we want to do those things, even if they seem to be somehow wrong to do at the time; so, what I am going to do next is this psychological thing where I want to become a write for love, it may not make sense to all of us, but that is the way that I feel I am being driven to do. In order to have a longer explanation you may read this other hub called, God works in mysterious ways, where I am writing some of my love problems, this will partly explain why I would like to become a writer and write about, my unwanted love story.
My unwanted love story
Dear reader whoever you may be, I know that I have already said that I am going to tell you the story of my life here in Hub Pages, but because of my lack of training as a writer, I seem to go around in circles as if there are always other things to say, in order to get ready for the real story to begin. So I hope you understand my position, I want also to tell you that when I first started to write the story of my life, I felt as if I was going back to school to learn how to become a better writer. Well this is how I feel even now while I am writing this story of my life for the first time. Anyhow I may have to write another few articles, before I would be able to start my life story from the beginning of my life when I was a child, because as I said, at this very moment I am still thinking to write about my unwanted love story.
Now that I have explained that let me introduce myself first of all, because I believe that I have not done that yet: My real name is Frank and I am just a simple bloke, and here I would like to welcome you to read my life story and the ‘Observation of my life; but as I have already mentioned above do not expect my writings to be well written because I have not been trained to be a writer, and I am not even a native of the English language, therefore I am only a try hard writer that wants to say something about my own life and love life, because my unwanted love happening has pushed me to write about it.
I need to say that, even knowing that I am not a good writer, I have come to a resolution, and I wish to write my own life story and the observations of life in English and then publish them in any ways I can on the Internet. I want and I need to write my life story just because, I need most of all to improve my own knowledge of the English language, and by writing my life observations I will have the opportunity of reaching a higher standard of knowledge of the English language, which I would not and could not achieve in any other way at my present advanced age.
So for the present time, I can only hope that my writings will be clear enough for somebody to read and understand them, and that the readers would accept my writings just the way that I have been able to write them, because as I said I am writing this in order to become a better writer, because this love force within me drives me to do it.
----------------------------------------
Life observation on love
Life observation on love and wanting to become a writer
During my life I have always liked to observe whatever has been happening around me, and I believe that there are a lot of other people that are doing just the same thing that I am doing. So, one could say that observing is just a way of life that everybody does, because we can’t help it. Since it is always very important to know what’s happening around oneself in order to survive. And in doing so we can’t help to make our own life observations about other things also, and also about life itself, and about how life affects oneself and the others around the self, everybody has got to observe what’s going on around themselves, even if one lives just a simple life like I have done myself in the past.
Therefore because I am just like everybody else, I happen to have made my own observations during my own life, and most of my observations are just ordinary observations. But during my life, there has been one of my observations of life that took me really by surprise, and I was shocked by it very much, not only at the time when that event happened, but also for a very long time afterward, and that event being one of the most important of my observations of life, it is actually going to be the event that I will be writing about in my observations’ writings and in my Dreamland writings, because sometimes we like to dream what we cannot have, Anyhow here is a link for, Menfranco Dreamland Modified, now if you read  this hub and the following hub, there is a good explanation about my love dreams.
I have also to say that, this life event that I am talking about, has happened to me during the later part of my life, at a time when I was assuming that because of my mature age nothing could or would shock me, or even surprise me at all. But this happening did really take me by surprise, and it also upset me very much, and therefore I happen to have learned from this rare event a great deal about human nature, which I am sure that I didn’t know before this event happened, and this human experience has made me change some of my earlier views about our inner feelings about life and about love. And because of this rare event of my life, now I have come to believe that, when one falls in love everything seems to have a different meaning. So, let me say this only once, I am talking about when one falls in love at the wrong time of his life, in a very difficult situation that one cannot even talk about it openly.
As I have just said I cannot talk or even write this event openly, for personal reasons, therefore what I am going to write here will be written in an impersonal way. So, there may be times in our life, (At least for me it has been like that just once in my life.) when we human beings will go crazy about somebody, or perhaps something, and we will desire to have this somebody or something so much that we will try to do anything to reach out for it, in order to make whatever we so much desire our own.
So, at that moment of life when this happens: We will feel that we want to reach out and do whatever we have to do without sparing any efforts, and we hope so much to succeed in our attempt, believing that it will make ourselves feel better in the end, if we succeed to reach our goal. We’ll have to do it because the desire of getting whatever we want so much is so great that we can’t escape it, and even if our reasoning may tell us that what we are doing is not exactly right, we will keep doing it anyhow; Because, we will be driven from the inborn human nature that’s within us, which will not let us go even for a moment. Therefore even if we would like to stop doing it, we could not be able to stop it, because our inborn human nature will override all our objections. And that’s what sometimes happens in real life, and which has definitely happened to me. Here I am talking about that God given human nature, which Mother Nature in conjunction with God has given us at birth, in the hope that it will be able to guide us the natural way during our lives. But sometimes this same human-nature that is supposed to guide us the easy in a natural way may overreact, and make things happen to a very high degree just like what has happened to me.
Driven by this inner force as I have been driven once during my life, and this happening in my case did last a very long time; we will try to do our utmost in order to do something better than we have ever done before, so that we can reach the goal that we have in mind. And even if we know that it will be very hard for us to achieve the goal that we have in mind, and there is a risk that we won’t succeed at all, we will still try to do it anyhow, because our inner self drive will not let us go.
So, there are times during our own life that one would like to do what one would like to do or at least dreams about of being able to do something that may set us up to a higher standard, where one has never been before. And one hopes that by doing so, the interested person that one loves and wants to reach, and also the rest of the community would take notice of such achievements. Therefore one starts to dream about what one can do, in order to achieve one’s own dream of success, in the hope of impressing the other party and succeed to reach her heart.
All these love feelings with no love happenings have pushed me to write for myself only, because I was forced to write in the hope that through writing I would be able to reach her heart.
Writing for yourself only
Usually any writer writes because he wants people to read his own writings: But in my case when I started to write it was different, because I didn’t want just anybody to read my writings, because they were written for a special person only. And since this special person could not read them, because they were being written on our home computer, I didn’t want anybody else to read them at all, and even less from any member of my family. So instead of inviting a reader to read my writings, I had to try to turn them away. And I have done that, and I have used several ways to turn them off. Some of the ways that I have used may seem even crazy, but I was so desperate to have some privacy of my own at the time, so I just wrote whatever seemed strong enough to keep any would be reader away.
Here one may ask. Why do you write it at all, if you don’t want anybody to read it?
Well, here I want to point it out to you, that my love dream has made me write a lot about my love feelings, and even though they were only painful love feelings, I had to keep writing them: so that I could keep dreaming about my love and not despair, and while I was writing and dreaming I felt that I was trying to prepare myself for the future, so I was hoping that there would be a future for me with this special person.
Having done that, I found that I could not forget about my love dream writings, because they were and are a part of myself, and therefore I could never willingly destroy them. So I have been thinking of finding a way how to save them, and this is what I am trying to do just now. I have also to say that I have been able to write about my love dream, or dreams, because we have a computer nowadays, and therefore it is a lot easier for me to write on the computer, and the computer allows me to store my writings in it. And also because I have been able to write on the computer, whatever and whenever I could and the computer allows me to correct or change my writings, so I have been able to write. But if these events had happened in the past when there was no computer, then I would not have been able to write anything at all.
I need to point out that the computer has made it easy for me to write what’s on my mind, but it has got a problem with privacy. That’s why I have written what I have written above only, when I could have said even more. Anyhow, I believe that this post is becoming too long to say much more. So, see you with my next hub, where I am going to write about the last article of part one of my life story called; Farming today compared to the old way, in this article we will compare how we lived in the old time, and the great difference of life style that we have today, in a way this article links the old way of living with our new way, see you later.
By the way this link below is the link to the Hub that I am going to start writing about in our next post; see you then.

-----------------------------------------------
-

Some hub links