Non-fiction. Early Childhood

Early Childhood.
A short Episode.
I spent my first years of my life living with my parents and elder brother on a dairy farm in a very remote part of the countryside.
During the depression years of the 30’s my brother and I needed to spend a lot of time home alone as father was working away erecting telegraph and power poles and mother had the farm work and milking the cows to take care.
Needing to make our own amusement, there was always something exciting for us to explore or create. We roped together some small logs and when it rained they were taken up the side of a hill and used to slide back down, lots of fun and lots of cuts and bruises.
Somehow time was made to teach us boys school by correspondence, we were lucky to have a mother with special skills to pass on to us.
Living among the hills created quite a few storms, the thunder and lightening was scary to us kids so if mother was away milking we hid under the beds till it passed.
Exploring the surrounding bush was always exciting, looking for different birds, rabbits and sometimes we would see wild pigs. There was a nice swimming hole in a stream which was always lots of fun over the summer, also fishing for eels kept us busy for hours, mother always told us to throw them back again as she wouldn’t cook them.
Our home was very humble, all our vegetables were grown in our garden, enough potatoes, pumpkin and carrots to last the year, mother would make lots of sauerkraut which I dislikes intensely but I had to sit there till I finished my plate, today there is lots of herbs and spices to make it delicious. There was beef or lamb on the table when father killed a beast, it was shared among the other farmers as there was no refrigeration and they would share theirs with us.
It was a strange experience for us boys when the family farm was sold and we moved south to a small dairy town where there was electricity and telephones and we could go to school. I can recall switching the lights on and off, fascinated how there was instant light. Going to school by train was a real novelty and something that has never left me; I still have a passion for train travel.
Those first years of my life were good, no matter how poor we were, mother made sure we never went hungry, I still can’t imagine how she managed, bless her.