Contents

       Title Page

      Dedication

      Letter to Reader

      Harvest Moon

      The Crutching

      Droving Done

      Fifty Bales of Hay

      Cattle Crush

       Truck Wash

       About the Author

       Other Books by Rachael Treasure

       The Farmer’s Wife

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Letter to Reader

      Hello dear reader,

      Can I please take a moment to let you know in real life I am a nerd? I am more likely to be found in bed with a thesaurus than with an actual bloke, so I must stress … these stories are fiction. Because of this I haven’t bored the reader with all the safe sex practices needed to get you through life to a healthy age without your private bits falling off. Therefore, I stress, to young and old, in real life practise safe sex and while you are at it, practise love, respect and kindness with the one you’re with!

      Remember, no balloon, no party.

      Rachael

       Harvest Moon

      It was the sort of summer’s day where the horizon took on liquid form and shimmered like clear moving jelly in the distance. It was the type of day that the red dirt of the road felt so hot that it might suddenly ignite into flames beneath the soles of one’s boots.

      And there was Stella in that sweltering heat, standing before her oven. It was the day of her tenth wedding anniversary. A decade ago, her mother-in-law-to-be had warned her not to get married around harvest time, but since she was a little girl, Stella had always wanted a summer wedding, so the January date was set. Should she have listened?

      She swiped a sticky, persistent fly away from her face and blew her breath upwards to her dark fringe, trying to cool away the strand of hair that stuck to her brow. Standing in front of the fan-forced oven wearing only her wonky underwire bra and rather saggy black undies, Stella wondered why on earth the men needed cake for afternoon smoko on a day like today? Wouldn’t a packet of shortbread biscuits do?

      She sighed and felt a drip of sweat trickle down the small of her back. It wasn’t so much her husband, Tom, nor his father, Dennis, demanding the tucker. Rather, the pressure came from her mother-in-law, the sort of pressure made by the unseen slow-moving push of boulders. Nancy was a perfectionist in everything on the home front, and particularly when it came to providing meals, which she dished up with a somewhat bitter pride. Nancy was especially upright in her body language when she delivered her signature smokos during harvest time or shearing. But it was the way Nancy wielded her love for her family and her control that had them swimming circles around her. She used her command of the home and the food as power over the men, and power over Stella. Her smiles were thinly disguised grimaces of a woman jaded by life.

      ‘They work such long hours,’ Nancy would tut-tut as she eyed Stella’s sloppily folded washing piles, ‘so they need their bellies fuelled with good home-cooked meals. None of that bought stuff. That won’t feed a man. Packet cake and frozen shop-bought sausage rolls are cheating in my view. But that’s just my view. You do what you like.’

      The men worked such long hours? Yeah, sure, Stella thought. Long hours spent in the air-conditioned cabs of fancy tractors. Cabs that had stereos that broadcast the cricket all day, or iPod playlists of favourite country music. Then there was the social element of tractor driving, where the radio handpiece was a link to their mates harvesting grain in the district, always nearby. And they had the built-in drink holders, and the plug-in space for Eskys containing cold stubbies of beer when the long arm of the clock slipped past five o’clock. All this along with GPS controls so the men barely had to steer to get their grain rows straight. They only had to get out into the heat occasionally to adjust the chaser bin, open a gate, refuel or set up the grain auger. And then there were the trips to the railside grain weighbridge and silos. Sure it was routine, round the clock, hectic work … but it was mostly air-conditioned and social. Not like this kitchen. And there was no need for fancy smokos. No need at all.

      The reason Stella knew all this and Nancy did not was because once, years ago, before the wedding, before the babies, Stella had been part of that tractor driving world. And she had loved it. It was before life crept up on her and took her to a place she never thought she would be. In a kitchen, while her beloved rural world moved on outside without her. Not for one moment did she begrudge her kids. But she missed being with Tom in his world. Instead, she was groomed by Nancy to become one of the ‘womenfolk’. It depressed her.

      Stella glanced at her goddess, sticky-taped to the fridge.

      ‘Please help me today,’ Stella said, looking at the image of Nigella Lawson standing in her British kitchen, curving wildly and womanly in a red dress that clung to ginormous knockers. Her white, full breasts brushed by the ends of her flowing dark hair. ‘Please give me strength, Nigella,’ Stella said again.

      Tom had given her a Nigella cookbook last Christmas. She was certain Tom wasn’t attracted to it for the recipes … more for the fact that Nigella had pouting cherry lips and did things to strawberries and cream with her mouth that reminded him of fellatio. But Stella didn’t care. She admired the woman. A woman who had suffered the death of loved ones. A woman who made cooking about love and sensuality, and about self-soothing. A woman who was comfortable with her curves and in the dead of night liked to stroke the shelves of her pantry and feast on midnight snacks. Nigella, in Stella’s book, was a legend.

      Stella wondered if Nigella had the same trouble with men, or did they treat her like the goddess she was? Did the men in Nigella’s house do the dishes and bring her champagne, or cups of tea when reclining in the bath? Or when Nigella’s men knocked off work, did they kick boots off at the back door to be tripped over, and after a quick wash, was the couch located and feet put up on stools and the television flicked on and the newspaper unfolded, and did the news or the sport become the focus? Not the kids. Not the wife. Not the domestics. Was it the same the world over?

      If only they had a bath in this dump of a cottage, Stella thought, she could soak in it and Tom could bring her a Bundy. If only they had a pantry so she could soothe herself with some shelf stroking and learn to love her kitchen and her cooking the way Nigella did. Still, she reasoned, Nigella would certainly do more hours than the men. There was no doubt there. She was a mother.

      For Stella, her day usually started at 5.30 a.m. with Ned’s first bottle, and it wasn’t done until she fell into bed in an exhausted heap after a hectic routine of domestic tasks and helping the men. There was the endless round of dirty dishes, bathing the kids, looking after the kids, planning the next day’s meals, getting the washing away, sweeping the spiders from the verandah and watering the garden. Then there was helping the men working on the farm … round and round it went, on and on. To add to the pressure,