Dick n Dora: The Interview

Who are Dick and Dora?

Dick and Dora are two characters of deep and vivid personalities from a childrens’ book series in the sixties.

They are also my folks. It is a pretty funny coincidence. (Editor’s note: my parents are NOT actually fictional characters from a childrens’ book. They are REAL people. With the same names as their cartoony counterparts).

What are they doing on this blog?

Mum and Dad (as they’re sometimes less colourfully known) live on a 50 acre farm in Northern NSW. Half bush, half paddocks and with a creek at the southern end, it is incidentally where I spent most of my childhood (and subsequent angsty years).

 Since my parents, my brother and I first moved out here, the property has been camped on, walked over, swum in, grazed, overgrown, burnt, flooded, ploughed, mulched, cleared, planted, composted, weeded, fenced, un-fenced… Beloved dogs have been buried here. Nicked porno mags have been buried here also. But if I was being honest, the best things done with it have mostly happened since we dependents left home…. Who would’ve thought?

Mum and Dad are farmers and gardeners. Though they’ve always had slightly green leanings (beginning with a rural upbringing in Ireland, moving to growing vegies in their backyard in a dusty small town in Western NSW and then on to growing organic garlic as a business), in the past 10 years, particularly, they have settled whole-heartedly into an organic life with a largely self-sustainable flavour.

The two areas of the farm that are most scrupulously attended to are the garlic paddocks and ornamental garden around the house (both of which take up 1 ¼ acres).  We talked about these gardens and the garlic while we sat on the comfy couches of the front verandah, watching the birds entertain us.

Me: Firstly, what tweaked your interest in gardening and garlic?

Mum: Well I don’t really recall what tweaked my interest in gardening…I think it evolved because of the space we had. And we had a sort of a garden, with a few shrubs and a circular driveway first. Then it was upon talking to a really good gardener, Caroline….it took on a bit of formation. So I guess it evolved rather than me being interested in it first because back then I didn’t really know about plants.  

Dad:  Well, I’ve been a vegie gardener since I was a kid. We were self-sufficient on our farm [in Ireland]. We were basically organic without knowing the term at the time… and I’ve been growing vegies ever since. Remember even out in Nyngan we had a vegie garden going?

Mum: In fact we’ve got pictures of you and Mark when you were little and Dad would, in showing how big the cauliflowers were would hold them next to your heads.

Dad: Oh yes… we did that as a comparative thing… And prior to that we had a veggie garden in our first house [in Australia]  so really we’ve been growing veggies since we came to Australia. And it goes back to my own home, when I grew up, being self-sufficient.

When we came here and we got into growing garlic, well that evolved mainly from our next door neighbour, Ted. He had retired and still wanted to do something and researched a load of things he could do with his block. He came to me with a proposal to grow the garlic together as a partnership. He would do all the marketing because that was his field and I would grow it, basically. That’s how it started off. We did it for 8 years before his health gave way and then I carried it on, went organic and reduced the amount of garlic that we grew. And that’s where we are at the moment. And we’ve been growing garlic for 21 years now, I think…

Me: Why did you go organic?

Dad: Well, for health reasons I guess. Organic farming was fairly new here in those days, wasn’t it Dora?

Mum:  Well we were basically growing vegetables organically. We never sprayed anything. Without the big hoo-ha and getting certified and all that, we never liked spraying on our vegetables anyway. So it was just a natural progression really.

Dad: And I think we probably saw it as a better proposition in

providing a premium product.  And doing it on my own and reducing the acreage meant….

Mum:…. making it more of a niche kind market

Dad: Yeah. The idea was to reduce the acreage to a manageable organic crop that I could handle on my own.

Me; Mum, your garden, what’s your thinking behind it?

Mum: The plants are very much geared to the climate here…. a cold climate garden. Most things do well. And it’s all cut back in the autumn and there’s nothing to do in the winter. So I went along with Caroline’s suggestions of picking things that are suited to this area. Because when you go in to the local nursery and buy a plant, you don’t know where it’s come from. You stick it in the ground and it might last a year and then it’s gone.

 Me: What about other things here in the front yard, things like the pond?

Mum: We just wanted the pond to be like a feature.

Me: It seems like in the front of the yard, there’s always been a thing...something in the middle of the front yard.

Mum: yeah, we had a rockery and then a birdbath…

Dad: And the verandah has sort of influenced it as well…

Me: So, what do you get out of the garden?

Mum: A sore back…..ha ha. No, I get a lot of satisfaction now. I usen’t to but I do now. And I think it’s an attitude.

I used to come out and be overwhelmed by the beds and rushing about thinking “God, I’ve got to go over and do that over there” and while I’d be working on one bed, I’d be thinking of what another bed needs and it would all get too much. Now I’ve learned to say “Right today this is the bed I’m working on” and I’ve pieced it together better and I don’t think of it so much of a huge burden.

Me: Dad?

Dad: What?

Me: What do you get out of the garden?

Dad: Oh well Mum does most of the garden. I get satisfaction out of growing veggies and um…

Mum:  the ambiance?

Dad: …the ambiance, I suppose, of the garden that Dora works on.

Me: And the vegie garden you enjoy because you know you’ll get something out of it?

Dad: it’s healthy and it self-sufficiency. I like the idea of self-sufficiency.

Me: You’ve got a bit of both, really. The productive side and the showy side… I’ve just noticed a bunch of parrots have landed over there in that tree [peach tree].

Dad: Yeah........ Oh. They’re after your bloody fruit, Dora! The peach.... The bitches!

Mum: I made jam out of that last year.

Dad: Look at them, there’s three of four of them on the peach, Dora.

Mum: Ah, they’ll be right

Dad: Yeah ….. (Oi!) [he calls out to the birds]

Mum: We can share…

Me: You live in the bush. There are things that get into your gardens that you'd prefer not being there but they’re also mostly native animals. So how do balance it? How do you deal with that?

Mum: Well in this garden… the rabbits are generally barred by the fence. The possum is the biggest problem but I make up a chili spray which keeps it off the plants, mostly. Not completely but that’s fine. We like to have the fauna as well as the flora so we just have to put up with it.

Me: And the veggie patch?

Dad: Well, we have the vegie patch in the converted tennis court and so we can grow berries in there and fruit and vegies. The bush mynas get in so they attack the figs. They will ruin the figs so we drape bird netting over the fig trees.

Mum: It’s nice that the little birds can still get in…

Dad: The little birds…the wrens, they love it in there.

Mum: And that’s healthy, we need them to be in there. It’s just the parrots and the mynas doing the damage.

Dad: And the mynas wouldn’t eat all of the fruit. They just spoil a lot of them by eating only a little bit out of each fruit. But generally the tennis court has worked wonders in keeping the wildlife out.

Mum: The tennis court has got mesh over the top.

Dad: Yeah, chicken wire over the roof and right around the sides.

 

Me: What gets your goat in the garden? Is there anything you really don’t like to do? …Well, I guess the mynas get your goat?

Dad: Oh, not really, I don’t mind the bush mynas. I quite like them really.

Mum: I think now, now that I’m 55, it’s more an energy thing. If I know its time to get barrow loads of manure … I find I’ve got the equipment but it’s the sheer hard slog of wheel barrowing loads of manure down from the shed each year. That’s probably the hardest thing. And the age thing I suppose… Dick helps with me out sometimes too.

Dad: My biggest frustration is in the summer time. I don’t have enough time to spend in the garden because of the garlic. I spend time on the garlic right through the summer and as a result the veggies suffer a bit. And Dora doesn’t have enough time to look after them as much.

 

Mum: Because I’m flat out working and I do all the mowing and just general keeping up with everything.

Me: But it doesn’t seem to have affected you too badly. You still have a lot of vegies growing.

Dad: Oh yeah, most of the time we do, but we could have more. Like carrots, we haven’t been successful with carrots. or parsnips and cauliflower. It hasn’t been as productive over the last several years.

Me: And you put that down to time?

Dad: yeah. because it’s a big vegie garden. There’s a lot of work required in it.

Me: So given a clean slate… given the original setting again, how would you do your garden a second time around?

Dad: I don’t think I’d change anything, Jo. I like the way things worked out…. I mean even though nothing was planned, it just kind of developed, but looking back on it, I don’t think I’d change anything.

Me: So there’s nothing that you would’ve given a go that you didn’t get around to..?

Mum: No, I don’t think so either. Um, a couple of things I would’ve liked but now that we’re older it’s probably too much hassle. But I would’ve liked the sides of the driveway to be covered in bulbs. Daffodils… a natural look. I’ve always fancied that. I also feel that we didn’t have a nice shady tree that we could sit under. So when we’re out the back at the BBQ we’re out in the sun

Dad: But we have a tree growing there now... …near the Maybushes.

Mum: Yeah, but it’s slow to grow.

Me: What creatures frequent the area?

Mum: Birds, possums, frogs…

Dad: Snakes. We get the odd snake around but we don’t worry about the snakes anymore.

Me: What are your favourite parts or areas in the garden?

Mum: Um, well a favourite thing of mine is after it’s all mowed.

Dad: Yeah, it looks lovely when it's mowed.

Mum: And my favourite bed is the prairie garden out the back. It’s just beyond the BBQ. I love those grasses there. You can walk through one part of it.

 

Me: And you like it when it’s all mowed?

Mum: Yeah

Me: You’ve got a ride-on mower, haven’t you?

Mum: Yep. I sure do.

 

Dad: I don’t know if I have a favourite part. Probably the tennis court, the vegies...

Mum: And that’s interesting because that took me 12 months to convince him to do that. I came up with idea of covering up the roof of the tennis court and putting the fruit trees and veggie garden in there. because the birds were just eating everything.

Dad: But we did have the fruit trees here, we had them surrounded with netting.

Mum: yeah, but it was ugly. So it took a long time to convince you and now it’s your favourite thing.

Dad: Well, it’s my favourite thing in view of the food and the production thing and the satisfaction of going out there and getting your own fruit and vegies and berries and all that… and it’s close to the house. It’s easy to slip out there and get whatever you want.

 

Me: OK so what, if any, would be your philosophy of gardening?

Mum: I think my philosophy of gardening now would be to just do it a little bit at a time and not to overwhelm yourself. And I think it’s very therapeutic. It’s very calming. There’s hard work involved but there’s great satisfaction too… I don’t know if that’s a philosophy….

Dad: Um, I think if you really want to get value out of your garden, whether it be ornamental or a veggie garden or whatever, you really need to be prepared to put hard work into it. Hard work equals satisfaction.

Me: well I think that’s it. Thanks for that Mum and Dad. It must be just about time for a cup of tea…?