Our Fruitful Record - Work
Work on market gardens is physically demanding. It is a constant cycle from the first steps of raising seed to ploughing, planting, watering, weeding, tending and harvesting to grading for sale at market three days a week. In their interviews, narrators speak about the length of the working day that was usually from dawn to dusk. When most of the narrators began working, market gardeners were working by hand often with the assistance of horses. Machinery made many tasks easier but long days were still part of the life of a market gardener.
"Yes, friends, the people on the land work all together, talk, laugh work …it’s beautiful…" - Ilda Cavuoto
Pictured: Lorenz family with celery. Left to right, Nick De Palma, Darren Lorenz, Brad Walker, and Dennis Lorenz.
"…when the war was on people were billeted here … and some of them met girls [from the Women’s Land Army] and married them" - Margaret Emery
"…we were happy with everything. We got used to it here and so here was our day, here was our state… Yes, I was happy to be here, yes, yes because Italy is beautiful but in Italy there wasn’t much work so people were not able to do what they wanted… here in Australia… it’s a completely different life, a different thing" - Ilda Cavuoto
Pictured: Dulce Silke, Land-Girl in the Second World War. Daughter of Arthur Silke one of the Silke Brothers, market gardeners, Silkes Road Paradise.
"In the early days my first memories are of carrots and beetroot and the workers digging them out and then taking them down, and squirting them out and having them ready. And then even the potatoes they used to dig the potatoes until the tractor came along and then the tractor had a potato digger that used to dig them out and then you just had your buckets and you walked along and picked them up." - Brian Emery
"…we used to do a lot of crop rotation so for example, during winter we would enrich the soil by planting broad beans and peas with the view that when spring came you would rotary hoe that into the ground to inject some nitrogen in there. The other things that they would do were rotate crops so for example, they’d grow garlic and then on top of that you’d plant things like carrots or any vegetable that is susceptible to pests and a lot of pests, you’d plant them on top of onions and garlic you see." - Robert Parletta
Pictured: Antonio Parletta, Paradise, 1987.
"Well, celery remained, it’s intense labour; you’re still cutting it by hand where you had your potato diggers and your onion harvesters: - Paul Emery
Pictured: Picking beans on Antonio and Lucia Parletta’s market garden, Paradise, 1988.
"We’d start at dawn and we’d work until 10:00, 11:00 o’clock at night, we’d start whenever the sunlight came out and work and then – we had a, maybe a break during the day, a little bit. But we’d then have a packing shed …we’d usually grow tomatoes as well so we’d have a packing shed to pack all, to get ready for the market next morning." - Sam Mercorella
Pictured: Lorenz family, cauliflowers on the truck for market, circa 1951-1952. Left to right, Dennis Lorenz, Jack Lorenz, Ron Larson, and Eddie Zucker.
"…those days, cauliflowers grew, and of course, you used to go through and cut what were called the fit cauliflowers, the ones that were ready, they weren’t all ready at the same time … you’d have to cut through maybe two, three or four times, and you carry them out to the end where you had a track, where you could stack them up, and get in there with a truck to load them up. It wouldn’t matter if it was pouring with rain, you’re bogged up to your knees, you still had to cut the load and get them out and get them loaded up." - Jim Pierson
Pictured: Fry family, John Fry on a Ransom tractor, looking East, 1965-1967.
"And then Dad started to going to the market and eventually had a trolley – had it made by Stock [the local Blacksmith] with four wheels and he had a horse and the old horse used to work the garden and he goes to the market as well." - Charlie D’Angelica
Pictured: Alfred James Smith Pierson with 1938 Dodge truck ready for market.
"… my memories really of the marketing of things … harvesting potatoes and then being bagged and going to market and loads of cauliflowers, some of which went to the East End Market but some of which were taken to the Rosella Pickle Factory" - Margaret Emery
"… we grew about seven acres of carrots – that’s a long time ago. We went to … market nearly 11 months of the year – we would take carrots in three times a week - carrots, parsnips, lettuce." - Charlie D’Angelica
"… and then I’d go to market three days a week. I used to call them market days … Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and the off market was Tuesdays and Thursdays but I went market days and I’d get up at 3:00, 4:00 o’clock in the morning and go to market and then come back 10:00,
11:00 at the most, have an hour’s sleep, a bit of lunch and then go back to work and that’s how we did it for years, but that wasn’t just me." - Sam Mercorella
"…all done by hand, no machine, you cut the tops and the roots of the onion and put them in the boxes and bag them up and then the merchant would come around and pick them up whenever we told them they were ready, and that’s what we did in those early days to start…" - Sam Mercorella
"Very often you’d spent hours in the day with a knapsack on your back spraying…" - Hartley Ey
"… early days in early ‘50s they never had the machinery, the stuff to fit on the tractor to do the rows. But so you walked up and down all the rows, single row with a horse, but then they got machinery fit on the back on the tractor, whereas a tractor could go all the day, the horse couldn’t go all day." - Dennis Lorenz
Pictured: Lorenz family, last crop of celery before the land was handed back to the Government. Left to right, Troy Lorenz, Ray Kimber, Cyril Emery, Brad Walker, Paul Emery, Jamie Lorenz, 1992
"Just a handkerchief, we didn’t wear proper masks, we just put a handkerchief over your nose.– if you were using a systemic spray like Metasystox you’d wear rubber gloves." - Merv Ey
"…it’s hard work, very hard work, and some years, you know like you’ve got nothing because the rain or the hailstones…" - Maria Matteucci
"…And then the later years just before I started, [my father] seemed to get the people that come out from Holland and Dutch men they seemed to like to work in the garden, they would come here for a few years when they first come out from Holland and then once they got settled they’d usually go somewhere else." - Dennis Lorenz
"During the 1950s, ’51s, ’52s, there was a lot of Italians came out to Australia ... and they were looking for jobs Saturday morning, and they’d come up, ….the Gorge Road on Saturday mornings. We had 16 there one morning, and we used to catch up with the work that was behind like hoeing or whatever was required, if we were cutting off onions, or something like that. It was all done with hands in those days and onion cutting was done in contract work, two shillings a box, a crate." - John Lomman
Pictured: Ready for Market, left to right: Raymond Ey, Samuel Hockley, Hartley Ey, Otto Carl Ey (known as Dick), in Athelstone, circa 1930’s.
"Dad had three men full-time and we had causal labour as well, we employed some Italian ladies to help, and on the weekends we always had three or four Italian immigrants, these are young guys that immigrated from Italy and it was their second job." - Jim Pierson