You notice these things because the farmer and the city kid were vastly different animals.
Everything this man did, or said, or thought, were moments of wonder for this townie.
And he became legendary when I took stories of The Hat cussing and kicking, and eating, back to the uninitiated in the suburbs.
He was probably doing the same – taking stories of the uselessness and incompetence of city kids to the saleyards and the local Federated Farmers meetings.
Anyhow, about 6am, before he even pulled those thick industrial-strength socks on, The Hat would greet the new day with a large bowl of porridge, swimming in thick unpasteurised farm milk and drizzled with the cream from the top of the can.
Disgusting. I can sense the heart monitors hemorrhaging at the thought.
I’d grab a banana, and he would scoff through the soggy end of a Park Drive rollie.
“No wonder you’re a runt.”
I didn’t know what a runt was, but I was glad I made him laugh.
After an hour and a half of tasks, he would be back at the dinner table, demolishing bacon, breakfast sausages, mushrooms and/or tomatoes and raw eggs on fried black pudding.
Plus, a toast rack and pots of tea.
I’d have two lightly boiled eggs.
“Runt,” he would say again.
Two hours later, his wife would arrive out in the paddocks with a basket covered in a tea-towel.
He would demolish three or four scones smeared with raspberry jam and whipped cream.
“Jeez,” he would say.
”A man needed that.”
I would feed off the sight of another man feeding.
By one o’clock, what a man needed was viscera, innards, guts, offal.
A big plate of lamb’s fry in a thick gravy with bacon and mashed potatoes.
Why would you enter the cavity of a sheep’s carcass for something to eat when all I craved was a luncheon sausage and tomato sauce sandwich?
Sheep guts! Yeck!!
Offal probably tasted okay, but when you see it freshly sourced in a slaughterhouse? Well, that’s different.
By 6.30, half a sheep emerged from the oven – the full mutton roast.
The meals were overlapping because The Hat still had egg residue from his breakfast in his whiskers.
I had a small selection of roast veges awash in gravy.
“Runt,” said the farmer, howling with laughter as if it was the first time we’d heard it today.
I did enjoy making him laugh.
