Australia can do better things.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will start with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. Today we are going to talk about the political parties, and how Australia can do better if they pass better laws. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see more visit links, The Australian Political Parties, Australia Can Do Better

This is the house of representative in Canberra, it is where the Australian parliamentarians discuss and pass their laws, sometimes their laws or budget are poorly made, so, they need reviewing, like the assets test that we will talk about in this article.  

Australia can do better than this. 

People in power need to put people first

Welcome to our article,  Australia Can Do Better, 

Dear readers, this is another article about the Australian political parties. We believe that the Australian government can do better if the politicians in power think about the people first. Therefore, whichever party is elected from the people to form government, when they budget or make new laws, they must put people first, because that is their job, since that is the reason they have been elected to parliament. Of course, the political parties have their own beliefs, so, they help some groups more than other groups. So, let us look which political party is better for which group:  

The Labor Party helps the workers and the have-not. They also have idealistic ways to help all communities; so, it is like the communist party, in the sense that they don’t like the rich and the large enterprise. They like the government to be the big spender, which is good, but they easily run out of money and that is their biggest problem.

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Now let us talk about the coalition. The coalition like to make laws and budgets to helps the rich; they also help the poor and the have-not, but they are not their priority.

In this article, because the coalition is in government and we want to say things that they have done, let us talk about them a bit more than the Labor Party.

The coalition likes large enterprises and the rich people, they are more willing to help the employers, the self-employed and those that own properties, in the belief that these groups will employ people gainfully, which will help run the country without asking much help from the government; so, the coalition government let the country run on its own, as much as they can from these self-driven people; which when the coalition is in power, they are more willing to use their own money to run their business. But even this system misses a few things, because there is no help for a large section of the community.

Anyhow, what we want to say here is that both parties are not looking after those people that are neither rich and no poor, they are left on their own to do what they want to do, because they are self-employed, are farmers or own properties; but that is not all, they turn to these people only to tax them, and worst still sometimes they make laws or pass budgets that penalize them badly. Anyhow, let us look at what the coalition did, when they did this mathematical heartless budget that has hurt many people.

The mathematical heartless budget. 

To understand what I am saying here, we need to go back to Joe Hockey budget 2014; this budget must be the worse budget ever made, because it penalizes those people that work hard and look after themselves. If you ask me what I think about Joe Hockey as a politician treasurer, I will say that they made a mistake to put him there. Whoever becomes a treasurer must be somebody compassionate, he must think about how his budget is going to affect the people, especially the poor people, the pensioners and the family man; but Joe Hockey has no compassion in him, he thinks only about the government bank account that is overdrawn, so, he wants to brink the government bank account to surplus.

The then prime minister Tony Abbott did not understand the situation any better himself, he thinks that Joe Hockey budget is good; I remember Tony Abbott smiling and laughing at budget night, when people were shocked at this tough budget. In my opinion the PM should have at least be apologetic to the people that were affected adversely, but he kept smiling and laughing, as if what they were doing was great.

There were many mistakes in Joe Hockey 2014 budget, but in my opinion one of the main mistakes was the change they made to the assets test. Because treasurer Joe Hockey and PM Tony Abbott made a disaster, when they changed the assets test, from $1.50 per thousand to $3.00 per thousand, when people in most cases cannot earn that sort of money from their assets. Perhaps I feel this way, because I have been affected and I have many friends that have been affected by the assets test badly, so, we hate Joe Hockey, because he has robbed us of our fair share of money that we were entitled to have. This is what we want to talk and explain in this article, and if this article is not enough will write another article, to show you what we mean.

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Let us start talking about the assets test.

The assets test and the pensioner the way we understand it.

Here we are forced to repeat; people work hard during their lives and save money, so that, when they retire, they can use this money or use the earnings from the assets that they have bought to live a better life.

But this does not work right all the time, because politicians introduce laws or taxes that hurt people that have worked hard and saved their earnings, like the change in the assets test of 2014 budget, that has cut off the pension to many pensioners, other had their pension reduced so much that they can hardly live on it, in fact, these people have to live on a budget that is a lot less that the government pension. I believe that people that work hard and save money don’t deserve to be treated this bad.

I don’t know why the politician cannot work it out themselves, it is not that hard to add a few numbers together; anyhow, it maybe that they are too lazy to do that, so, we need to write down examples to show them what they are doing, because they need to be explained the consequences of what they have done. So, let me write a short example hereunder on how the assets test has affected these pensioners that own two houses, one is their residence, the other is a rental property.

We are talking about rental properties, because rental properties are at the top of the list of the disadvantages that have resulted from the increased assets test. So, let us talk about some friends of mine that will call, Mr. and Mrs X in a shortened version, we will write a longer version in our next article.

Mr and Mrs X, after the assets test was introduced, they informed me that the new assets test has affected them so bad and in such a way that that they could starve, therefore, they must withdraw money from their savings to live a modest life. You see, they receive very little money from their government pension to live on, because of the assets test. Their pension has been cut to $120 each per fortnight, so, they receive $240 for both from the government pension, plus their house rent that is about $13000 a year net, after expenses. This works out at about $450 per fortnight for both, So, their income is now; $240+450=690 per fortnight for both, which is a lot less than the normal pension, which can be about $1200 for both.

What is wrong with the people in Canberra? Are they blind and can’t see that they are punishing the people that have worked hard during their lives? They worked hard and saved their money to live an easier life when they retire, but now they are punished for having done that; this does not sound right to me, this should not happen, if all citizen were treated equal, but that nasty budget broke all rules, when they changed the assets test. I believe that the government, before they change anything financially, they must ensure that all citizen should receive, or they should be able to earn a minimum amount of money to live on. Therefore, they should not bring out laws or budgets that make it impossible for their citizen to achieve that themselves; but if they bring out laws like that, they must reimburse the citizen for their loss, it is only fair.

But there is more to worry about, if this trend of punishing the self-driven hard worker continues, they will be killing the will of the hard-working people to earn and save money and own a second property. You see, once this group of people realize that there is no point to work hard and save money, because they will be put in a disadvantage financial position from the government. They will stop working hard and the looser will be the Australian government, because they will run their business in such a way that they can collect the government pension when they are old. I hope you see what we mean. I believe that Australian government can do better than this, but they need to fix the mistakes they are making, and most of all fix the assets test.

This article is becoming too long, so, see you in our next article, where we will write a few articles, starting with how the Australian pensioners are alarmed, and about how the rental properties have affected the owners adversely, because of the overrated assets test and to what degree. See you soon.

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The Australian Political Parties.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now we are writing posts about social issues. We have started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will start with Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. Today we are talking about the political parties that form the Australian government. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see this article in full visit this link, The Australian Political Parties. 

This is Canberra parliament house, where the politicians have their seats they have won at the last election, here they are supposed to discuss what needs to be done and pass new laws. So, let us look at the different parties that form government. 

The Australian Political Parties of, 

The commonwealth of Australia government

Welcome to our article, The Australian Political Parties 

The government of Australia is the commonwealth of Australia, it is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. It is attached to the commonwealth, and the head of the commonwealth is the queen of England. Well, it sounds as if we are still an English colony, but we are not. Some people do not like it, but we are linked to the British monarchy only in name, because we can do what we like, anyhow the government is run on this British system, which is excellent, it is like a republic, since we vote to elect our government and this system is doing well all over the world. So, let us see who are the people that we vote for.

Now, in Australia there are two major political parties and some small ones. So, it is always one of the major parties alone or with the help of minor parties that forms government. Anyhow, when we want to talk about political parties, people want to ask, which party you think is better? 

In my view there are no better or worse parties, it all depends from what we the people want from them. You see, both political major parties have good policies and bad policies; people view these policies in different ways, according to which group of people they belong, what they do for a living and their needs, because in most cases this will influence to which group and party they will belong.  

Having said that, now let us discuss which party is better for this group or that group. We have to say that whatever job people do, it influences them to choose the party they belong, which will be the party that could help them most; so, let look at the parties, starting with the Labor Party, since it is the largest single party.

 

The Australian Labor Party

I believe that the Labor Party is the workers party for good reasons, since they represent the workers unions, which helps the worker receive the proper wages from the employers and other things. The Labor Party has other good things, that helps the poor people, at least as much as the coalition party does if not more, because the Labor Party aims to pass laws that the poor people can benefit from; so, it is a good party.

The negative for this party is that they aim to make laws that penalize the people that are rich, they don’t care for the middle income people that own anything, as soon as you own something for them you are a rich person; so, this is the political party for the have-not and the workers that don’t own anything, because as soon as you have something in your name they want to collect more tax from you.

I don’t mind if they tax the rich, because they are rich, and they can still live in luxury, even if they pay more tax. But this attitude of taxing the people that have a few things to their names is wrong, because they are struggling people like the workers that don’t own anything, and my guess is that they are workers that have worked hard to own these few things, and they will continue to work hard, if they are encouraged with fair laws, that will let them grow.  

But when this people see that they are being penalized with extra taxes, because they own something, they will be discouraged, this brings in a negative attitude, and it may not be the best result for everybody. You know, there are a lot of these self-starter and they pay a lot of tax, if they keep going, they may even become richer, and pay more tax to the government; so, the Labor party in this case should watch out what they are doing. They should let these middle-income people continue to work hard and grow. So, the Labor Party is not the party for those people that want to progress with hard work, or any other means they have. It is only good for the poor people and the workers that work for wages.

Now we have seen that the Labor Party does not care for the self-employed, who belong to middle income section, some of them may not even earn as much as the wage workers, but because they are self-employed or own a small business or something else, nobody cares for them. So, today I am still waiting for a political party that puts the self-employed at least at the same level of the wage workers.

 

The coalition Liberal and Country Party

Anyhow, a few years ago the middle-income people thought that the coalition was the better party for them; but it is not so anymore, because the coalition also fails to do the right things to these groups that are neither rich nor poor. So, both parties fail to make fair laws for the middle-income hard-working people of Australia. The social security system will completely fail them too, because they are not setup to help them, they are set to help the poor and have-not.

Now, let us see what the coalition does and who are the people that vote for them. The coalition favor the rich, therefore, it is the party for the rich people. It is formed from two main parties, the Liberal Party and the Country Party, they both aim for policies that makes people run their own business, but not for small business, because they class them as simple self-employed people.

Anyhow, the coalition likes the rich people that have their business and employs people, since they are setup and own their business and other things. This system works well, because it is self-driven, using the will of the people that are self-driven; this seems okay up to a certain point, because the self-driven people are business people that put making money first, so, there can be problems because they are greedy, but they must be greedy and work hard to stay in business, that is the only way to succeed. Some people don’t like them when they succeed, they don’t see the hard work they do, they only see these people gains and that upsets them. People need to see that these people are the self-driven people that helps run the economy, and they pay lots of tax, even after trying hard to minimize the tax, so, both parties have problem to solve.

But who is going to look after the middle-income people of Australia? Anyhow, while we are writing these articles, we are looking which party is more likely to make laws that will benefit those middle-income people that are self-starter, even if they are only making ends meet, they are still working and earning their living. You see, these people need laws that can help them, in case their small business fails; because they are not rich to withstand on their own. It is like what is happening to the farmers today, they are self-employed, and they own properties. You see, even these people need help from the government sometimes, just like the have-not do. We will suggest something as we continue to write these articles.

 

Both political parties have faults. 

As we have said, the Australian political parties have a good side a bad side. The Labor Party works in favor of the workers, the coalition is too far in favoring the rich and forget the rest. The coalition believes that the rich people by trying to make more money for themselves, they will create more jobs, so, the economy will run better by itself, while the government doesn’t do much. The coalition can have the support of those middle-income people that are not rich. These people are more likely to follow the coalition, because they believe that it is more likely that the coalition make laws in their favor, since the Labor Party looks only after the worker that work for wages, so, there is no chance that the Labor Party helps them.

Here we are talking about the second largest group of people after the wage worker, these people are the core of the Australian economy, because they are so many and work hard. Anyhow, this group for their own reasons become self-employed, they work hard and if necessary, take risks to improve themselves.

Anyhow, most of them will try to own a house and other things, because they believe that their savings plus the superannuation contribution can help them to live a better life when they retire, most of them believe that if they are lucky and work hard, they may become rich enough, and will not need the government to help them when they retire. Anyhow, I believe that we need this group of people like that, which are self-employed and take risks, because it is from this group of people that successful people come from.

But I must say, that most of them are dreaming, and their dream may not become true, because only a few of them will get rich enough to retire and live on their savings and superannuation contribution without the help from the government. You see, most times what you do during your life, it does not work out the way you want. Anyhow, what happens to these people is that not only they don’t get rich, but also, they are rejected from the politicians, because no major party is geared to look after them, and that is not right.

Therefore, both Australian political major parties fail to look after those people that are not poor, and they are not rich ether, they are left on their own, but not only that, some political idiots make laws that hurts them bad, because they forget to put the people first. But before we do that, we need to tell you about, today Liberal political scene in Canberra.

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Today Liberal political scene, 

Today, after electing a new Prime Minister in Canberra, if the Liberal and country party coalition want to continue to hold office after the next federal election, I believe that they need to overall many laws; they have this opportunity to do this, since their leader has changed, so, a new leader can change a few things to his liking.

We need to point out, that one of the reasons why they were not popular anymore, it was the budget when they changed the assets test, because many people were financially hurt. So, this new government must check and reset the social security system, because they made a mess of it, when the treasurer Joe Hockey, with then PM. Tony Abbott made a disaster, by changing the assets test and other things, because they needed more money and didn’t care about the people.  

Only if they fix those mistakes, which I think is going to be the key issue for next elections, even if the politicians are not going to mention it, the public will not forget it, because they are hurt from the injustice and hardship it continues to bring.

It is upsetting, because what they have done is a contradiction to their own liberal principle, which people count on it. They believe that people should be free to do what they want, they should be competing to give the best possible service to the community, which these middle-income people do.

But then suddenly the middle-income people are put in a disadvantaged position, from laws that punishes them, just because they try hard to work and save money, so, they have some personal assets. Assets in your name are only good if they can give you added security and not be punished from stupid laws, just because the government needs more money. Now if the government needs this money, they should make sure that the people affected, don’t end up earning less than the normal minimum pension.

On this assets test subject, I am writing my next article, where I am going to show you what I mean, of course, what we are going to say is linked to the farmers that today are having a hard time, and the reason for that is that they cannot qualify for help from the government, because of the assets test. Anyhow, I want to talk about the assets test for the whole community. I know that they are only my personal views, but if I want my views to be known, then I need to write them down.

Anyhow, this article is becoming too long, and people don’t like long articles, because they don’t have time to read them. So, see you in our next article, Australia can do better, if those in power put people first. Anyhow, if you want to see more photos and more details click this link, The Australian Political Parties, 

 In our next blog, we will discuss about the assets test, and we are discussing the drawback it can produce. See you soon.

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About the Australian Social Security

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, now starting with this post, Farming today is still a risky business, we want to talk about social issues that can affect all of us. We will start with some Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. We are starting with articles about farming and their problems, since farming is the most important part of our society, because it produces food for us to live. We hope to interest lots of people. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see this article in full visit this link, Australian Social Security

Above is one of the many government offices called "centrelink". Anyhow, centrelink is the government office that runs the, Australian Security System, but not everybody can benefit from the System, because you need to qualify to receive it. And this is what we are talking about here. 

The Australian social security fails the farmers.

Welcome to our article, Australian Social Security.  

Dear readers, these blogs that we are posting now have been written when these things have happened, so, to make sense, you need to allow for this time that has past. Anyhow, we have posted our previous articles, Farming today is still a risky business, and then followed with, Farming today compared to the old way, to make the point that farming is important and must be kept going, because that is the way that we produce food. Anyhow, in this article about the “Australian Social Security”, we start by writing, why the Australian Social Security fails to help the farmers; then we will also discuss other things where they fail. But first let us discuss about the farmer, because as we have said in a previous article Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business, so, we want to work out, why the farmers don’t get social security payment from the government, like most other people do.

You see, today the Australian Social Security system is helping lots of people, but it is not helping the farmers, even though the farmers really need help from the government. Therefore, we want to know why this is happening, and then, we can suggest how to avoid this happening again. We believe that the Social Security system in Australia must help anybody that needs help, at least the name itself suggests that. So, we are going to investigate and talk about this issue, in this article and the following articles.

Anyhow, our views are based on what is happening in Australia today, about farming and the drought, so, the first question is; why the Australian Social Security system has failed to help the farmers. We believe that the Australian Social Security can do better than what it is doing now. So, let us see why the Australian social security is failing to help the farmers.

Now, what we are saying here is what we know, but, if you want to know more about the Australian Social Security system, you should follow these links, Social security in Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Australia, Benefits and Payments - Australia.gov.au, and other links that can be found on the internet.

Anyhow, we believe that the Australian Social Security system that we call Centrelink, has failed to help the farmers, because it has not been planned to help them from the beginning, as we will explain as we go on writing these articles. Anyhow, we are talking about the drought and the farmers that are having a very hard time, so, we were saying that all this hardship can be minimized, if aids from the Social Security System was more readily available to the farmers, but it is not, so, the only thing that we can think about this failure, is why the social security has failed to help? Because it is not fair for the farmers, so, the present Social Security System needs to be fixed.

So, why the social security has failed to help? Once you ask that question and look for the reasons, you realize that in Australia not everybody is treated the same, from the current social security system. You see, people are treated different because they belong to different categories; there are: the-have and the-have-not; there are the workers that work for wages; there are the self-employed; there are the farmers, which we could say are self-employed, and others; anyhow, when people go to Centrelink the Social Security government agencies for help, the agencies do what they can according to where these groups of people belong, so, let us see some examples how this works.  

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Here we can see people waiting in one of the Centrelink offices to wait for their turn to speak to the people in charge, to declare what they need to declare to receive financial help from the government. 

How the Social Security works. 

Let us start from the working people; when people that work for a wage, become unemployed and they are not earning money, they can go to Centrelink, where they can apply to receive the unemployment benefit from the government; this means that the government gives them some money, until they find another job to go to and can earn their living. This system is called Social Security unemployment benefits, or something like that, and it is good, it is like receiving a small wage to help you survive, so, it helps the workers when they don’t have a job and need financial help. 

But the problem with this system is that all categories are not treated the same, this can create some problems for some people. So, I believe that something needs to be done, to help anyone that needs help. You see, some categories may not receive help because they belong to a certain category, even if they earn no money and have no money, like the farmers today, this is the problem with the Social Security system of today.

You see, the farmers cannot turn to the government for help, because they are self-employed, and they are supposed to be rich, okay they are rich, because they own a lot of land, so, the assets test will exclude them from any government help; in this case there is no social security for the farmers. This is the reason why the social security system is failing the farmers, it is not set to help those people that cannot earn money even when they work hard, in the hope they can earn their living.

But I believe that these people must be helped, because they are the backbone of the Australian economy, therefore, we cannot afford to lose them, so, the Social Security system needs to be adjusted to help them, when they need help. They must be helped from the government, until the day that something else can replace the government help; like the collection of funds that we have suggested in our last article. Here we need also to say, that today farming is not regulated from the government, but some regulations may need to be placed; so that when things don’t work out, the government will be more willing to help the farmers.

Anyhow, we have worked out that today the farmers cannot be helped from Centrelink, because they are self-employed, and because they have too much property as assets. You see, the assets-test is the main problem here; but I believe that the assets-test in special cases should not override the income test completely, this suggestion does not apply only to the farmers, because the assets-test is also making life miserable to pensioners that own properties, when those properties cannot earn half the money the assets test believe they could.

So, in my views the assets test needs to be modified. Anyhow, we are going into details later, anyhow, it will become self-explained as we write more articles about it. We want to say now that there are issues that need to be fixed from the federal government. So, this farmer’s problem and the assets-test for pensioner, is going to be a real problem for the politicians, if they want to help the people that have voted for them at the elections.

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 Let us look at the political reasons.  

Anyhow, I want to point it out to you, that in our previous articles we have started to talk about the farmers problems, but slowly we found ourselves to talk about assets-test and politics. Now, what is happening at the Australian federal government level is not right, they need to work better what the people need, and how the people are affected when they make their budgets, I believe that this is one of the reasons why Australia is having problems today, some of these political people that become treasurers are heartless and careless, they have made many mistakes that has affected the public adversely, some of these mistakes need to be fixed, the public is not going to forget easily what they have done, so, they are going to run the risk of losing their next elections, on this issue alone. But let us compare what is happening now and in the past. I believe that in the past it was better, at least this is the way I have seen it happen.

Anyhow, in the past as far as I know there was no assets test in the seventies, it was introduced later to stop people that were abusing the system, also because the government needed more money. Now, let us try to see and discuss some of the reasons that apply today, which takes us to see that the federal government is greedy, because they want more money. So, here we need to look at who are the people that make these decisions.

Of course, they are the politicians that we send to Canberra parliament to govern us, since the government is formed from the political parties. Now it becomes evident that it is what these political parties represent, believe and preach that are going to make the future laws and budgets that parliament will pass, to govern Australia.

So, let us talk about the Australian politics, who represents who and to which party the group of people may belong and other things. Since this is a different issue that influences the outcome, we will talk about this in our next article the Australian political parties, where we will try to explain how we see them.

After we do that, we will come back to talk about the social security system. Anyhow, here I need to remind you that we are writing a group of articles to show you what is going on, even if these things have happened in the past. See you soon, with our article The Australian Political Parties

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Farming, harvesting the ancient way, part three.

Dear readers, in this blog, we have written several posts about D.I.Y. articles that dealt with building works. Having done that, we started with this post, Farming today is still a risky business. Now in this blog, we are going to write part of an old article called, Farming today compared to the old ways; we are doing this to give farming the importance they deserve, so that you know why we are talking about farming. When we finish with this article, we want to talk about some social issues that can affect all of us. We will start with some Australian social issues that we have already written in the past, when these things happened; then we will follow with what is happening these days. This is only our views of what we see happening, so, we hope we can say something that can be helpful. We are starting with this article about farming and their problems, since farming is the most important part of our society, because it produces food for us to live. We hope to interest lots of people. 

Anyhow, you can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk  

You can see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork  and,  http://diybrickwork.com,  

To see this article in full,  Farming today compared to the old way 

To understand what we are saying here, we must imagine how harvesting was done a couple of centuries ago, before the industrial revolution or progress. I believe that most of the wheat was harvested by hand with a sickle, just like this man in the photo harvesting wheat.  

Wheat harvesting the ancient way.  

Dear readers, this is part three of, Farming today compared to the old way, where we want to show you the great improvement that we have achieved and the better life that we have achieved. Anyhow, we had to divide our original article in three parts to make it easier. Anyhow, we have written this article to compare and explain how farming was done at the time when I was young, and we have done that, so, in this blog we want to compare the ancient ways of farming with today farming. Here I need to say that I have witnessed the last part of this old practice when I was young. You see, when I was young we were already using a horse drawn harvester, and it was very helpful; but there were people that had some small holdings and we had one of these ourselves, it was in a place, where it was hard to go with the harvester that we had, so, we had to use the old ways for harvesting our wheat for that small wheat field, because that was the only way to do it for one reason or another.

So, let me describe how harvesting was done in those old bygone days; at harvesting time strange as it may seem today, we could hire some specialized people that were good at using the sickle, these people usually went from town to town to do this seasonal harvesting job; we need also to explain that in Southern Italy because the terrain has different altitude the wheat reaches maturity at different times, this was helping these seasonal workers to have a longer span of work, now just to compare those very hard times with today times, I have to tell you that these workers were sleeping anywhere they could on a sack filled up with straws under a shelter if they could find one, as they could not afford anything else. In the morning they would get up early and wait in the town square hoping that somebody would hire them for the day.

Now let us say that we had a small plot about one acre and we could not use the harvester, because it was not possible to go there, we would hire four people and form a gang that could harvest one acre in one day and collect it in hips, that later would be taken on a cart to the farm house to be threshed one way or another.

In the old times anything that had grown in the field was collected, it needed to be collected for the people to survive, because the fields did not produce as much as they do today, because they could not be cultivated with our modern machines. You see, today we have the tractor to cultivate the fields and it does a better job than the horse drawn plough, we have many types of fertilizer to help us grow more wheat but let us go back to talk about very old harvesting times.

This photo above shows you a large group of harvesters on a large field harvesting this wheat with their sickles, so, wheat then must have been a lot dear than today, because it took an infinite amount of work to collect the wheat. Anyhow, after cutting and collecting the bundle of wheat, there was still a lot of other things to do, as we are going to tell you. 

Wheat harvesting and threshing the very old time 

Now I must say briefly how the older generations before my times used to thresh their entire harvests, to collect their produce. Now, let us suppose that it was a few bundles of wheat to be threshed one could even extract the wheat by hitting them with a stick, but let us say that we had a cart-full, or many cart full for that matter, then we had to use a different method, which is the way that most farm used in the very old times for centuries, before the threshing machine was invented, so, let me tell you how it was done. 

I happen to know this procedure, because in the farms when I was young, we were still using this method with smaller crops, most likely broad beans, lentils, chickpeas, linseed, and other farm produce that were not meant to go through the wheat trashing machine. When we were doing this procedure of threshing these minor crops, the elder would always be telling us that this was the way that they used to collect their wheat as well and usually it took them a few months to collect all the season produce. So, now let me describe this to you, so that we can compare the difference.

In order to do this old threshing, first of all we needed to prepare a piece of ground that is very solid and smooth, this can be achieved by stripping the old dry grass on a piece of land that had a large clay content, then wet it with a little bit of water to make it compact; once that was ready we would place our wheat or whatever was to be threshed and collected on this clean ground, then we would get our horses mule and donkeys whatever animals were available and drive them around and around until everything was threshed. Of course there was a lot more to say, but let us make it short otherwise it would become too boring.

In the old times most things were threshed by driving farm animals over the produce around and around, and at the same time we had to turn this wheat around several times; after doing that we had to separate the wheat from the straws.  

People working, lifting the wheat and the straws up and letting it fall down, hoping the the wind would blow the straws away, since they are lighter that the wheat. This work could go on for ours, until they were separated.         

Now, once the threshing was done we had to separate the produce from the straw and any other foreign matter, this was achieved by removing the straws from the top layer making sure that no produce was left with the straws, at the same time we would collect the bottom layer in a hip, once that was done we would have to clean that produce by using the wind, to take away the finer parts that were still mixed with the wheat or whatever it was, and there were many other things that we could use to get this wheat clean, by the end of the day we could have collected two or three hundred kilograms of produce, and when we did that we thought that we had done well for a day work.

                                                    Wheat ears. 

In the very ancient times was even worse, see what they were using in the Medieval Times, here is a link to check out some ancient farm tools including the Flail and Winnowing Basket used to collect and clean wheat.

Medieval Farm Tools 

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                                                                Clean wheat

I hope that what we have written gives the modern reader a view of how thing were done in the old times, so, I do not want to say much more about how all this threshing and cleaning of the wheat was done, because even writing about it is boring today, but anyhow it needed to be done in those days, because that was the only way to collect our wheat to make bread and other things to eat. Now, my dear reader’s do you see how hard was then even to collect wheat for ourselves, so that we could make bread and other cereal product.

I hope I have been able to write something that really sets up the great difference of the ways of life that we were living then and the ways of life that we are living now, for this I want you to compare and judge for yourself how much better off we are today.

To the young people who think that today life is hard, let me describe to you what I have witnessed when I was young, because then life was indeed harder than today, you see those days everybody had to find how to earn enough to feed themselves there were no handover from the government. So, the very poor people of those days were trying to collect anything they could to feed themselves, as I have witnessed these things myself, so, let me describe this to you:

You see, at harvest time this is what I have witnessed, I have seen old and poor people mainly old ladies go around the fields and pick up any ear of wheat that was left behind in the fields, one ear of wheat here and another ear wheat there until they had the strength to go around, they did this each day until harvest time was over and there was nothing else to collect; and I tell you what these poor people were happy if in the end they had collected enough ears of wheat that they could thresh and clean themselves, perhaps they could have collected enough to make 50 to 100 kilos of wheat during harvest time and they were happy because, they could make bread from this wheat and not go hungry for a few months.

Now I hope that you can see what I mean when I say that the youths of today don’t know anything about hard times?

Anyhow, I hope that today this abundance of cheap food lasts for a long time, because things can change in the future. Today the climatic change is the worrying part, because we don’t know how much it is going to affect the farms and our lives.  

Dear readers, we have reached the end of out article,  Farming today compared to the old way, so, now we can go back and continue with what we wanted to do after our article, Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business, where we said that we wanted to talk about the Australian Social Security System, because we believe that it has failed to help, when they needed help. 

See you soon. 

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