Getting hit with a dose of ‘reality’

The farmer’s in the den

The farmer’s in the den

Hey-ho the dairy-oh

The farmer’s in the den

WELL, I can’t think the last time yours truly got to sit down in his den, put the feet up on the desk and simply sit there and ponder the ways of the world.

But it doesn’t surprise me that’s how those Germans might farm, what with their small properties and massive EU subsidies, but it’s not the reality of real farming, Aussie farming.

If you’re wondering why I bring up the Germans, let me enlighten you, again. Farmer Wants A Wife was first recorded in Germany in 1826, as Es fuhr ein Bau’r ins Holz.

The farmer wants a wife

The farmer wants a wife

Hey-ho the dairy-oh

The farmer wants a wife

D’uh. Of course the bloody farmer wants a wife. Hell, even I’ve got one. If you don’t have a wife where do you get little farmers from?

The wife wants a child

The wife wants a child

Hey-ho the dairy-oh

The wife wants a child

See what I mean? This is where the little farmer comes in. And where the reality really kicks in. A missus, a sprog (and like the royals, you’ll need a spare or two in case number one doesn’t want to take over the family farm).

Nappies, sleepless nights, car seats, all the clobber kids seem to need these days just to move around the house, let alone go out.

That’s reality.

As opposed to the garbage the missus tried to convince me to watch on the telly the other night.

The originally named Farmer Wants A Wife.

Now most people would admit the old Whacker is hardly a woke bloke, but fair dinkum folks, what a crock.

How can any of this contrived drivel be “real”.

When I was making me play for the missus, I don’t recall a couple of TV cameras and microphones shoved in our faces in the hayloft.

And while I was, as you’d expect, considered the catch in the district, I don’t recall five or six of the local sheilas wanting to join a harem and spend weeks hanging on my every word and bursting into tears if I trotted out one of the others.

Although, I don’t think I would be speaking out of place if I suggested one or two may have shed a tear when they heard I was off the market, their mothers probably did too.

Then the missus confided that, in an earlier series, these fops pretending to be modern men, were using farms that weren’t even their properties.

Fair bloody dinkum.

Apparently the people running this joke of a show felt they needed to have all these farmers on nice, lush, green farms regardless of time of year.

In TV land, there no such thing as a drought, flood or fire.

Now that’s reality TV.

Farmers who’ll not want to show their faces in the footy clubrooms.

Farms that aren’t really their farms because in reality TV bad things don’t happen in the real world.

Farms where the women, dolled up like a bunch of stud cows, have to perform all sorts of tricks for the camera to try and win a date night.

Farms where a bunch of (mostly) city slicker women head bush with gay abandon and within a week or two – sometimes a day or two – in front of an equally stupid national TV audience, are madly in love with a bloke they’ve never met.

Come on folks, pull the other one.

So I left the missus in her make-believe reality and headed out to the shed to finish fixing the header, only to discover the grandkids had been mucking around in there with motorbikes and my toolkit had vanished with them.

Now that’s the reality of what happens after the farmer gets a real wife. And it left me with nothing to do but head back inside to join the missus for another dose of farmer farce.

And that’s called the sad reality.

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