GLEN APLIN COMMUNITY MARKET 1

My Gran, my Mother, Me and my two Daughters learned to knit, crochet, sew, embroider, grow vegetables and flowers, bake cakes and make jam at an early age. We exhibited our needlework or cooking in the country agricultural shows and always when a school, church or some other community organization was holding a fete we contributed our goods and sometimes manned the stalls.

If it wasn’t our church or school holding the fete we went along to purchase cakes and confectionary, but we never bought needlework. As my mother once said to me, “I can make any of these if I want them.”

Today it seems to me the district markets now held in most towns and cities have taken over this niche market. No longer are goods donated to a worthy cause. Instead people man their own stall to sell their produce and pocket the profit. Organizations have realized that they can hold regular markets and make an income  by renting space to the stall holders.

My district of Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland needed to raise money to renovate the Glen Aplin Community Hall, so now about four times a year a market is held in and around this hall on a Saturday morning. Today, 31st July 2010, I attended this market and took the following photos to share with you.

It rained overnight and has continued to shower today, so there weren’t many outdoor stalls. The first to catch my eye was providing a substance for organic gardeners.

Bags of manure

• Sheep manure @ $7.00 a bag
• Chook manure  @ $10.00 a bag
• Cow manure @ $5.00 a bag
• Barley straw @ $7.00 a bale.

These quantities and these prices are clearly intended for the small garden. When I buy Lucerne hay, containing many more valuable nutrients than barley straw for the purpose of mulching my garden, I need to buy 100 bales  @ $7.00 each, delivered to my garden.

Trixie on Lucerne hay

An interesting market stand was the one where old iron horseshoes were fixed to aged ironbark timber slabs to create hanging racks that could be used for many purposes. Ironbark is a common name for a form of slow-growing eucalyptus tree.

Horseshoe racks

The woman selling these racks said that when they moved into their home these boards, over 100 years old, had been considered rubbish until they hit on the idea of using them for this purpose. The aged wood was still strong. Ironbark wood was often used in earlier days for fencing and railway sleepers. We discovered more than fifty old railway sleepers formerly used for fencing posts when we bought this property almost 19 years ago. I have used them in many places around our garden and as edging for the Rosemary hedge fronting our Remembrance Field.

WWOOF girls beside the Rosemary hedge

The next stand to catch my attention was not selling an organic or craft product. No, it was a couple of men selling their services as chimney sweeps. In the times of Charles Dickens when people had brick chimneys in their homes skinny little boys were obliged to go down these chimneys to brush out the soot. Here on the Granite Belt there are a few such older homes with brick chimneys, but most people nowadays have combustion stoves with metal chimneys.

Patches, our cat, sits beside a combustion stove.

At Das Helwig Haus we have six such stoves and in past years a son would climb onto our roof at the end of each winter and with a brass brush attached to a rope he would drop it down the chimney. I would hold the rope and he would pull up the brush, before allowing me to again pull it down the chimney pipe until all the soot had fallen through into the fireplace. In recent years I’ve called the local plumber to undertake this job.

Chimney Sweeps

These young men who live on the Granite Belt at Dalveen offered several services.

• Chimney sweeping
• Wood stove sweep
• Fire brick replacement
• Creosote removal
• Dryer vent cleaning
• Water proofing
• Chimney caps
• Repairs
• Gutter clean sweep
• Fire box sealing
• Restoration and re-painting
• Chimney and roof flashing painting
• Gasket replacement

Email:woodfires@dodo.com.au

On such a cold and rainy winter day it was a pleasure to step into the hall amongst the bustling crowd surveying the stands. Behind several tables women were busily knitting while their partners, usually a husband, sold their finished goods. There were racks of beautiful knits for children.

Knits for children

I can remember a time when my mother knitted a pullover every year for each of her six children.

When a teenager I began knitting my own pullovers and other woollen items for my husband and children. Later I knitted for my  grandchildren. I knitted matching pullovers like I am wearing in this photograph for Eberhard and me, but he seldom wears his pullover, saying he doesn’t feel the cold as much as I do.

Fay wearing a handknitted pullover

I mastered many styles of knitting and although I do not buy knitted goods I greatly admire the skill that has gone into such a pullover as this white Arran style which I saw on display today at the Glen Aplin Community Market.

Arran style knitted pullover

These are quality products where the labour of the knitter is undervalued. So it is with most craft products. The wool for this pullover would have cost as much or more than the knitter was asking for her hours of labour. I was asked twenty years ago to knit a garment for a store. When I requested $5.00 per hour for my skilled labour, I was told my price was too high.

There was a time when Eberhard would purchase whole fleeces, card and spin the wool and I would then have the option of knitting with wool in shades of white, grey, brown and black. Many of these garments were given to family and friends.

Now I write. You can read about my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine on www.australia-book.com.au

Wildflowers, wilderness and wine

I am also publishing via weekly posts on http://fayhelwigauthor.com another book I have written called The Forgotten Ones. In this book I tell the story of Eberhard’s youth in Germany - the years 1926 to 1950. I also illustrate this book with many photographs I have taken during holidays in Germany.

Next week I shall write about the other stalls represented at the Glen Aplin Community Market.