Kraft+ DT - April - Remember your roots.

Hello again Scrappy Friends, welcome; today I'm sharing a DT post for 

Kraft+

It's a recipe challenge but not one I wanted to follow in the traditional way with a wedding theme.   When I came across this old photo of my Father building a round haystack more than 50 years ago, I knew it was time to record this lost art.   So the photo and the haystack building is the something old, something new is me trying to paint with my newish Distress Oxides paints, Something borrowed, is the sketch from the super talented Laura Whitaker from Stuck?! Sketches! and something blue, 
the blue paper and the blue clouds in our Aussie sky.

First I prepped the page with clear Gesso. 

Next I stamped the trees with a
 Darkroom Door "Gum Trees" stamp.

The painting was a matter of trial and error; 
with lots of practice on scraps of paper to achieve  the effect I was hoping for.
I kept the embellishments simple with a metal camera and some string 
and a few cogs which I rusted with Prima rust effect pastes. The pastes are available from one of our generous sponsors, Scrap Matrix.


The journalling is on the back of the page and it reads:-
This photo was taken over 50 years ago.  My Dad is on the top of the haystack and he was helping my cousin to build a round haystack. My cousin, an only child, was only 19 when his Father died; he was left to run the family farm with his Mother and Aunt.  When his Father was dying, he asked my Father to mentor the young man and help out during harvest, when my cousin was often incapacitated with severe hay fever. 

Despite having a farm of his own and no Sons to help him, my Father honoured the request, and for the next 30 odds years, he worked with my cousin, especially during Harvest time. I remember my Dad building one of these circular haystacks, now a lost art, as so many farming chores are done mechanically.  

I recall Dad driving a post into the ground, attaching a long piece of binder twine to the post with a stick tied to the other end, and walking around in a circle dragging the stick in the dirt, like an enormous compass. This created as a guide to the the perimeter.  Then a layer of hardwood logs went down to form the base and gradually the sheaves where built up, layer by layer.  I can remember being fascinated with the long handled pitch forks tossing the hay high in the air to land on the top of the stack.
I loved being outside watching the changing seasons and getting involved in the chores of the day. One of my jobs was to help turn the handle of the separator, to separate to cream from the milk and then churn the milk into butter.  Societal norms dictated that women could not be farmers in that era, but I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if those restrictions didn't exist.
Journalling March 2018

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