When hard work was a way of life...

James Mahoney remembers life on a mixed farm, cooking in camp ovens, problems with wooden handles, gates, fences, and snakes, and cooling off under the willows with billy tea after a hard morning's work. And he recalls learning how to plough a straight furrow, making money from rabbits, spuds, old bones and pigs, and clearing the property of blackberries and bunnies, and washing done in a pioneer laundry. They were the days when racing trotters had a daytime job in the baker's cart, of home-trained blacksmiths, of expert saddlers and coach painters, half-time school, the mounted police, reading by kerosene lamp, noisy political rallies and looking for Ben Hall's gold.