Published by jennib at August 3, 2008 RUTH SNELLEMAN Life on a farm doesn’t often allow for visitors. The responsibility of raising children, maintaining a house and hoping for a successful crop leaves women little time for friendships. Most farming houses have one room for visitors. In this one room, the heater is allowed on. The rest of the house remains chilly throughout the winter months. Curtains are drawn and the air is pickled with the smell of marmalade, dust and mothballs. This is the place for the ministry of Mima. Originally from Melbourne, the Rev Deacon Mima Mitchell, decided, many years ago, to marry a farmer. When she moved to her husband’s farm near Hopetoun, she said she cried every day from loneliness. Her tears only dried when she gave birth to her baby son. These days she visits farm women, just as isolated as she once was. Aside from Mima, one woman doesn’t receive visitors. She told Mima “some women fall onto a bed of feathers when they marry. I fell onto concrete.” One husband insists upon sitting at the table whilst Mima talks to his wife. There is no privacy on the farm. Another turns the radiator on the kitchen when he eats his lunch. The room soon becomes toasty. Once he leaves the room, he switches the radiator off. The winter chill once again engulfs the women. In the weeks between visits, one of them writes page after page of letters to her friend, Mima. She also makes grapefruit marmalade. She employs the “2, 4, 6” rule – 2 pound of fruit, 4 pints of water and 6 pound of sugar. She wins awards for her cooking and craft. She bakes cakes and gives free range eggs to Mima at her next visit - tokens of appreciation for her friend. When she visits, a vase of gardenias is placed specially on the kitchen table. At each visit, Mima brings a custard tart and the woman devours it with cream. This time, her husband can have fruit. The tart is hers. Mima sips tea from fine China and the woman eats her lunch and talks about the rain. She notes that the cold weather has meant that her chooks haven’t laid as many eggs. She only got six yesterday. She usually gets 16! Another’s husband worries constantly about money and about the amount she spends on food. So, for one week, she stopped eating. She served her husband and she served her children and she did not eat. She busies herself with housework and she knits and crochets. She said she “hasn’t been one month without mice.” Every morning she has to clean mice droppings from the benches in her house. Another’s husband won’t even sleep in the same bed as his wife. So plagued with worry about the family’s financial situation he just paces the floor at night. Mima said that she “must continue to visit these women.” She does it “for they have no one else.”
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