Cane Country

Farming areas around the world have several things in common, and it really doesn't matter whether they are dairy farms in Wisconsin, cattle ranches in Texas, or corn fields in Iowa... they are all rural, to different extents of the word 'rural' that is.

In Wisconsin, our subdivision, and street ended at a field usually inhabited by dairy cattle. 

Surprise!

And we weren't really that rural. East Madison was only 15 minutes away,
Middleton (the home of the fabulous Two Peas In A Bucket for all you paper crafters out there) only about 25 minutes or so, if we took the back roads past corn fields and open pasture, past the county Sheriff academy... we were in abundant supply of stores.
Texas was pretty much the same way.  Go the back way past ranches filled with the all too familiar and famous Texas Longhorns and open fields and past a Llama the girls named 'Kevin', and we hit plenty of stores there too. 


Here somewhere in Queensland, we are rural, and I mean RURAL!  We have cane farms around us.  We have no choice but to drive the back way into town, because we are on the back roads.  This is something never experienced by a couple of kids from the north/midwest/southwest U.S.

We drive past wildlife - kangaroos are abundant, fields, forest, or 'bush' as it is known here, just to get to the highway, and then its a drive into a small town with approximately 100 people... ok, its not really 100, but there are really not that many, but there are few stores, maybe a handful or two.  The closest larger 'city' to us here is Bundaberg, that is in total, about 1 hour away. Counting the road work from the floods last year.


Now, I do have to say that when I mention rural, its about as rural as the girls probably would want to get, perhaps.  There are places in Australia that are remote, remote enough to fly in to the closest town just to do grocery shopping.  They usually grab enough groceries for about a month, which could add up to 4 or so trolly (cart) loads. Bundy, has stores to some extent, but if you want amazing stores, you have to drive 5 hours in the opposite direction, to Brisbane.  Keeping in mind here that Texas can fit into the state of Queensland, 3 times.  So really, we don't have it as bad as some may, though it really is more of a lifestyle choice here in Australia.


We have learned about Sugar Cane.  In brief, it is planted, harvested and new shoots grow.  These shoots take a year to mature when harvesting occurs again and this process reoccurs.  Every 3 years, the fields are replanted with new cane plants.

Right now, we have fields that are just starting to be harvested around the area, and some that are still getting to the final stage of thier growth.  But from what I hear, it will be a huge harvest this year, much larger than normal.