fertiliser dumped on the ground
The straw that breaks the camels back in Purple Roads, is when a load of fertiliser is stolen from Matt and Anna’s farm.
This happened in Esperance a few years ago – a whole truckload just vanished into thin air. Word on the street had it crossing two borders into NSW and landing at a BnS Ball, where a farmer apparently bought it. Whether or not there was any truth to the this, I have no idea, but it certainly got the creative juices flowing!
This is some of our fertiliser on the ground waiting to be loaded into a truck and spread all over the paddocks. This is how Matt’s pile would have looked, albeit a fair bit bigger.
It’s bloody expensive stuff, but you can’t run a farm without. For those of you who don’t know, fertiliser can be spread onto your pastures to help – soil, especially in long-time farmed land, is often deficient in many trace elements and metals. It also goes ‘down the tube’ (seeded right next to the grain when you plant crops) to help the grain get the best start – a bit like breast feeding your baby!
So when Matt realised the fertiliser had been stolen, he knew his crops wouldn’t grow without it and they were in real danger of loosing their farm Manna. The bank manager knew this too and that was why he foreclosed on them.
