I was home at the farm on the weekend to see our canola crop come in.

Harvest is always a frenetic time, with machinery and trucks thundering every which way, keen to get the grain in before any rain can gather.

I spend the time anxiously pacing, trying to distract myself in the garden, my heart in my mouth as I wait in anticipation for the first indication of yield to come in ...

... waiting for an indication of whether we've done our money, broken even or perhaps even cracked a profit!

I climbed up into the header cab and did a few runs with the contractor. This is always an education! The header driver divided his time between talking to me, with very careful politeness, about the subtleties and nuances of controlling a GPS driven harvester, and raucously yarning to his mates over the 2-way as they fly past in their trucks, laden with grain on the way to the silos in town.

At one point, he uttered nervously to his mate on the 2-way, "

Ducks on the pond, mate, I gotta a duck on the pond

"! Now most Aussie farm girls will know exactly what that means. This is code among country men that there is a woman present and that all foul language should be moderated immediately! It is a particularly common warning when women walk onto the board of a shearing shed. Funny! I'd love to know if this is a habit peculiar to Australia, or whether there are similar expressions in other rural communities around the world. I suspect it is unique to foul-mouthed Aussies!