In the image above, you can see a section of lettuce growing in the Santin market gardens on Valetta Road. The photo, looking north-east, was taken in the late 1940s and has been supplied by Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo.
It’s the end of July and in Adelaide, we’re having some chilly days. We are fortunate that we can keep warm even on the coldest of days and nights. Over the past weeks, there have been some very bitter nights and even a couple of times we have woken up to see that ice has covered the windshield of the car.
Our lives today are a contrast to those of the first-generation Veneto market gardeners who established their commercial market gardens on leased land north of the River Torrens in the 1930s. It was the time of the Depression and it was not always easy to sell at the East End market because the cost of living prevented people from buying fresh vegetables.
Some of the people who were interviewed for the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project remembered that their parents came home from market and they had to destroy the vegetables that could not be sold.
The economic times were tough and until the end of the 1930s, there were challenges when the River Torrens flooded in winter and crops were destroyed. The floods impacted on the livelihoods of market gardeners and orchardists in the low-lying land west of the City of Adelaide and disrupted means of transport.
Rae Ballantyne, whose parents had a market garden close to some of the Veneto market gardeners on River Road (now Findon Road) remembered the problems for his father, James who acquired his land as a soldier settler after World War I. The Ballantyne property was adjacent to the river.
Dad told me that the first year when he moved in, he got flooded out seven times that year. So, whether he did have the mound up there, I don’t know. But then the river never broke its bank there it always broke up Holbrooks way and Underdale way then come down through that way, I have some photos shows the river. The river was very narrow and full of trees and shrubs I think that is why it got flooded all the time because it just got blocked up with rubbish …
(Rae Ballantyne, OH
During the 1930s the State Government funded a project to solve the problem of flooding. It constructed the Torrens Channel or ‘Breakout Creek’ as it became known and to drain the wetlands and divert the course of the river. The project was completed in the late 1930s and the rate of flooding was all but eliminated.
Growing vegetables in winter
The first generation of market gardeners grew outside vegetables such as cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, onions, beetroot, lettuce and spinach that they tended over winter. Frankie Ballestrin, son of Isidoro who had arrived in 1927, recalled the winter jobs of weeding the rows of winter vegetables. He estimated that the first generation would have planted outside vegetables in separate half-acre sections over a few months so that the crops could be sold at market over an extended period in winter.
Frankie reminded me that the work was hard, summer or winter, because in the early days, all the land was prepared by hand. The digging was physically demanding and gradually hand digging was replaced by horse and plough and then tractors reduced the physical labour for the Veneto market gardener families.
Protecting crops and livelihood
Anna Santin worked with her husband, Vito and his brothers, Lui and Romildo and her sisters-in-law, Rosina and Clara, in their market garden on Frogmore Road from when she married in 1948. She remembered the challenge of working in winter and the need to look after the tomato crops in the glasshouses – “It was our living once a year, you had to protect it.” (Anna Santin nee Mattiazzo, OH 872, 3 April 2013)
Frosts in the glasshouses
Albert and Mary Tonellato nee Zoanetti were 1.5 generation market gardeners. They had arrived as children in the 1930s. They had a market garden on Findon Road and they recalled the way they would manage frosts in the glasshouses in winter.
Well, we used to get frost in the morning, frost, and we used to burn coal, old motor car tyres, we’d put them in buckets, used to put about – three or four buckets … hanging up in the glasshouse and light them up about … about midnight … The frost used to burn the tomatoes.
(Albert and Mary Tonellato nee Zoanetti, OH 872/3, OH 872/4, 3 October 2008)
Winter inside the glasshouses
Sandra Semola nee Zampin worked with her father, Silvano, on the family market garden at Findon after she left school at 12 years old until she married at the age of 19. She remembers that they did not do so much work in winter because their land was often saturated and not suitable for outside vegetables.
Sandra remembered that she worked with her father mainly in the glasshouses:
Winter was mainly inside, in the glasshouses … But outside Dad didn’t plant much in the winter because it was too sloppy and we used to plough to get the land ready so water could go through. But that was about it in winter. And get prepared, bamboos, we used to cut the bamboos down.
(Sandra Semola nee Zampin, OH 872/44, 27 April 2017)
Unlike the days when the first generation of the Veneto market gardeners were making their living from the land, vegetables are available all year round today. However, as the market gardeners would say, tomatoes grown in winter don’t taste the same as the juicy sun-kissed specimens of summer. Winter vegetables in season are a delight and I’m sure that shopping for them inspires different ways to cook and enjoy them.
There have been some technical problems in posting the last two blogs and you would have received the email notifications later than usual. I am hoping that these issues have been resolved.
Madeleine Regan
28 July 2024