As I clump about the place in my red band gumboots, smelling the farmyard smells chickens bring with them, I’m reminded of when I lived on a farm and a colleague commented that I was “playing at being a farmer”. I had numerous chooks and a goat and a large vegetable garden. A stray cat called by regularly. There were possums in the walnut tree at night. The furry beasts, with ghoulish red eyes, would screech and run along the verandah with hob-nail boots on, and I could hear rats behind the scrim walls of the old villa I rented.

Now, in my small city garden, as I toil in the service of the chooks, mixing up their mash at 6am, cleaning out the nesting box in the early afternoon, picking up their poop and burying it under the rhubarb or in the compost, fetching them greens and treats to vary their diet and marvelling at their quiet clucky chicken-ness, I feel a certain farmer-ish satisfaction.

Having solved their incursions into the garden by judicious use of the sprinkler, I am harvesting the fruits of my vegetable labours.

And – drum roll, please – half a dozen eggs for a bacon and egg pie.