Hi from Isle of Anglesey

[Diwali]

I think you will find Husqvarna was originally a gunsmith and like a lot of others gunsmiths had to find something else to do during the rare occasions when the Europeans were not trying to kill each other.
Like a lot of other gun makers they diversified into fashionable enterprises that could be made with the gun making equipment they owned.
Not much different to the BSA group or Royal Enfield except it was managed by competent people not old school tie idiots.

Thanks for a very interesting response on the history of Husqvarna and Fergies.
The concept of making a living on 10 acres in Australia is farcical. I suppose you colud make a go of it in the south east and south west but I imagine it would be a struggle. My dad, a £10 pom, took on a 1000 acre spread in WA but gave it up and went into minerals!

 

[bertsmobile1]

Yep,
Close to the big cities a 10 acre plot intensively farmed for veggies made a good living for a big family with a lot of kids ( free labour) until the 80's when supermarkets took over .
But out of town, or over the hill, no chance
A friend just sold his fathers old farm. 1000 acres ( consolidation of 90 ex-service blocks ) which included the entire town of Brooklana with 300, residential blocks, surveyed, laid out but never actually sold because tractors got bigger and you no longer needed 1 man / 5 acre . Ten acres is the limit one man could farm using only walk behind impliments or horses.
Most of our early pollies were either the sons of squatters / former pollies or Pommie rejects.
As late as the 70's they still believed that "rain follows the plow" and the "cure" for our deserts was to farm them, just like merry old England.
If just one of them sat down with a black man who had 50,000 years of orally recorded history of the country they would have found out why only a few Nations bothered to farm their tribal lands other than fire improving pastures.
In the 70's we spent a fortune building a beautiful dam, draining the Upper Hunter valley, where incidentially they had been growing DRY CLIMATE WINE GRAPES for around 80 years so the "beautiful dam has never been more than 1/3 full.