The Year We Sold The Ponies The First Time

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I've been going through old paperwork and came across a receipt where we 'sold' our two ponies to my father. This brought back a few painful memories. In 1980 we bought into a farm machinery business with two other couples. They put their farms up as surety for a massive bank loan which we should have been able to manage. However we then ran into four years of drought at the end of which the bank was threatening to foreclose. The interest on the loan was horrific and without credit the business couldn't buy spare parts, etc. The drought meant farmers were also doing it tough and weren't buying new machinery. The business got so close to being wound up that we really feared that the bailiffs could turn up at any time to seize anything of value. We 'sold' the horses to my father hence the receipt, signed a statutory declaration to say the piano also belonged to my parents, gave Vince's LP records to a brother for safe-keeping and sold a small freezer to a sister-in-law. We didn't have much else of any value. Vince began applying for other positions and, once he found one, we walked away with nothing. The others carried on and were able to eventually trade out of their problems. If we hadn't left it was likely they would have lost their farms. It was tough at the time but I'm not looking for sympathy. In the end, it all turned out for the best. And it is also nice that we managed to stay good friends with the four partners despite the circumstances. I wonder what will turn up in the next batch of paper.