Struggling with context

[Anonymous No.12660876]

I am an ESL brainlet and I can't for the life of me understand the gist of this paragraph:
>Remember I said the old lady had spent most of her life helping hack farms from the bush? Well, we had always understood that each new farm had just about paid for the last one, and when my grandfather was lost to the bush, my granny was left destitute.
(From Keri Hulme's "Windeater")
What the fuck does "helping hack farms from the bush" mean? What's the meaning of the word "farm" throughout the paragraph? The author is from New Zealand, for reference.

[Anonymous No.12660886]

>>12660876
Clearing forest land ('bush') and cultivating it

[Anonymous No.12660887]

>>12660876
>helping hack farms from the bush
This means that the old lady helped someone (probably the grandfather) turn wild and untamed land into suitable farmland.
The meaning of the word farm refers to a place where crops are grown in the soil on a large scale.

[Anonymous No.12660896]

>>12660876
Maybe start with The Very Hungry Caterpillar if this gives you trouble
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bush#New_Zealand

[Anonymous No.12660901]

>>12660876
another ESLfag but I thing hacking frms from the bush just means that
you cut down grass and bush from plains and turn it into farmland. basically creating farms
>we had always understood that each new farm had just about paid for the last one,
I don't know how farms work to understand this but the gist is that they lived a hand to mouth lifestyle
lost to the bush is probably the grandpa getting into an accident while working

[Anonymous No.12660912]

as stated above, the bush is rough land
the idea being that it was so much effort that each new farm (could sell the land, could try to grow) would pay for the last one, then breaking even
hence once the guy dies, there’s not enough workers to be able to try to make a living

[Anonymous No.12660913]

>>12660886
>>12660887
Alright, I see. And after a couple of phrases the text concludes with
>Boy, how the old lady must have hated me. She must not have forgotten those apples
or something along those lines, but no other references to fruit are made. Does that imply she was working on an apple orchard?

[Anonymous No.12661016]

>>12660913
If it really hasn't explained the apples yet (seems unlikely tbphwy), then it's leaving It deliberately ambiguous and it's probably going to do so in a later section.

From that sentence, all you can say is the narrator offended her in some way connected to apples. Maybe he stole some. Maybe he put his dick in some. Maybe he crushed his grandfather to death with a pile of them. Who knows?

[Anonymous No.12661292]

>>12660896
I have no problem reading in English. I just hadn't seen the term "Bush" being used in that context before, but now it's clear.

[Anonymous No.12661304]

>>12661292
Bush can be used to refer to the wilderness in general. Like when people talk about going for a hike “in the bush” or bushcraft etc

[Anonymous No.12661458]

>>12661292
>I have no problem reading in English
Your English seems pretty great but it's kind of whack that you don't know how to use a dictionary