A new era

2011 started off with a bang as we have finally been blessed by a visit from Sylvia, my delightful mother-in-law. This was her first visit to the farm since we left the hustle and bustle of Jozi more than 3 years ago. Daunted by our tales of dry toilets, baboons, solar power failures, bathing in buckets and Kevin’s exaggeration: “our entire house can fit into your kitchen” – she hardly slept a wink the night before her arrival, worrying about what she would encounter on Farm 119!

After much cajoling (and some Jewish guilt tripping), she finally acquiesced to a visit, so Kevin brought her back from Jo’burg where he had been visiting a mourning friend. Concerned about her comfort, I phoned home just after her arrival and learned that she already had a swim in the farm dam and was happily snoozing in a hammock! (I have yet to set foot in the murky waters of our dam; much preferring the heated indoor pool at the Pezula Spa.) Always ready for an adventure, with a fresh and inspiring approach to life, Syl explored the forest with the children, hiked with Kevin, attended Mila’s ballet class and discovered that the farm is actually quite luxurious and civilized - if you don’t mind peeing in a pot in lieu of an en suite bathroom!

What a delight to share our home with a mother again – not since my mom’s passing 2 years ago have we had the privilege. This visit will hopefully signal the first of many…

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We’ve slipped comfortably into our new routine for the year, and I thought I’d share our daily comings and goings:

Monday mornings signal the start of the early rise routine for the week: my cell phone alarm rings at 6.15, after which we all snooze 3 times until 6.45. “We all” being myself, Kevin and the kids. Although the kids start off in Luke’s racing car bed in the evenings, they make their way to our bed during the night. We take turns snuggling each other with each snooze, then do the quick bathroom-dressing-toothbrush run and enjoy a healthy breakfast of oats and fruit smoothies prepared by our Minister of Nutrition (Kevin). Mila feeds the chickens, quails and rabbits (part of her chores-for-pocket money arrangement) and by 7.15 we’re off to town, picking our neighbour’s son up for a lift to school.

The 25 minute drive to school is a peaceful one (zero traffic, beautiful scenery, the occasional baboon/cow crossing the road) while we take turns deciding on the music: Luke’s favourites being Cat Stevens and Lenny Kravitz, Mila usually opts for Beyonce and has discovered Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, while Buddhas (the neighbour’s son) prefers Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Bob Marley. Sting is an all-round favourite, and I try to work in the odd Les Miserables or Ella Fitzgerald for a bit of cultural indoctrination! This morning it was Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody - full blast and on repeat. Musically inspired, the kids are delivered at the Knysna Montessori School and (if I’m lucky) I’ll be on time for work at 8.00.

First task at the office is the preparation of coffee: 2 strong cups in my mom’s old plunger: one cup for me and one on her behalf. Thereafter, it’s me behind my computer, preparing financial statements, completing tax returns and auditing the accounts of a variety of businesses (hotels, sawmills, property holding companies, body corporates, estate agents, restaurants, etc). By 2pm (after 6 hours of work), the caffeine has worn off and it’s time for the afternoon shift.

On Mondays I go to a private Pilates class which leaves me so stiff that I’m generally immobilized on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It’s been more than 2 years that I’ve done any formal exercise, so my muscles have gone South and need some serious resurrection. With wobbly legs and shaky abdominal muscles, I drive to school to collect the children, where I am almost always greeted by: “what did you buy us, Mommy?” If they’re lucky, I’ll stop at the farm stall on the way home and buy them each a piece of droë wors. (We’ve become occasionally meat-eating vegetarians.)

We arrive back at the farm around 4 pm, after which we disperse into various activities: visiting the chickens and rabbits, watering plants, training dogs, playing computer games, swimming in the dam, weeding, scraping cow poo off the patio (the cows can be so rude!), trampolining, picking food, playing Lego (mostly Luke), unpacking the car (mostly me) or cleaning the house. We had a newly appointed cleaning angel coming twice a week: she arrived for the first week and has absconded since…

I start preparing dinner around 6 (something simple, quick and vegetarian) and we eat together as a family with each one getting a chance to discuss their day. Bedtime for the children is at 7.30 (theoretically), so we end up getting to bed at 8. Since Kevin’s birthday is on the 12^th and mine on the 29^th, we’ve allocated even days to him, while I take the odd days to read to the kids and put them to bed. On the nights that I don’t fall asleep with them, Kevin & I might watch a movie on the cinema size Apple screen with surround sound: a marvelous home theatre system devised by my clever, computer whiz of a husband.

Tuesday afternoons mark the first visit of the week to Knysna’s legendary bakery/ restaurant, Ile de Pain. I simply refer to it as: Heaven. Here I procure a masterfully, wood-fired bread and sip on the best cappuccino in town (if not the world), while reading my book. I’m currently enjoying my first Tom Robbins book, courtesy of the Bibby’s Hoek Book Club: a group of formidable women who get together once a month to support and inspire one another (we also discuss/share books in between drinking wine and eating decadent treats!). After an hour of me time, I’m off to collect Mila from Sidwell Roman’s School of Ballet: yes, he is a charming, coloured ballet teacher! Then, the home run while trying to avoid the droë wors.

I’ve managed to slot in an hour’s worth of writing on Wednesday afternoons at a dubious coffee shop at the old-jail-turned-art-studio, where I wait for Mila while she attends art lessons. This should translate into more correspondence from me in 2011!

Thursday afternoons see another ballet lesson and some grocery shopping, and on Fridays I head straight for Ile de Pain again to collect my fresh kitke (traditional Jewish Sabbath bread). If we’re not doing a Friday night dinner with friends at home, we support the evening market at the school, which is a delightful get-together of locals, live music and food stalls. The kids run around with their friends, beg for candy floss and spend their pocket money on cheap and nasty glow-in-the-dark toys from China!

Weekends see us pottering around the farm (building chicken cages, erecting shelves, gardening, painting, various domestic chores) interspersed with family outings to the beach/forest/local tourist attractions. For the past few months we’ve been visiting our friends Danny & Stacy & kids in Plettenberg Bay regularly, where they have decided to take a year’s sabbatical from their lives in Vancouver. We wade in their heated swimming pool, visit the beach or laze around reading books while the kids have their faces firmly stuck behind Danny’s iPad or one of the many Apple computer screens while playing Club Penguin (an on-line virtual reality game). In true South African form, they were burgled last week and are now without said Apple laptop and iPad…hopefully this won’t send them packing back to the North!

Seems pretty suburban for an off-the-grid family on the farm!

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In the meantime, Kevin is off to Mozambique thid week to work his photographic magic on a new hotel development – a welcome change from the quiet life on the farm with nothing but the chewing cows for company. He has redesigned his website with some help from his “man in India” (www.digitalfactor.co.za) and is reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” while spending most days glued to his computer screen.

On the animal front, our dogs are responding well to some training advice we received from a dog psychologist (!), the neighbour’s cows are grazing happily and our new guinea pig (Mr Sox) has sided himself with Fuzzy the rabbit. We had to rescue our weakest quail (named Fernando Torres because of his running speed) from his brethren who continually peck him in a cruel “survival of the fittest” scenario. He’ll be spending the rest of his days with a colleague’s rabbits (hopefully in peace). Our chickens are growing at a rate of knots, but still no eggs….

We are expecting a string of female woofers from all over the world, with the first arriving at the end of this week. Our growing a tunnel sports a new door - thanks to our previous woofer, Idez from Belgium (a 30 year old artist and meditation enthusiast). Now that it is finally secure from the cows and hounds, we are looking forward to starting some serious growing. Whether the tunnel will hold up to being ripped apart by the beastly baboons, remains to be seen… 

Settled

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out an update from the forest and the cliché “no news is good news” certainly applies. Besides being sucked into the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy of brick-sized novels, there are a variety of reasons for the long silence. Predominantly, spring (and by now, late summer) has arrived, delighting us with an abundance of flowers, insects and butterflies. This is the first season that we are truly settled on the farm and I find myself pottering about: planting, picking, smelling, weeding, feeding animals, watching freaky spiders spin their prey into web cocoons with the children… basically enjoying life.

When we first arrived in Knysna, there was talk of a magical three-year period in which to find one’s feet. October saw the dawn of this new era and I can definitely say that there is truth to the rumour. It does feel as if we are finally settled and looking back over the past 36 months, I hardly know how we made it some days! Coming here does seem like an idealistic dream (testimony to my permanently rose-tinted outlook). We had no idea of the hardships that farm life would involve – from the baboons, lice and flea plagues to the lack of water and adjusting to solar power. Then there was the unexpected passing of my mother/friend/soulmate as well as the general existential and financial crisis experienced by pretty much everyone on the planet! But the increased appreciation for life, love, water and resources, sharing these incredible natural surroundings with our beautiful neighbours and seeing our children run free, has made all the “suffering” worthwhile.

And after 3 years, we finally got ourselves some chickens! The children and I selected 5 little one day old chicks: I chose “Penguin” a little black and white number, while Luke went for “Popcorn” and “Lovely” and Mila has the two “Golden Girls”. Having had absolutely no experience with live chickens, I was quite shocked to learn that they should be kept under lights for the first few weeks. The words: “are you out of your mind” went through my head as I listened to the purveyor describing how to position a 100 watt globe over the chicks and keep this light on 24 hours a day for two weeks. She obviously had no experience of solar power! We resorted to good old fashioned water bottles - refreshed 3 times a day - and this managed to keep our chicks alive long enough until they could be placed outside with the rabbits and quails in what is becoming a very lively little enclosure. (Luckily, we had some good rain, so constantly filling the water bottles was not a problem.) The rabbit/quail/chicken cage is of course another reason for my long silence: the kids and I find ourselves chasing chicks and stroking our rabbits rather often. The there’s the constant task of filling in the tunnels that the rabbits keep digging in order to ensure that they don’t escape – something that my guru neighbour, Mr R had warned me about…

We watched our chickens grow bigger in anticipation, anxious to discover whether they would turn out to be egg-producing hens or noisy, troublesome roosters. At one point we suspected 4 of them of being roosters and were debating the option of eating these (a strange discussion to have in a vegetarian household!). But alas, it appears by the rather amusing cock-a-doodle-ling that Popcorn is our only rooster and pretty trouble-free (for now).

Our beloved rabbit Fuzzy turned out to be a boy after all, but our first set of 7 baby rabbits all died within 2 days of being born. The first 3 gruesome little bodies were strewn around the cage with injuries presumably inflicted by the chickens, and the remaining 4 babies were discovered in a half-dug burrow - one already cold. It appeared as if Coco had abandoned them. After hot-water bottles and various tactics to try to get her to bond and feed them, we eventually took the last two survivors into the house and proceeded to feed them baby formula with a syringe. Both managed to get through the night, but neither made it past the next day. We spent a few hours demarcating the cage in order to separate the rabbits from the birds, and will report on the next litter soon.

In the meantime we’ll continue rearing the pair of baby field mice we found amongst our extra dinner plates when we tackled some boxes on Boxing Day.

Of course, there’s been the dependable presence of wwoofers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms). We were blessed with a 3 week visit by Tasuku, a mathematician from the island of Okinawa in Japan. He built a very neat growing tunnel (mathematically quite accurate!) and having worked in a sushi restaurant in California, was able to show us some nifty new tricks and recipes – tuna mayo rice balls wrapped in nori have now become a regular meal in our household. He infused our farm with Japanese grace and cleaned the kitchen immaculately.

Tasuku (whom Luke called “Hey, let’s play Lego” for about a week before he could remember his name) was followed by our first South African wwoofer (a lady name Lucianne) who spent 2 weeks wrestling with the “Kak”-kuyu grass, which is constantly invading our flower beds. We then had our second local volunteer, Alexa from Cape Town, who jumped on the trampoline with Mila and painted the newly erected patio roof beams. Yes, we finally have a roof over our patio and celebrated with a fabulous roof wetting party attended by our kind, caring (and quite eccentric) community!

I had a break from the farm when I recently visited Pretoria for my 20-year high school reunion.  I attended a rather well-respected, Afrikaans girls’ school. What a blast! Whereas the 10 year reunion still had a measure of posturing and showing off (who got married, gained/lost weight, etc.), by now we all seemed to have grown up, even sporting the odd wrinkle with pride. The “koeke” (i.e. the “good” girls) had figured out the carnal matters which led to them having children while the “terte” (the “naughty” girls) also bore children, causing them to settle down, and so we were pretty much all on the same page. (In case you were wondering, my allegiance was with the naughty ones!) After the official lunch with the girls on Friday, about 20 of us went to a “resort” in Warmbaths for the weekend, where things got loud and juvenile (especially since many of us left our husband and children at home for the weekend and had complete freedom to regress to our teenage silliness!). Plans are already underway for our 25^th – this time at a wine farm near Cape Town and the doctor among us is rumoured to have made promises of bringing the Botox along…

Kevin has been living the high life – travelling to Johannesburg to work his photographic magic on the 5 star Legacy hotel group (and being accommodated at one of their fine establishments, which of course made me green with envy!). He also had a stint in Cape Town and was awarded a Gold and Silver award in the Fuji Film photographic competition (no prize money, though). He also has a new lady in his life: a sleek 17” MacBook Pro (Apple laptop) – a truly sexy piece of equipment which has enabled us to watch movies at a much lower energy consumption and have internet access in the house…the first time in 3 years that we can surf from the comfort of our couch. Things are really looking up!

The kids are doing marvellously – Mila goes to grade 2 and is switching from recorder to guitar while continuing with her ballet lessons. Well on her way to becoming the next Hannah Montana (she even received a blonde wig from Santa)! Luke is ever the Lego builder and enjoys kicking the soccer ball, imitating pirates and Michael Jackson and catching frogs and fish in the dam with his new fishing rod.

A few months ago, our cleaning angel, Sophie, resigned from our domestic chores in favour of her Thesen Island employer. I have since spent many hours in cleaning meditation – getting closer to enlightenment with each wipe, scrub and sweep of the mud and dirt left behind by the actions of my beloved family. I have discovered that there is something rather fundamental and cathartic in cleaning up. It sets a certain pace to the daily activities and completes the cycles of creation - like teaching the children to pack one game away before starting another one. However, for fear of ultimate enlightenment and spontaneous combustion, I have relinquished my domestic stronghold and agreed to employ a new domestic helper (if only for one day per week)!

We have been immensely blessed with an abundance of rain over the past few months – our tanks (capacity: 26,000 litres) are full, our dams are swimmable and we have more water than we’ve had in three years. Flushing the toilet and filling the hot water bottles for the baby animals have not presented any problems. Now the new bath in storage is really starting to beckon for a bathroom!

We’ve had a fabulous festive season, hosting dear friends (Brett, Sue & co) in our refurbished container/wwoofing room: by now quite a civilised guestroom. The daily mud baths and dam swimming was quite a change for them from their London existence and Brett applied full-blown urban warfare techniques when a fly plague presented itself. With sticky fly catching strips dangling from every conceivable place and armed with fly swatters, we sipped our sundowners, discussed New Year’s resolutions while gazing out over the forest, listening to the call of the fish eagle.

Speaking of which, the large wooden eagle carving (which we moved with from Johannesburg) was positioned at the edge of the dam, but got knocked over continuously by the grazing cows as they try to scratch their ears against it. After three attempts at stabilising it, Kevin finally dug a huge whole and poured 4 bags of ready mix into it, adding some solid steel bars for good measure, and proclaimed: “the eagle has landed”. 

Almost Spring

Greetings from the forest where the sun is rising earlier to greet us in the mornings and the flowers are delighting us in their abundance.

I am happy to report that we are all in good health and spirits (not counting the occasional midlife crisis!). We are without a wwoofer for the first time since the start of the World Cup though, so we are once again making intimate acquaintance with the dirty dishes!

The reign of Rob (our American volunteer from Wyoming) ended with half a patio – which was completed by the next American (Eric from Illinois via Utah). Now we can have sundowners on the “stoep” like true South Africans! (Although my alcohol consumption is mostly reserved for book club.)

Both blokes were a real gift from the Universe (or as I like to believe: angels sent to us by my mother). They were a great hit with the kids: playing Monopoly, Clue & Lego like experts, while building/digging/planting/fixing during the day and tending to those all important dishes in the evening. Bless them both!

Our international experience did not end there: Kevin spent a week in London for his niece’s wedding (his sister Debbie’s daughter, Talya). It sounded like a fairy tale affair… he also managed to shoot some fantastic cityscapes.

He returned in time for Mila’s 7^th birthday party: a “High School Musical” disco/sleepover party, complete with mirror ball and flashing lights (the office was converted into a dance hall). We had pitched a tent for the sleepover but the girls were too scared to sleep there and so we ended up camping in the tent for a few days as a family! Since moving to the farm and living the camping dream on a full time basis, we haven’t done much tent dwelling, so it was a great mini-holiday long weekend.

The long-weekend culminated in the much anticipated Women’s Day spa day at Pezula! Three wonderful friends and I spent the entire day being pampered, dipping in the heated indoor pool, lazing in the sauna, perspiring in the steam room and imagining that we’re the idle rich while sipping cappuccino’s. The decision was taken to make this an annual event and saving has already commenced…

Kevin’s birthday on the 12^th was a quite sushi affair at home.

On a much sadder note, our dear friend and Kevin’s long-time biking partner, Louis Rothschild died in his home the following week – another crime statistic. He joins the growing list of loved ones who have passed on since we leftJohannesburg three short years ago: David Braun, Ananda, Melt vd Spuy & Trudy vd Spuy. We feel very blessed to have shared his birthday with him this year: he visited us on the farm with Aviva (the love of his life) and Levy (his son who turned 1 shortly before his passing). It was truly special to share in his happiness and new family and our thoughts and prayers are with them constantly.

Our 9 quails are surviving (although we’re still waiting for eggs) and they have been joined by our 2 baby rabbits (Coco and Fuzzy) who are just the most delightful little creatures. Although the quail/rabbit cage is now dog proof (thanks towwoofer Rob), they spend much of their time in Mila’s underwear drawer where they get fed carrots. No-one is more in love with them than me, though – having been a big rabbit lover since I first encountered them many moons ago!

Our neighbour discovered a dead puff adder outside our farm - road kill left behind by unknown speeding tourists in shining cars. With an audience of neighbourhood kids (and a few trepid adults, including myself) Kevin expertly dissected and skinned it, then proceeded to photograph it (what else!), with some interesting results. The skin has not yet found a final resting place, so I am regularly freaked out when I stumble upon it unexpectedly.

On the garden front I am excited to report that I no longer have to buy packaged lettuce at the Pick ‘n Pay! We’re able to eat garden greens and fresh sprouts every day! We also enjoyed our first cauliflower and multiple beetroots – I was amazed to discover how much stronger the taste of home grown veggies are. Mushroom (the dog) is doing a fine job of keeping the baboons at bay, although the cows have been eating my primulas….

We’re also enjoying the additional electricity from the extra solar panels. For the first time in three years, we can pretty much watch DVDs whenever we want and Mila can even play computer games (Super Mario brothers, Pacman and Asteroids), although getting her off is rather challenging! I do sometimes miss the “no sun, no TV” excuse, but thanks to the World Cup playing soccer with their dad is now also a favoured option.

Luke (4 ½) is unbelievable cute and at that age where we just want to freeze him before he turns into a fully fledged boy. Lego is his first love, although he also thinks that anything to do with the Army is super cool (much to our dismay, of course). He loves catching tadpoles and fish in the dam and can spend hours hitting a golf ball around the farm with his golf club (a present from his golf pro-oupa Sybie). He has quite a mean swing and I often find him aiming at the cars and the buildings!

Mila’s love for ballet is starting to wane as she is discovering the internet, but horse riding and shopping are still high on the agenda, together with a certain boy (who I have been sworn to secrecy about). She has hit that unavoidable age where homework finds a place in the daily routine and I have also had to come to terms with the fact that I have to be involved in it once again. She’s also quite an avid soccer player, playing in her first official soccer match against another school this week and she now sports her own email address: milafactor@gmail.com

Speaking of school, I am off to my 20 year matric reunion in Pretoria next month! How’s that for making one feel old….

Check out the latest pictures at www.digitalfactor.co.za/august2010

Cheers

Tanya

PS: This entry will soon be found on the blog site, together with all previous emails, photo’s, videos, etc:

www.tanyafactor.blogspot.com

Abundance!

We celebrate our abundance: with over 100mm of rain in the past few weeks, our new dam is the fullest it’s ever been. At 16,000 litres, we have more fresh water than we’ve ever had since moving to Knysna (almost 3 years ago) and with 14 solar panels we also have more domestic electricity since leaving the buzzing city life behind. So we were able to watch all Bafana’s games (except the disgraceful one when our DSTV gratefully did not want to work) and we were able to shower afterwards!

This abundance did not come without the necessary animal sacrifice however: I found our hounds chewing on a headless animal which I at first thought was a lamb, but which we now believe to be a newborn/miscarried calf. The fact that it had no head has led us to assume that it had initially been caught by a leopard (or maybe used for muti?)…life in wildest Africa…


Father’s day saw Kevin taking the kids on canoe rides on the dam and we collected our latest farm volunteer, Rob (from the US) the following day. A belated and ongoing father’s day present: someone to wash dishes, deal with compost, dig trenches, cut trees, build Lego, etc. Every man needs a wife and a “wwoofer”!

I’ve been collecting refuse bags of shredded paper from the office which we plan to use for isolation in the walls of our (still to be constructed) “wwoofing” bedroom. One of my colleagues assumed that it was for a dog house - not knowing that WWOOF is: Willing Workers on Organic Farms!

On the garden front – we have had some devastation caused by the cows (aptly named Koeitjie no 1 and Koetjie no 2) who managed to break in through the collapsing fence. Not much remains of our vegetables (no tomatoes, no peppers, no spinach, etc.) and many of our flowering plants have also been chowed….luckily Rob jumped in and secured the area.

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I also celebrate the completion of a new slip cover for our much-loved couch. This may not sound like much, but the cover was constructed from the office curtains which at first became dribbled in varnish by an incompetent painter – at which time I had a complete nervous breakdown and wept like a baby (it was shortly after my mother died). Then, the day after moving into our new house, a baboon got into the office and defecated all over the curtains (floors, walls, desks, etc.). We had no water (due to the drought), no bath (we only have a shower) and the laundromat wanted to charge us R600 to wash them – so they were shoved into the container for 6 months, until they were finally transformed.

Weekend on the Farm

The weekend started on a particularly exciting note: a “Knit-a-Thon” at the kids’ school! What a delight to knit with a crowd of about 50 moms (and one dad) while the school kids entertained us with music and dancing – all in aid of a Rotary project to make blankets for the needy. A signal that the hand crafts of the past are making a comeback? I hope so…

We also welcomed the arrival of our first American “WWOOFER” on Friday: Erin is a 32 year old writer from San Francisco who has spent the last 14 months travelling through Africa while writing a selection of short stories – we eagerly await reading about ourselves in the Farm 119 chapter! So far she has been painting window frames, washing dishes (yeah!) and playing Snakes & Ladders with the kids. It promises to be another wonderful encounter with one of our world wide community of like-minded souls.

The weekend weather was wonderful (albeit rain-less) and felt more like early summer than early winter. We attended back-to-back children’s parties on Saturday and the kids found vuvuzela’s as part of their treasure hunt at the second party – needless to say the neighbour has become a pretty noisy place (but at least we now have something yellow for the soccer world cup!)

Saturday afternoon saw Kevin riding his bicycle around the neighbourhood in an effort to find a rugby-watching-party: apparently there were 2 exciting games taking place…but to no avail. (Quite a sad sight!) I believe we won the first game as there was the distant sound of jubilation from the nearby coloured township, but of the second game we have yet to learn the score. (I have since heard that we won both…) Not that Kevin’s that much of a rugby fan – maybe he was just trying to run away from the vuvuzela’s!

On Sunday we had a delightful tea party with family and discovered guavas on our trees! The kids even went out in the dark with torches to go and pick guavas for their dinner (and of course Mila had to be rescued from the tree when she got stuck). We can be sure that the luscious fruit will attract our friends the baboons…

Sunset

A

Sunset at Farm 119...

Back Home

It’s been more than three weeks since our return from Jo’burg and only now do I find the time to report back

amidst the hurly burly pace of life on the farm! The big city experience was wonderfully exciting, filled with friends & family reunions, shopping,

3D movies, Playstation, electricity and hot baths – everything we had hoped for and more (and we didn’t have to wash dishes for 10 full days).

I was rather impressed by the pace of development and multitude of new shopping centres mushrooming all over Gauteng, although the hours spent in traffic reminded me of the reasons for seeking greener pastures… the billboards & media screaming for attention, making it difficult to complete a thought!

Urban discussions revolved around politics, traffic, municipal inefficiencies and - of course - the soccer world cup. An interesting change from the crime stories of the past and very different from our usual neighbourly discussions about baboons, vegetables and rain (or lack thereof).

In the rush before leaving for Jo’burg, I gave Kevin one of our usual #3 haircuts, but forgot to replace the comb on the shaver before tackling my own head…with disastrous results! I ended up with a shaven avenue along my head which needed 2 more #1 cuts over a period of a week in order to return to a homogenous state. Needless to say, I was having the aforementioned urban discussions wearing a variety of hats. The children initially had a lot of sympathy for my plight, but later found it amusing to pull my hat off in mid-sentence, point and laugh…oh, what joy to be the source of a child’s laughter!

***

Coming back to the forest feels more like returning home every time.

This time we returned to (a) winter, (b) a new maid and (c) a strapping young German “wwoofer”, Finn.

(a) My most beloved Morso fireplace is coming into its own – we’re even using it to boil water and cook food! It truly has been one of the best investments we’ve made and promises to keep us cosy over the next few months.

(

(b) It’s been quite a sigh of relief to welcome our new angel of cleaning (Sophie) once a week. Although Kevin & the wwoofers have been a great help with the housework, it’s amazing to have the whole house clean at once! We have experienced fortunes of personal growth in the areas of co-operation, bribery, meditative dishwashing, acceptance and surrender during this period of domestic independence, and I now have the most sincere appreciation for Sophie’s skills!

(c) Finn spent his 2 weeks digging, installing water tanks, landscaping, washing dishes, building Lego with Luke and playing Monopoly with Mila. He celebrated his 21^st birthday with us but not before we “corrupted” him with the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Knysna Gay Parade (where his blonde hair & blue eyes managed to get quite a few “looks”…). Lucky for him, we didn’t all go in drag again this year! Our local community of fringe dwellers all pulled together to throw him a 21^st birthday bash – I hadn’t been to one of those in years, and felt positively middle aged! I really appreciate the incredible sense of community out here in our epicentre of the new world.

On the home front I am still happily fixed in a D-I-Y dream (painting, mosaicing, decorating, gardening, planning never-ending projects). Kevin is finding the balance between solitude on the farm and frequent trips to the big cities and Mila and Luke are happily settled at school. They have recently discovered the internet and are currently in the throws of a Michael Jackson craze (much to their mother’s delight!). I am ashamed to admit that none of us own Bafana Bafana shirts and I can’t be sure whether Luke even knows the difference between soccer and rugby!

And on the garden front, we have a few peppers which are doing wonderfully and we’ve had our first crop of about 6 cherry tomatoes (after 2 years of trying). The butternut didn’t really go anywhere (the babies having been ravaged by all sorts of unseen beasts and insects) but the kids are getting much delight from the sweet Cape Honeysuckle. I’m also very excited about a new little landscaped garden outside the office – a welcome alternative to the sheets of cardboard which were spread all over the grass in a lazy eco-effort to kill off the grass and prepare the area for planting. The wildness of the farm is slowly making way for some semblance of civilised cultivation (whatever that might mean!).

I remember having a picnic on the farm last year for Mother’s Day and having to wash the dishes in a plastic tub with no hot water and no sanitation nearby. This year we have a cosy little home with hot running water and flushing toilet – a definite step in the right direction!

We have the French and Danish teams making their way to our little town in the next few weeks where they will be staying (and hopefully spending their Euros), so World Cup fever is certainly in the air….better get that DSTV hooked up and install a few more solar panels…

More images @

www.digitalfactor.co.za/farm119may