Our New Home

Life on the farm is not at all what we expected. Life tends to do that sometimes. The website helpexhange advertised free food and accommodation in exchange for farm work on various organic farms. I imagined days of getting up at sparrow fart to pack fruit, even to help pick, probably even clean the ablutions at the campsite and stroll around with a basket under my arm collecting eggs from under hedges. I had visions of Theo working on his unique physique as he dug the odd trench and cut his way through hiking trails, or do farmy type of stuff involving tractors and bales of hay.

A huge fire swept through the mountains 2 months ago and burnt down most of the farm. The owners have suffered a huge loss, loosing every single orange tree and 99% of their mangos. The land is dotted with coal black tree skeletons and the exposed mountainsides are coated in a layer of fine ash. Very little life has survived. The campsite and houses used to be a sideline but is now their only income and luckily escaped the fire.

The only hard work we have to do is lift the binocs as we study the birds in the trees. Seriously, all they want us to do here is keep an eye on the campsite. They have workers who collect the garbage, clean the ablutions, the couple of hired out caravans at the campsite and the few holiday houses on the farm. There’s no free food (luckily Theo came fully stocked just in case), but free accommodation in exchange to move the sprinklers and chase away unwelcome animals (baboons and dogs) is a pretty fair exchange I’d say.

I won’t be getting thinner though. Not at the rate Theo is cooking but he’s enjoying himself. For lunch he made a seed potbread and for supper he is going to make kebabs with chicken and the field mushrooms he picked this morning when he walked around moving the sprinklers. Ho hum, life’s a bitch.

We aren’t just vegetating though. Most days we either walk around the farm exploring, doing the easy hikes, studying our field guide books and of course there’s the sex. Were still getting it out of our systems (5 months at my mom’s house followed by nature all around us…do the maths).

Right now I’m sitting at the river side which runs the length of the campsite. What a fantastic view. We mostly have the whole place for ourselves except weekends when a few people arrive. Everything is lush and green and I just saw a mongoose dash off. Yesterday on our hike we spotted a beautiful Cape Eagle Owl which is supposed to be rare. (our Sasol bird book has come in very handy). I lost the staring competition while Theo examined the little bones in its poop. He does that a lot – poke at old poop. The campsite is home to loads of garden birds who visit us daily. We’ve learnt to identify Cape Robins, Boubou Shrikes, Cape White-eyes, Thrushes, Masked Weavers, Cape Bulbuls, Sparrows, Honeysuckers and Cape Wagtails. I’m surprised to see they travel in pairs. I kinda thought birds just fly around looking for food doing their own thing till it’s time to mate and then bugger off to be on their own again. (Except Swans who stick together for life like an old married couple.) The male birds of some species have spectacular colours whereas the females are often dull brown jobbies - opposite to humans. When another bird arrives on the scene they all screech and put up a huge fuss very much like people. I still don’t know which cheep belongs to which bird though.

Apparently there are Leopards in the mountains and we’ve been checking out spoor and poo. We haven’t been able to identify spoor yet so we are probably examining dog tracks and dassie pellets. We’re camped 20 metres from the loos and a few nights ago Theo came rushing back making funny noises while he grabbed his boots and a torch. There were 2 scorpions in the loo and a huge toad. We’d left the light on and all the goggas had made a bee line there, followed by the next food chain group. Now we leave the light off, unless in use. The moths around here are huge and when they fly into the window at night it sounds like someone banging against the bus.

We are 25 km from town – by gravel - so I expect we won’t be going in unnecessarily since we are paying our own way here – so its just us and the birds and the bees