Frontier Farm Excursion

So I’m a little behind in updating, but I’ve had a few busy weekends. The week right after I got back from “Holiday” we had a senior seminar paper due, so I had a lot of work to do. Then that night we went to a play called Ours was the New Dawn. I originally saw this play back at CSB/SJU right before I was accepted to the South Africa program. I didn’t actually like the play that much, mostly I think because I didn’t understand anything that was going on. This time after seeing it I thought it was fantastic! Knowing the culture, history, and country of South Africa I really understood it and loved it! We got to sit and talk for a while afterwards with the two actors in the play and it was a lot of fun.

The next morning (Friday the 17th) we headed out on our Frontier Excursion. I honestly have no idea where in the country we went except that it was near the area of Grahamstown and about a 2 ½ hour drive. We arrived on Winnie’s farm at about 2 that afternoon. Winnie is this crazy, loud Afrikans farmer’s wife and we love her to death. She acted just like she was one of our own mothers. We met her husband, whose name escapes me, and then were immediately fed lunch. Yum yum. They had tea, which is my new favorite drink, sandwiches, and dessert. Dessert was probably my favorite part. They had brownies with frosting, something I haven’t had in three months! They also had what us Minnesotans would call bars, haha, and pancakes (they called them flapjacks) with jam and whipped cream on them. Oh, it was fabulous. Then we were kind of let free to roam the farm. Oh, I almost forgot, we also met Charlie Brown, her little schnauzer puppy dog who was just adorable. Fenced in right outside their door were three kudos, two females and a huge male with horns. We were able to just go up to the fence and pet them. Then they had ducks, geese, chickens, and duikers (sp?). We also rode their horses, which were a little skittish and someone from our group ended up falling off of one (don’t worry he was okay). We went down to the fields to see their other deer and that afternoon we also had a cow milking demonstration. I kind of got to milk a cow, although it was only one squirt and to cross it off my life goal list I do feel like I need to fill like a cup. We did get to squirt the milk into our mouths though- straight from the udder and it tasted like (surprise, surprise) warm milk. That night we chilled out in the backyard in the warm weather and had some wine and appetizers while our braai was cooking. It was like a warm summer night on family vacation back in MN. Dinner was delicious as always. The braai food was kinda of like a turkey stew and then we had pumpkin bread, garlic bread, roasted potatoes, and a sort of vegetable salad. I was so stuffed. Half of our group then headed to Francois and Aurelia’s farm where we would sleep for the night. The other farm had a very nice house!! We fit 13 of us in the master bedroom and the boys slept in the pool house. They had very ornate decorations, a pool, and a tennis court. Oh yes, we were also amazed by the toilet which was entirely made of stone. We even found a scale in the bathroom! We hadn’t weighed ourselves in months. Unfortunately it was in Kg, but thankfully due to my nutrition education, I remember how to convert it to pounds. I am happy to say I’ve pretty much maintained my weight down here, although I have no idea how that happened.

Saturday the 18th we started by driving over to Winnie’s farm for breakfast. We had toasted sandwiches with bacon and egg or tomato and cheese, some sausages, and tea. It was so nice to have home cooked meals. Then all of us hopped in the back of three bakkies (trucks) and head out on the road. It was so fun to ride in the back of the bakkies. The area we were in is all grassy mountains and we drove for a while until we stopped to hike a bit. When we stopped we hiked on the top of a “mountain” to look at the top view of a waterfall we would hike to when we went down, then we hopped back in the bakkie and drove down to that path. When we got to the waterfall (or rather dried up waterfall) we had to swim back to where it carved out the rock. A few of us daring individuals jumped into the freezing pool water and kicked along with a few tubes. The water was freezing! It was like Lake Superior in South Africa. I guess the water will be that cold when it only gets sun a few hours a day. We made it back and climbed on the rocks back there. Laura scrapped her knee at one point in the adventure and decided to write her name on the rock in the blood flowing out of her scrap. Gross, Laura! We finished up our hike and then headed back to Francois and Aurelia’s farm. Our host is big on hunting, so we got to see all the stuffed animals he killed. We actually saw a stuffed zebra and a giraffe, in addition to other crazy cool animals. Apparently, you just have to get a permit to shoot a giraffe here and there’s no limit to how many you can shoot in your lifetime. Crazy!!! He also showed us all of his guns. He reloads them himself and makes all of the cartridges (I’m sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology). I even held the gun that he shot the giraffe with. That must be one powerful gun! He had all kinds of pictures with him and his son, Dawie, and the animals they’ve killed on the wall. Not long after that we hopped into the back of the bakkie and went down the road to his sheep-shearing place. Francois and Aurelia have a sheep and cattle farm. They have about 3,500 sheep, which they use for wool and mohair. Wool is the largest source of income on their farm, then usually the beef, then the mohair. They can tell if mohair will have good year by simply looking at the fashions popular that year in a Paris magazine, ha J. For the first time in my life I got to see a sheep be sheared and that was a bit of a scary experience, not that it hurt the sheep or anything, I was just afraid he would. The worker would have the sheep kind of sitting in an upright position on it’s butt and it would just cut the wool off with a pair of huge scissors. At times we weren’t even able to see the shears underneath the thick wool and we have no idea how the worker was able to see what he was doing. I’m guessing lots of practice enables them to fully shear the sheep without cutting its skin. They shear them in such a way that all of the wool stays together in one piece and then they lay that whole piece down covering a whole table and divided out the good and bad parts. Wool that is usually a couple inches long is of the highest grade, so then they divided it up into grades and what part of the body the wool came from. Usually the sheep all get sheared in September. It takes around 8-9 months for them to grow wool long enough to cut it. They usually only get sheared once a year where as the mohair sheep get sheared about twice a year. Other than that the farm inoculates the sheep once a year and then he only sees them about one a week for the rest of the year. Amazingly he only has nine farm hands that help him out on his farm. I guess he hires an extra crew from Lesotho for the shearing though. As common in South Africa, all of the hands on the farm are black. These two farming families where we stayed though have a bit more of a worldly education and do not hold any racist attitudes towards the black people, like many Afrikaners that we run into do. The land that they live on is also not in question either. Often the land here had been taken away from black tribes either in 1918, when the second wave of Europeans settled here or under the Apartheid. The two farms that these families live on have been in there families for ages. The land wasn't a general area that tribes settled on either. That afternoon, we got to hang out at the farm, play tennis, or swim in their pool. We got a really good game of ultimate Frisbee going too with the Wildebeest contesting the springbucks. That night for dinner we had another braai. This one though they grilled all thirty of us steak! It was so good. We also have homemade bread, chili sauce pasta salad, cheesy potatoes, and wine. After dinner we went out again in the back of the bakkies for a night game drive. We had Dawie the son leading us in the first bakkie with a spotlight. It was so fun to drive around at night in the cool air underneath the clear sky. The stars here are so gorgeous and you can see every single one, as there are no city lights. We can’t find any constellations we know though over in this hemisphere. We saw a porky pine, kudus, a jackal and some cows J. When we got home I headed off to bed.

Sunday the 19th we woke up and had breakfast of toasted sandwiches and tea again and departed not long after for the vista. Apparently a vista is the view from the top of the mountain. The only vistas I have ever heard of is the tour boat fleet in Duluth. The view was amazing and we got a lot of fun pictures up there. We were able to see the hilly/mountainous area all around us. I’m really going to miss the landscape here. About 11:30 we headed home for P.E. The car ride was fine, but something I could do without after al the driving we’ve done lately.