Projects Initiation and Mobilization

Since we decided to stay on a farm for a year, my mom has been generating ideas like some kind of creative rollercoaster; all of us has been engaged in the planning of having numerous animals, and, armed with our very formal Project Management Plans, we have been working at it steadily (thanks again to mom) during January. 

Plans and drawings.... 

We’re planning to have chickens (my project), piglets (Theuns’), and maybe even a horse or two (for Maarten, our family’s horse lover); things have made good progress so far.

I’m going to have 10 chickens in total (in their coop a short distance away from the house) and supply eggs to the farm’s grocery shop (for their own workers) and our household. Theuns and Maarten are going to handle batches of piglets, two at a time, one month apart (we buy them at six weeks old, and sell them as pork when they are about 4-5 months old).

One Saturday morning we got some of the farm workers to help put up a fence for Theuns’ piglets. We already have some cement pigsties a short distance from the house, but wanted to make a camp for them too. Charles (the supervisor) and company quickly wrote off our previous attempts at planting poles and what not (it was very funny actually; he would shake the pole we’d planted, pull it out of the ground, and remark how they’ll start with planting poles). They put up an elephant proof fence in 2 hours (something that would have taken us much longer), fixing my chicken coop’s one side as well.

 Speculating.

Raising the fence.

The jaw smasher - a most useful and dangerous tool for putting up fences. 

Standing and (hopefully) piglet proof!

The Start of Everything

For the past week, it’s been very busy here on the farm; a lot of things began (including the public schools) which kick-started everything. We’re planning to have chickens, piglets, and maybe even a horse or two; the projects have made good progress so far and I’ll post about it next week.

Last Sunday we also had a first short church service in the tiny church building on the farm (next to the sick sheep). The farmer family and some of the workers also attended. We listened to a tape for 30min, discussed it and prayed; we hope to keep on doing it for the rest of the year as well.

Our school has been ongoing from the first week of January, but the public schools only started this Wednesday. As a result, Voortrekkers also started in George, and we had our weekly George outing on Thursday; it was good fun as the first day of Voortrekkers is always a Fruit Feast; more accurately a Watermelon War where everyone ends up very sticky and very wet. All of us look forward to the camps this year.

The boys and me also began some ‘paid jobs’ this week for which we volunteered; they babysit JanDiesel (our hosts’ 3-year old and very cute lively boy) two times a week, and I clean their house once a week. It’s a good way of earning some pocket money.

JanDiesel with our chickens' first egg which he found.

 

We had quite a lot of fun on Tuesday when our school morning was interrupted by a neighbours’ son who came for a visit on his horse; pretty soon other children had gathered and everyone went for an unexpected ‘swim party’ at the dam; something we usually did daily in the afternoons because of the extreme heat the Cape experiences during January and February (it’s above 30 degrees Celsius daily; in the middle of the day it’s 40 degrees Celsius).

  Very refreshing...

 

When we got back and tried to put the horse’s bridle on, she decided she’d had enough and galloped off! We jumped in the car and sped after her, only to catch her 2km later; it was very funny to see how she had her own personality and definitely got annoyed with her owner.

 Fun riding!