The opinionator

Today I read an article that was published in the NY Times yesterday by presumably a blogger calling himself opinionator (I'm technologically a bit challenged, the information age proves too much for me to completely wrap my head around but I think that's how it is...)

Anyhow, the header is 'The busy trap' and boy did he get it right, in my opinion.   People have become too busy to live.   Even me, but when I compare myself/ourselves to the city folk who visit us, we seem positively sedentary!   Opinionator made the remark that the 'work' that people find so incredibly compelling to the extent that it governs their every minute of every day where they have to make a long-term appointment before they can sit down with friends for coffee, is something 'they' seem to forget, was invented by God as punishment.

I would like to share some of what I posted in response:

I read your article 'The busy trap'

Firstly I loved it and couldn't agree more. However, God didn't invent work as a means of punishment. I also always believed it to be so, until I moved out of the city (Johannesburg RSA) to a farm 400km away. I don't have lots of money, but I have animals, I have friends, (lots who flee the city weekends to come visit), we ARE busy, but here's the crunch: we always have time, because the time is our own.

Back to God and the work issue. We read that He planted a garden east in Eden, and commissioned man to work in it. Then later He also says to man, 'everything that is in the garden I give you to eat, the seeds and the fruit and the herbs thereof.... will be for you and for the animals for food... " I have had many epiphanies linked to these simple statements.  

   
- He planted a garden, He did not plow, fertilise, rip up and rip out to plant hectares of one thing. It was a whole, containing fruit, seed, and green things for man to eat.

   
- He put man to work in it, before the fall. So working in the garden was a blessing, not a curse.   Garden as in good to eat.  Something of everything.   Edible landscaping as opposed to big agricultre.

   
- He meant for man and animals to eat from the garden... not each other!   Ok I haven't become a vegetarian as a result of this, because that would also be a skewed representation of a lot of other information contained in the Scriptures...  

 

But back to me and my little farm.

I grow vegetables organically, and all together in one large space.

I pasture animals without additional feed and hormones. Yes even my pigs are green pastured.

I supply more than 30 families and one very large rehab centre and a restaurant with eggs, fruit and veg in season. The pastured animals is a new project, and some customers are anxiously awaiting the day they can order meat too.

Bottom line: The farm needs my and FJ's presence 24/7. I am busy. But I am never too busy to see friends, have an evening out, sit down for coffee with my grown kids who also live on the farm with their spouses, take my oldest granddaughter of 5 to the Kruger National park or somewhere else that's nice for a few hours or share hand feeding a new piglet with a two-year old or baby-sit the babies of which there are two.   I am in Eden.

Work was not invented to punish us. Working on a cursed earth is the curse.   But work itself is still a blessing. If it is a curse it is because we have made it so, each one individually in his or her life.

 

Enjoy your life. Every day is worth living, if you don't allow it to pass in a blur of 'busyness'.

Some people get this.   Some people don't.   Won't ever.   Some wish they could.

The intrepid hunter

His first ever with a rifle.   First try, first morning, first shot, done and dusted.   Well done FJ!


Will we be able to wipe that smile off again ever?

FJ prefers to hunt with a bow, which he doesn't have the time or money to pursue often either, but he went along on this invitation without his bow because he fell recently and cracked the head of the radial in his elbow.   So no pulling of bows for a while!   The organiser kindly offered him the use of his rifle.

Happiness is...

                               ... and biltong!

Chocolat

is the blog name I have chosen for my daughter who is a budding chocolatier.   I suspect the flame of this particular passion was lit when she watched the movie "Chocolat" a few times over when she was a teenager.

She has great plans for her truly South African home-bred chocolate factory.

Piglet's progress

I suppose the few sleepless nights I had feeding the little runt every two hours was worth it.   The first night he squealed and butted with the teat, struggling to suckle.   Real determination on both our parts saw him through.   Eventually he was just waking up every two hours with a horrendous squeal, would suckle very briefly and fall asleep again.   I concluded that he was simply too small to expect more than a few draughts at a time of him so it didn't take long but that does not detract from the fact that at 60-something I was feeding a baby every two hours!

Yesterday at dawn I took him to be with his family and after a few moments of hesitation he snuggled in with his siblings.   I left him there the whole day and in the evening took the milk to the sty to give him an extra feed just in case he needed it.   When I picked him up he gave a little squeal which earned me a couple of shoves and a head-butt from Mom.   He drank well and because it was such an unusually warm evening I decided to leave him there for the night.   (I slept for nine hours!)

This morning, milk bottle in hand, I hurried to see how he was.   When I picked him up his tummy felt  round and full but I still offered him the bottle.   He took one quick complimentary swig and then stuck his nose into the crook of my arm.

"You're ok" I thought and tucked him back among the siblings.   He's still easy to spot, the little Tyke.

I like happy endings.

FJ

is my son Farmer Joe.  




Having grown up in Johannesburg he was and still is also MM (Metro Man).   I remember the gobsmacked look he and Chocolat carried around for days when I announced we were moving to a farm 400km away from their friends, their activities, their friends, their shops, their friends, their comforts....

I remember the heavy-heartedness with which Chocolat said, after a few days when the reality of my decision had really sunk in, "Mom you know people our age move away from places like Barberton, they do not move to a place like Barberton hey?    I was undeterred.   We threw her a lovely 21st which was also a 'fare thee well' party.   Or so we thought.   The friends followed us.   Visited and kept on visiting for the decade that has passed since then.   Some brought other new friends and one brought her fiance and got married here in our garden and then promptly they also moved here.   The kids have found spouses in spite of being relegated to the country, and so have their city friends who now come to visit as couples and with babies.   We have a clutch of our own, FJ and Chocolat have managed to produce four precious daughters ... it must be the water...

Back to FJ.   His transformation has been complete, except that he still cares for his skin and remains an under-cover MM.   He loves the solitude of driving the tractor or doing loader work, the noise of it drowning out even the possibility of us calling him on the phone or radio.   There is a pair of fork-tailed drongos that follow him around to see what they can glean in the way of insects his activities flush out for them.    They have perches in the garden from where they hunt on the lawn, but they know the sound of the vehicles starting up and then you see them perk up and twitter around to see which direction he will take and then off they go.  

I took a ride on the loader with him once and caught him out having a conversation with them, telling them not to get so close or where to go, or to be patient he was going to help them just now ... When I asked him if he was seriously talking to the birds he said an emphatic, frowning, Ja! as if he didn't get that I was asking.

Should I be concerned (?)   :)


 

Perhaps it is inevitable that from a litter of eight piglets one would be a runt.

When I first saw the piglets on Saturday I thought one was marginally smaller than the rest and by Sunday afternoon the difference was more pronounced.

Here's how history repeats itself.   When Chocolat was little we lived on a plot with a nursery in Midrand.   One particularly frosty June morning one of my salesmen stepped into the office after having been away to their family farm in Haenertsburg for the weekend.    Noticing a bulge under his jacket I opened my mouth to protest but he raised one hand in defence and with the other he drew out a little pink bundle of indignation.   I did not expect it to be a pig, no.

He had picked it up for dead, caked in icy mud.   He had washed it a few times, apparently, and fed it every hour the whole weekend long.   The piglet was snowy white with pink skin shining through.   And angry at life wow!   I wasn't having this.   Folding my arms I demanded to know who was going to look after the pig while he was outside in the cold working.   You had to know this youngster.   He put on his most imploring face and stepped closer, opening his jacket so that I could peek at the silenced tyke.   As long as that pig was tucked into a jacket against someone's chest, facing into the arm which you had to bring in close, he was silent.   And silence is what you wanted once you heard what he was capable of.

                "I'm not keeping him inside my jacket the whole day long" I said.  



So I unzipped my jacket, clutched him to my chest and worked the computer keys with my right hand for most of the next two weeks.

Chocolat was home sick that day so I made a number of excursions to the house to check on her, and around lunchtime trying to coax her to eat something, she said all she wanted was the pig.   Desperate for her to feel better I fetched the pig and tucked it in with her.   She cradled him in her left arm and he lay on his side, just the head sticking out next to hers on the pillow.   They slept for hours and when they awoke her fever was broken and he was tame.   Who'd have thought?

The pig grew strong and lively.   Did I mention naughty?   When my lunchtime salad was brought to me from the house you could hear his squeals of delight from a mile away.   He would bound into the office as if that whole dish had been set up just for him.   We taught him not to squeal inside the office, and not to jump and work himself into a frenzy over the food.   He had to sit, which he did, flat on his funny little flat bum, hind legs sticking out in a perfect V and front legs locked straight into position between the hind legs on the floor.   His head would be tilted in a straight line up to the table, which must have looked like Table Mountain to him.   It was a perfect Pilates stance.   From there he would give little grunts every now and then just in case you forgot about him.

I was always fearful that my dogs would someday get him.   I had a formidable Dobermann and an equally formidable Weimeraner with an unusually deep wide chest and heavy build.   They often lay at the gate to the house, observing jealously his antics on our side of the fence.   One day someone left the gate ajar and too late I saw piglet strutting towards the Dobermann with stiff little legs.   The dogs knew not to come through the gate even if it was open but piglet didn't know he wasn't allowed inside the yard.   That was their turf.   The Dobermann lay with acute attention, like a Trafalgar Square lion, just waiting for piglet to cross the line, which he did before I could get there.   She was jet black and beautiful, in the prime of her life and she had been jealous of piglet for a long time.   The Weimeraner lay about a meter further, also on high alert watching the scene unfold.   Sensing her threatening vibe Pig jumped the last few inches on stiff legs and nipped the Dobermann on the nose.   The dog was totally caught off guard.   She scrambled backwards and sideways at the same time, stumbling over the Weimeraner who was equally anxious to get away from the pint-sized threat, and that was that.   A truce was reached and they all became friends.

That was thirty years ago.   We now live in a different place.   My daughter Chocolat has a daughter.   Three, in fact.   The pig is black, not white.   But the love is the same...   History repeats itself.

Oink power!

We did our best to provide Pickles with a good bachelor pad when Porky farrowed.   The building materials are the same as for the family home and we kept to the style, it is just smaller.   After all it only has to house 1 pig...

Pickles.   

When we put him to bed last night with a snack of bread shortbread biscuits, he complained, that's true.    But the sun was setting and it was thick with lovely grass so I was sure he was going to settle down soon enough.

 This was what met my gaze early this morning -

Who'd have thunk?

This gives new meaning to 'flipping the house' I'd say.

Such ingratitude...!

A rather special dog is my dog Varkie

who started life the only bull-terrier in a mixed litter, the one and only chip
off the old block, looking exactly like daddy-o.

There is another just like him, a brother from the year before, who lives in Johannesburg...                                                                      

When he was little Varkie really loved to laze, play top dog and hunt for rats in the woodpile.

These days he mostly likes to laze...

Occasionally he remembers to also live up to his name Varkie (Piggy in Afrikaans).   He just loves to help dig the veggie beds.   With his snout.   How does this make sense in any doggy language?

Varkie doesn't seem to care much about being appropriate as a dog.

This is where the happy bits of the story of Varkie ends.

Even though he spends his days and nights mostly in a horizontal position, and loves people and seems mostly really useless, he is quick to respond to intrusion by other animals into his domain.

So being a farm dog definitely has its challenges, even if you are a bull terrier with uncertain ancestry.   We have porcupines who regularly raid the cauliflower and broccoli in the veggie gardens, which Varkie takes exception to although I have never seen him eat vegetables.... (?)   Har-har.






One morning this is how we found him, just sitting quietly at the cottage door feeling slightly sorry for himself.







He didn't flinch when we pulled it out, he just looked up as if to say "You done?"

I came away hoping it was a lesson cheaply learned
but maybe not...


                              The quill went in up to where Joe is indicating here...
              

If you are squeamish, close this post now.

Shortly after, the porcupine's bigger heftier brother (not really related I know) came to visit.

A big, mean bush pig decided to walk down the road past the fence at 2 o'clock in the morning

A huge and protracted commotion ensued when the dogs noticed the intruder and took exception to him strutting his stuff on their turf.

   

Thankfully our houses are fenced off from the rest of the farm, or there would have been (more) blood.

Dogs barked and jumped against the fence to show their displeasure.

My son Joe shone his torch over the fence and shouted and fired a paintball gun to make a noise.   You had to be there...

Mr bush pig didn't take kindly to this attack on his person, and with deep grunts he charged them from the outside, trying to gaff them through the fence.

One dog cried as if it was being murdered, but it was not Varkie.   He just came away bleeding quietly but profusely, after Joe managed to chase off the pig. 

One wonders whether he is just the most headstrong one who would not even try to avoid the charge from the other side...   Headstrong sounds better than dumb...

Follow the path of the tusk...   It went in through the upper lip, tearing all the way through and out the bottom jaw taking splinters of bone off on the way.... 

 And then ended with a jab to the chest







End of gory story:  Varkie is a tough guy and he was sewn up admirably at the local vet, came home the next morning and carries on with life as usual.   He's just fine and dandy and right now is trying to jump up onto my daughter's house's roof to chase off a monkey who dared come to visit.

This post will hopefully serve to chronicle the long and fruitful life of Varkie the bull terrier, without too much more shedding of the red stuff....

This morning I was surprised...

to find the moon still up when I went to open for staff and animals,

but I was not prepared for the rest of the surprises 

the morning was about to serve up....

Some weeks back new acquaintances gave me two pigs, Pickles and Pork.   They are my first ever pigs so I'm delighted they are a small breed.   She is a bit of a pot belly and although he does not have her typically upturned nose and dragging belly, he is also from a small black breed.   

The snug, movable "teepee" we made for them. 

As it turned out Pork was already pregnant.   So now you've guessed it..

Eight beautiful piglets!

That's when I decided my reticence for starting the blog, which I have been threatening to do for almost a year now, will be something of the past.   So here it is...   I'm blogging!   Finally!   Because of 8 little black pigs.

We had been meaning to put up a fence and gate so that dad could be separated once the piglets were born, and then had to scurry to get the job done.   Mom didn't like the activity one bit so she pushed grass over them in a heap, sniffed all around carefully, and lay down next to them...

Piglets?   What piglets?   None here....

But I came back with my secret weapon - shortbread biscuits!   Got mom outside in no time.

HOW SMALL IS SMALL!?

Just see the little face!
Ok both...

Happiness is... On Adri's first farm blog...