May 8, 2024

It was a bit of a manic morning at the farm. Three snotty, rowdy boys and a droning weed eater meant slight sensory overstimulation.

The baby spent the morning clinging to my leg because… loud!

The others were playing ‘cheetahs’ and putting on their cheetah power suits with reeds for tails and dry wors for meat.

Finally, after a stinky nappy change, the baby wanted to doo-doo and took me by the hand to the room. He fell asleep quite quickly, and I went back to the lounge. The brothers were watching some Australian cartoon dog family.

Time for some tea.

Surprise! Mom

While I was up and my leg didn’t have a baby clinging to it, I went to check the washing. We’d run out of water. A quick pump from the borehole sorted things out.

The kettle boiled a while ago, but as I walked back in from the laundry, my eye caught something unusual on the floor next to the fridge.

Those cheetahs probably spilled something in their hunt for dry wors. Unfortunately, a closer look tweaked the nose. It was egg. One of my last two in the house for the weekend.

I called the cheetahs for an explanation. The sheepish smaller one said yes, sorry, he’d cracked an egg by mistake. But don’t worry Mama, as ‘he’d put it back in the fridge on top of all the apples’. Great, thanks very much.

Tea would have to wait for the shelves, apples, floor, and containers to be washed and dried and checked and put away again, egg-free. The smell isn’t as easy to get rid of.

On top of this, there was a pear with one bite out of it that was going rotten. Classic Oribi baby (or any baby really). I guess the fridge needed a wipe-down anyway.

Small Wins and Big Wins

I decided to boil the kettle just one more time. The baby was still peacefully asleep, thankfully.

Just yesterday, our entire community here was celebrating the amazing news that the big-city prospectors had decided to withdraw their prospecting rights application to mine minerals on our farms in Oribi Gorge.

Apparently, the operation would be environmentally unfeasible. What a surprise, right? The oribi, ground hornbills, and Cape vulture colonies are safe for now.

A little bit of egg cleanup seems like a very small price to pay for a farm that’s still ours and still so beautiful.

Published here.