Superstitious Cobra

Cossie

I had to go Uniondale to have an x-ray taken of an odd blue hued lump under an old scar from a heart op I had two years ago. Uniondale is about 70km from where we live. My bakkie ( truck ) finally gave up the ghost, so our only form of transport in and out of the farm, is a Honda 200cc Bushlander, which copes with the dirt road exceedingly well but is a bit slow when it comes to tar, as the bike's top comfortable speed is about 90/80 km per hour.
Luckily for me, I have friends that stay the little hamlet of Harlem, 58km from where we live, and as they were going to do their weekly shop in Uniondale, they gave me a lift there. The trip to Uniondale was great as we chatted and caught up on news while traveling through the famous Uniondale Pass which is really stunningly beautiful, if you love the Klein Karoo landscape.
After arriving in Uniondale, they dropped me off at the hospital and we arranged to meet 2 hours later giving us all more than enough time to complete our separate missions. We said goodbye and we parted ways looking forward to our reunion in 2 hours time, followed by lunch back at their farm.

Two hours later, miraculously,  I walked out. I say miraculously, because, as you know, anything to do with governmental hospitals,  usually takes forever and a day. As I walked out of the hospital,  my friends arrived,  looking quite happy to see me walking out the door on time. They informed me that Rae (my gorgeous better half) had sent them an SMS (I never carry a cell phone) that I should contact her immediately and that the moment I was finished at the hospital, I should come home. I obviously thought, "what the f#@^k", because for me to get home, would take at least an hour and a half. What could be so urgent? My friends suggested that I give Rae a call and find out if there was some kind of emergency, which I duly did. My daughter answered and said that "Mom" wanted me to come home because there was a huge Cobra in the garden and she was terribly worried about our dogs.
"O my sack!", I exclaimed and informed her to remind Mom that by the time I got home, it would be gone and in fact, it had probably already disappeared. She agreed with me and said that mom was just in a panic. I could quite understand this because I am always been around to take care of snake incidents. I always catch and release them again, somewhere far away.

When I got home, I got the details of the story! Rae had organized for the next door farm labourer's wife, Silvia, to come and help her clean the house. Silvia was busy in our bedroom cleaning the windows, when she saw a Cobra slithering towards the house and Cossie (the cat in the pic above) ambling along the lawn in a direct trajectory to cross paths with the Cobra. The Cobra was, apparently, equal in length to my daughters height (157cm). Silvia saw the snake and let out an almighty scream that had everyone running to see what was going on, only to find her pointing out of the window. Looking out the window, they were just in time to see Cossie coming face to face with the cobra! The Cobra reared up and hissed at Cossie and Cossie followed suite by standing on her back legs with front paws poised in classic kung-fu pose and hissed. The Cobra, deciding this black cat was not one to cross paths with, then lowered itself and slithered away in a wide arc off into the Fig tree...... wow, I wish I had witnessed this! After hearing this story, we all went to check the Fig tree, there was no Cobra to be seen!.

This happened a few months ago and we have never seen the Cobra again! Yay to Cossie!

Below is a pic of the garden bounty on the same day: Basil, peppers, tomatoes, carrots and butternut. I guess it was just another day on the farm!

Time for Tomato Canning!

STEP 1: Put all your tomatoes into a pot or glass dish. Poor boiling water over them until they are all covered. The boiling water will cause the tomato skins to "pop" making them easier to peel.

STEP 2: While the tomatoes soak, you can chop up 2 large onions.

STEP 3: After a few minutes the tomato skins will pop open (see above) and can be peeled.

Here are the tomatoes once they are peeled and cored.

STEP 4: In a big pot, fry the onion until lightly brown.

STEP 5: Add the tomatoes and use a wooden spoon to squish them up. Leave them to cook on a low heat until the sauce thickens . Herbs such as basil and rosmary can be added as well as some salt and pepper.

STEP 6: Steralise your jars and lids placing them in a pot full of water with its lid on and bring it to boil for 5min and then let it simmer for 30 min thereafter, before putting your sauce in them. If you don't steralise your jars your sauce will go off.

Christmas eve honey extraction

A beautiful photo of the frames for the "supers" which is the box that goes above brood box. The "supers" is the box where all the honey is stored by the little lady bees and the brood box is where the queen resides and all little workers get made that keep the colony fed and provide us with honey.. I use these to replace any frames that get damaged in the extraction process.

first full frame of the day . Rae took the pic from a distance lol

We had run out of our own honey that I had last extracted in autumn and we were forced to buy honey in town to use in our soap and for our own personal consumption. I have been working on a restoration project at the Institute of Objects Conservation in nearby Twee Riviere and had not had the time to extract honey.
After tasting the bought honey, Rae insisted that our honey tasted far better and gave up eating her banana, honey and cinnamon toast which she eats every morning. So the pressure was on and  I also knew that my hives were laden with honey that the nectar that the bees had harvested through winter from aloe, heather and certain Protea species and that honey is yummy!

My two helpers

On Christmas Eve, we harvested honey from 10 hives and got 3.5 x 20 liter buckets of honey. Thought I would just mention that on the last Christmas Eve, I was stuck in the middle of a river in a Land Rover with an artist and his paintings, a Dominee (Minister) and a nurse (the Dominee's wife) and no lights......it was awesome and I will tell the story some time!

Yahoo honey flow

to spray or not to spray....?

After suffering for the last few years with a fruit fly infestation, this year was totally out of control, with about 70% of my fruit being infested. You would not believe how CRAZY this makes me, especially after waitng a whole year since the last fruiting season.
When I first discovered  the worms, I thought to myself, that's it, I am going to use the nasty chemicals and wipe these pesky fuit flies out!!  I can still cope with 50% of them having worms but more than this, really what is the point? At this rate, I was going to end up buying someone elses poisoned fruit anyway. I then did some inquiries at the local co- op and was told to use Malasol or Lebaycid but after reading the warnings and precautions, I decided against it and went back home to the internet for some tips on how to handle the fruit flies in a more environmentally friendly way.

By the way, the 2 pics above, are of baby Butcher birds in a nest in one of the aprcot trees .Their parents are doing a sterling job of keeping marauding birds away that are raiding the apricots.

Another bonus of not using nasties, is that your natural predators start to return, like the Ladybirds ( they eat aphids),  in the blurry picture below. I was so excited about seeing the Ladybirds in my apple trees, I went to google them for some more info and was totally gobsmacked to find out that they eat up to 500 aphids a day. You will see in the pic below that there are darker little spots on the leaves which are the aphids... a week later, NO aphids on any of my apple trees.

To help combat the fruit flies, the first step is to pick up any fruit that has fallen on the ground, or destroy any fruit that has been stung. Stung fruit always has a tiny harmless looking little prick mark on the skin. In the seven years that we have been here, I have always left the fruit on the ground to rot away. This is a no-no as the worm larva in the fruit then borrow into the ground, only to emerge the following summer as fruit flies and so the cycle is perpetuated. I must admit  that one of the main reasons I left the fruit on the ground, was that I noticed bees feeding on the nectar and thought it to "bee" a bonus for them in our dry summers. I once took honey out for another guy who had a bee hive in an abandoned apricot orchard and the honey was dark and tasted like apricot jam, delicious!
The second step is to hang fruit fly traps in the trees that attract the male fruit fly and thereby you limit the reproduction of fruit flies.
I am still trying to find a recipe for this "muti" which you put into a plastic 2 lt bottle with a few holes poked around the top. These you hang in your trees, one every 10m square. I must admit that this also bugs me a bit as it also attract other male bugs, including the beneficial ones too!

Soap maker Rae Conterio doing a bit of weeding.

The third step is to plant plants like yarrow, marigolds, borage, dill and khakibos around your orchard, as this draws all the beneficial insects like ladybirds, wasps, hover fly, etc So the more you plant the merrier and the prettier your orchard will look .
My last tool in my arsenal against the dreaded fruit fly, is something I have just discovered and it is called GF 120 Naturalite. This is apparently new on the market and it is applied as a spray that targets male fruit flies. I asked the local agricultural officer if this would not also affect other male insects but he was unable to tell me and said it was an interesting question and he would get back to me. I am still waiting.... Till next time!

What has the artisan soap makers been up to ?

It has possibly been our best year of soap sales, since starting our little soap business, which  is an amazing feat in the current economy. I am, of course, not surprised as we do make the best soap in South Africa (ha ha... we do have such a cheek!). We have even had clients who have gone overseas and brought back artisan soap for us to try, just to compare and to show us that we do indeed make a wonderful soap. We are of course, extremely grateful and blessed to be able to live this lifestyle through the support of all our wonderful clients. We will never become rich, as that would mean starting a factory and employing staff in a  town, which would totally defeat the object of why we moved out here.

Above, are two pics of a winter sunrise. The frost was so hard and thick that I could run and slide along with my gumboots. Star ( the dog ) seems to be totally oblivious to the cold.

Same orchard as the top pic but as it looks at the moment... beautiful and green! This is generally the best time of the year, as we have had our rains and then by the time January and February arrive, things start getting pretty dry again and everything starts to look brown but that's OK, knowing that it's all part of the process makes it acceptable and beautiful.

Star and T-Bone greeting the sun as it rises, they are brother and sister.

There is such a big hoo haa about alien Wattles but to tell you the honest truth, if we didn't have it, we would definitely miss it, as we use it for our indoor Dover stove, fencing and to stake our tomatoes, beans, etc. I do feel it has its uses on every smallholding, especially if you can manage a small grove of it, preventing it from spreading.

Above, I am peeling wattle latte that I am using to make a fence around our veggie patch, to keep out the bunnies, porcupines and little buck. When I have more time (whenever that might be), I want to try and make little bits of furniture out if the wood and baskets out of the bark.

Putting The Veggies To Bed.

Frosty Morning On The Plaas

With the arrival of winter, comes the arrival of frost and this winter has been the worst we've experienced in our 6 years here. I make it sound like an awful phenomenon but in actual fact, it is beautiful and I love it, besides, within the first hour of direct sunlight, it is all gone! So, if you oversleep because bed is just too cozy on these cold mornings... you will miss it!

Putting The Veggies To Bed

Every night, I put my veggies to bed, so to speak  This entails covering my beds with shade cloth, a practice that I have started to do because during the night, we have hungry visitors like rabbit and porcupine.

Baby Cabbage, lettuce And Peas

This works really well as it also gives you a chance to keep an eye on any nightly pest invasions, i.e. snails and worms.

Cauliflower, Coriander and Peas

In the morning, when I remove their covers, I do a quick pest check, maybe a spot of weeding while the day time is still warm enough. It also protects your lettuce from frost. So while the farmer next door is trying to deal with his nocturnal visitors by setting traps, or setting his alarm clock hoping to catch the night time marauders in the sights of his 22... you are fast asleep. You could also fence your veggie garden in, although my neighbor said that fences don"t work as they just burrow their way underneath. This led me to trying the shade clothe, as I had some lying around and so far so good! No traps or guns on our farm!

African Bliss Fathers Day promotion.

 With Father day approaching, we decided this would be a perfect opportunity to run a little promotion on our Men's Soap and our soap beds and let Dads experience our soap.

 Since adding this soap to our range, we have found that the soap actually appeals to an equal amount of men and woman, with its warm and spicy smell.

The first client to take us up on our promotion was the local "Domini" (minister of the NG Kerk of Joubertina) who is by no means a new client but has been a faithful supporter (and friend) of our soap range since our arrival in the Langkloof. He put in a handsome order of 100 soaps on soap beds and suppled us with a little verse which we tied on with string. Apparently the children are going to hand these out to all the Dad's in the congregation after the service on Father's Day. We, at African Bliss, thought this to be a brilliant idea and climbed in with getting the order ready, with much enthusiasm and love!.

Our soap beds are recycled from off-cuts of  Meranti and Oak and then are soaked in olive all for a week (this preserves them). It's has four little legs and drainage furrows to make your handmade soap last longer and was designed by Dino.... clever Dad that he is!!

Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there!