Embarking on our New (Old) Career...
This post should have happened yesterday but we’re busy building an awesome website and there were a couple of hiccups that had to be handled. Creating an extreme wildlife-experience website is a long-held dream realized, really a Cyberland manifestation of the game farm we once tried to create; a hugely exciting development for us. As our friends know, we encountered some detours and this is the road we have traveled to get here.
Interestingly, the places we have lived in have defined our lives. Each one holds a piece of our hearts and still now shapes our views of the world.
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| LA Nights |
For a city-dwelling, nightclubbing, South African career girl living in LA; marriage to a South African farmer, game and other, was the one choice that had not been part of my game (hahaha) plan. But to paraphrase the old Latin proverb, “A woman is not where she lives, but where she loves.” And so, without a clue as to what my new job might entail, I became a farmer’s wife! The culture shock was abysmal but once I realized that the days of salon manicures were over; I resigned myself to short, practical nails, and half the battle was won.
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| Capable Hands |
In the time that followed, we developed our farm, introducing children and livestock in addition to the crops of maize, pumpkins, onions and feed grass. Over the years we raised sheep, cattle, horses and game with varying degrees of success but my personal favourites were the Dormer sheep and the Drakensberger cattle.
The children were fairly successful too; we seem to have got the hang of breeding them quite quickly but gender selection was a problem. Production was limited to sons only, despite the implementation of many “old wives tales” designed to swing the odds towards daughters. After four, we decided to call it a day and concentrate on making a future for the six of us. Fortunately, the livestock did not follow our example and produced for us a better ratio of male and female offspring and for a time life progressed, while not always smoothly, at least profitably.
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| Storm Over Farmland |
As the political climate of our country changed in the ‘90’s, so did economic factors and (as in the EU and US), farming became ‘survival of the biggest’. To keep our heads above water and hold on to the family farm (started by M’s great grandfather in 1912), we had to diversify, developing the large homestead into a B & B and eventually introducing wildlife in a bid to attract the tourist trade. These measures worked for a while but as the situation worsened, it became clear that our African idyll was over. There was no future for us developing our dream, in the unfavourable area we found ourselves. Our ages were at odds with our ambitions and we turned our faces toward a new beginning.
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| Exiles |
There followed a period of exile, consumed with learning and catching up with the world, then time spent in Scotland soothing our inner hermits – where Sunshine and Shadow began. The worst extreme longing for Africa and the pull of the familiar had receded to a manageable level, we thought; But when M had a heart attack, we had an epiphany of where we needed to be. As much as we loved Scotland, we needed our native land.
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| Scotland Near Loch Fyne Our Last Home |
And so we came back…and on the way back, it became apparent that this yearning for our homeland was more than just a tidy theory. The appeal, the lure, that primal magnet was out there somewhere… out in the bush…out in the elements of life. And, because it is more practical, for the time being we have compromised and I live with one stiletto in civilization, one boot in the wild…
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| These Hills Are Alive... |
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And so this Blog is doing the same. Yes it’s a personal journal but it is also where I record our adventures and we develop our future as we settle back in Africa. Soon there will be our website because there’s so much to tell. With both families involved in wildlife, going back generations and an endless resource of photographs, true stories and tales as numerous as the ants on the ground; there will be folklore and food, people, places, wildlife and wonders at every turn. New material is arriving daily and if there isn’t enough, we’ll go out and find it. We hope to change any negative perceptions about Africa; one dung beetle at a time…
…And because the greatest, lasting impact on our lives has happened away from the developed world and its unrelenting torture of the tender human spirit…comes the area closest to both our hearts…The wild…
