Sleep Late! Not Me!

            I never sleep late and so it was on our first day on “Hopewell”.   I was awake long before anyone else and when I peeped over the bottom door of the rondavel there was a pink glow towards the East.   I listened to the night sounds which would soon be fading away.   There was the churring sound of the night jar, the lonely plaintive call of the Dikkop and in the distance a rooster was crowing at some native huts.   The calves in the kraal were calling for the cows that were resting nearby chewing their cuds.  



Dikkop

 Many of the sounds were strange to me but so exciting; I wanted to see the birds that made them.   In the Free State the Afrikaans people called the Dikkop a Commando bird as the Boers used it’s strange, haunting cries as their secret warning call during the Anglo/Boor war.   There was a little pair of familiar Wagtails that came out to greet me and I wondered whether they had followed us. My dad soon came outside and was surprised to find me there.   I asked him and he told me that the sparkling geen/blue birds were the Glossy starlings and the bird sitting on the top of the thorn tree was a Jack Hanger.   He was waiting for insects to appear so that he could pierce them with the long white thorns of the tree.   He would eat them later when food was scarce.  The big noisy birds flying overhead were hadeda ibis.   In those days they roosted in the rock faces called “krantzes”.

            It had rained on the farm a week or two prior to our arrival so the grass around the house, and near by, was a most amazing shade of green.   There was a slight mistiness floating low above the earth and when the sun came up the dew drops sparkled on the grass and the spider webs looked like strings of diamonds.   It was a most beautiful sight and below the house to the left, there was a kloof with big boulders on either side that looked like a village with whitewashed buildings.   By now we were all looking at this lovely scene and even my mom said that it was an amazing sight.



Milk Seperator

            I had not yet been through the house, but that could wait as I was anxious to see the milk cows and calves that had come with the ‘lock, stock and barrel’.   I also wanted to meet the farm folk and was soon greeted by them with a “Molo Basie” to which I had been taught to reply “Ewe”.   My dad, having been brought up on the boarder of the Transkei, could actually speak a better IsiXhosa than the locals who were mixing their languages.   The cows were driven into the kraal which was an enclosure made from tightly packed tree branches and they were each tied to a sturdy pole.   Each cow knew her place where she was given a scoop of meal, so when the calves were let out; they ran straight to their mothers.   I soon picked up what the milker called out when he said “Nikela”.   “Let out a calf, I am ready to milk”. These cows were a mixed herd but most of them were a type of Shorthorn.   It was also discovered that most of them were rather old and would not be good for milking much longer and would have to be sold.   When the milking was done, the buckets of milk were carried to the dairy which was a whitewashed rondavel behind the house.   There was gauze at the windows and door to stop flies from entering.   The milk would be poured into a separator whilst it was still warm and when the handle was turned, the low fat milk would flow out of one spout and the rich cream out of another.

Cape Wagtail

            By now the women folk were calling for breakfast which was a plate of delicious mealiemeal porridge, milk and sugar.   Bread would be baked in due course.   This was the nicest house that my mom had ever lived in.   Inside there were four bedrooms, a big sitting/dining room, a breakfast room, a kitchen and a lobby.   There was no bathroom and the toilet was what is called “a long drop” situated a little distance from the house.   To have a bath a big tub would be carried into a bedroom and filled with warm water and the children had to queue up at bath times.   There was a pantry in the house which my dad converted into a bathroom at a later date.

            We inherited a medium sized brown dog called “Whisky” and there was a cat or two (Chips was not impressed).   There were some chickens which had been kept for us by a neighbour.   There were a few fruit trees and another two rondavels behind the house where the one served as a pantry and in the other tools, etc., were kept.   A little distance from the house there was a big store and attached to that was what was called a wagon house and in it a wagon and farm implements was kept.   This was where my dad also parked his car.   There was a big “Kaffir” plum tree near the store and we soon learnt to call it an “iGwene” or a sour plum.  (Not sure of the spelling)

            There were two horses which were kept in a camp near the house and their names were “Tony” and “Champion”.   They were used for pulling the cultivators in the pineapple fields.   There were a few trained oxen and some young untrained ones and there was a big Afrikaner crossed shorthorn bull.

         

  The day was past before I had even seen a tenth of the place and my bed in the rondavel was calling.   There were no modern mattresses on the beds and we all slept on a hard coir one.   There was a spring mat from the head to the bottom end of the bed and invariably it was stretched and would sag when you climbed on it, making the bed hollow.   We at least each had our own bed now!

The farm road leading down to ther house

          

  You are most probably wondering about my dad’s friend, Harvey Bradfield.   I will tell you about him and his family next time.

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