Beautiful, sunny day! Ryan and I played a set of tennis (the court is in the middle of a cow pasture) and then Joe and Brendan took each other on. The view from the court was amazing! We also played on the trampoline. Brendan did a front flip and a back fllip – quite a monkey.
When Vital learned about my life-long dream to milk a cow, he asked his cow-herder to try to make it happen. This is the story – my mother, Nora Burke, was raised on a farm and often told stories about milking the cows. Mom died when I was seventeen and ever since then I had a desire to experience what milking a cow was like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to make this happen and it has become a family challenge. We’ve stopped at farms and requested that they help us out. Most often they tell us that the cows are now milked by machines. Several times, however, they have said yes. When it actually goes to happen there’s always something that happens (cow runs off, milk-hand not available, not the right timing, etc.). Today, I was assured, it was finally going to happen. Sure enough, however, Daisy had broken down one on the fences and had escaped. We ended our tennis game to go with Vinias, a local Zulu cow-hand from Lesotho, to lead her back. We romped through the pastures and ended up covered from head to toe with burrs. Vinias finally found Daisy and shepherded her into the pasture with the rest of the herd. We followed him into the pasture and quickly learned that we were surrounded by not only a pile of cows but also a whole whack of bulls. That lent some real excitement suddenly and we all cowered behind Vinias. He got Daisy in sight but explained in his broken English that trying to milk her would be suicide as she had just calved and extremely aggressive. Instead, we watched as her little one suckled on her – a beautiful spectacle for four city-dwellers! Vinias was quite amused at how enthralled we were – as well as how fearful we were to be amongst the bulls! We all dove behind him when one of the bulls turned suddenly.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the gentle hills and warm-hearted people in the area by doing the Midlands Meander. Our first stop was ‘Decandence’ a co-operative wherein African woman do art with beads. Stunning.
Our next stop was Swissland Cheese for some goat cheese-tasting. The boys learned how cheese was made – a revelation to them. Ryan really got into the tasting. We bought a silky fois gras and cheese for lunch and joined a South African family from Pretoria for our picnic. The boys went and fed the goats and romped around the farm while we spent a lovely hour chatting. A terrific stop!
At one of our stops the boys did some archery with toy crossbows – they loved it!
Our last stop was Stables Winery for some wine-tasting. When we got there the boys went off to toss the football. Joe and I saw one of the sommeliers pouring some Fanta Grape into a wine glass and we asked him to play a trick on the boys. He called them over and told them that he had some ‘children’s alcohol-free’ wine. He had them going by showing them how to swish the wine, where to hold the glass, and how to go about tasting it. The boys tasted the wine. Brendan said it tasted like ‘a popsicle’ and Ryan said it tasted like sparkling grape juice. When they found out that it was plain old Fanta we all had a great laugh.
We lucked in again! At the wine-tasting there was one other couple and we joined them for an hour. Although the wine was downright horrible (Stellenbosch is the place to drink wine in SA), the company was exceptional and we had lots of laughs. A perfect way to end the day! While driving into the lane-way of our B & B we saw a monkey scampering throught the trees above – and low and behold, it was the kind with the bright blue testicles!! It was so exciting (and humorous, I might add) to see one in the wild.
Upon our return Averil made us a beautiful supper of butternut soup, delicious bread, and a beef filet with pepper-corn sauce. Vital and Averil joined us and we spent the night talking about South African politics – yet another enlightening conversation! Sadly we are meeting a lot of people who feel that SA willl not thrive in the near future: economically, socially, or politically. Many natives who we have met are in the process of emigrating to Europe or the States. It will be most interesting to see history unfold. We stumbled back to our rooms and delved into our books until sleep overtook us. We feel so extremely fortunate to have this time together as a family!!
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