Day 84 Piketberg

Strange day to start this 13th week, I didn't have any time to stop and think about Lani, we stopped at the Spur to get answers to me e-mails. I sent off about 10 e-mails yesterday to prospective farms asking if they needed a wwoofer in winter, their are 35 farms on the SA Wwoofer list and I chose the ones that looked the most interesting and were in the Western Cape.

ready to move on to a better world

Piketberg from Versfeldspas

Received about 3 replies and one was awesome, Shantal was really glad of my request, she's 7 months pregnant and they need help badly with all kinds of building and renovating on their farm and asked if I could come from the 6^th with a view to stay long term. The others were all positive in content but had made other arrangement with wwoofers or helpers or were worried about the dogs but I will keep in touch with them for future reference, it will be good to work on a few farms before settling down, it will give me a better understanding of what people are doing and how they are dealing with services. 

We had packed up and done all our downloading and I walked the dogs around a bit and we were ready to move on, not sure where as I have no firm destination in mind for the next 10 days, when a knock on the door from a guy wanting to talk to me stopped me.

Turned out he is a local and needs to find someone to do a snake course for his neighbours company. His neighbour has a Government contract to fix potholes and clean road verges in this area, he has 14 guys and because many of them have encountered snakes along the way, many of them don't want to work for him anymore. He also has an R80 000 budget to do training of staff as part of his BEE status. So Aldrick, and his wife Coleen, have been trying to find someone to come and do a snake course for them, he tried Mike in Johies and was quoted an astronomical fee so he asked me what I would charge to run a course for these 14 guys and I didn't have a clue.

I told him I had done Mikes course but am not qualified to deal with doing one myself. He said whatever I know is more than everyone here combined and the budget has to be spent and Sipho, his neighbour, needs his guys to know how to identify the snake and deal with it and also have some basic knowledge on the first aid side of things, apparently no-one up here does snake courses.

So everything happened quite quickly after that, they asked me to give them some time to deal with it and ended up putting in a quote of R500 per person, this has to go to the government dept. for approval, then payment is made in maybe 30-60 days but in the meantime as I have to move on, I will do the course on Friday morning, but this couple are off to Cape Town tonight for a colleagues funeral and won't be back until Friday afternoon, I have not met the neighbour, nor was I very confident of being able to run this course without Mikes notes, which are in Joburg, so I had to Phone Val and ask her to scrounge around in my filing cabinet to look for them and then scan them and e-mail them to me. 

Meanwhile Sue phoned me, one of the other Wwoof farms to say that the Wwoofer they had lined up has cancelled and can I come and Wwoof for them, I told her I'm off to Shantal, not far from her, and she suggested I come the week before, so now I have to be in Riverdale on Sunday night and near Swellendam on the following Saturday plus I must do this course on Friday and then head out Friday afternoon.

So the afternoon I was parked outside Eldricks house in town while all the negotiations were going on, we then tried to download the notes about 5;30 and this proved difficult as their wi-fi would not connect, then the G3 was slow then it printed in the incorrect format, so eventually they left at 7;30 and we made plans to have the pages printed in the morning at a friends place up the road, Ben Cooper.

We spent the night parked in his driveway, plugged in with electricity and enjoyed for the first time today, a little bit of peace and quiet, and I really missed Lani on the bed with us, I hope her and Slicky are in a good place together.

Slept well in this little town although Jos has a sore leg, I had tried to introduce them to Aldricks dog, an alsation, but they were not interested and in trying to stop them all fighting with each other, my two ended up in a fight with each other and Jos came off second best and is now cut in a few places and limping badly so probably strained her leg.

Up early to wash in the backyard and walk the dogs in the park across the road before going up to wake Ben up and try and get my notes printed, this took ages as well as we had to scan and print each of 35 pages separately after first figuring out how to use an old system and then looking for ink for a printer not often used, but we were successful and I now have 35 pages of notes to use tomorrow but will have to wait and see how that goes. I did briefly meet Sipho as we came back to the camper and will catch up with him later to hash out the what the where and the when.

The Kouebokkeveldberg looking towards Ceres

beautiful mountains in the clouds

This is all happening on trust and I have no idea whether I will ever see the R3 500 I will earn as my 50% of the deal, but if I don't I will have learnt a lot and met a few interesting characters and kept myself busy for the few days I have spare before getting back into the farming life.

Aldrick did talk to me yesterday about trying to turn this into something bigger, he was in public service for many years until going out on his own this year, his money has now dried up and he needs to come up with some business plans, so he thinks this course could run all over the Cape as their is a need for all workers doing a similar job of which there are many, I'm not sure if I am interested in it as a business so we will have to see what pans out, first I have to spend the day reading this material and deciding on how to impart the info in such a way as not to put 14 guys to sleep. Not sure if I have Lorraine's knack of waffling intelligently.

Meanwhile we are having a Spur breakfast and e-mailing, blogging and downloading shows. Off to find a nice long hike with the dogs to clear our minds and start again fresh, a new chapter in our lives, down to three.

We went off for a drive out of town looking for a walk, didn't find a path going up only fences so back into town and ended up at the top end of town following a trail up the mountain, there is a beautiful mountain bordering the whole town and it does not have a hiking trail on it, crazy, so we made our own plan and walked all over the place where the vegetation allowed us free access, lovely walk on the foot of the mountain overlooking the town.

views from Aldrick's house, nice spot for a few nights

The Piketberg range

Bought some vegie soup and juice for dinner and went back to the house, I sat on the patio in the back garden learning my snake notes, when I ran into Sipho on yet a another walk with the dogs he tells me that the council have not approved the course as they say a snake course should be done in summer, this put a spoke in his sword but for me was no big deal, he said he would keep trying to get them to agree to it, but I doubt he will succeed. So we had yet another walk around the neighbourhood and then spent another night in Aldricks driveway, plugged into the mains and washing in his backyard, slept well and planned to find a laundromat in the morning and move on to Ceres, heading for Riversdale. For me the 2 days was worth it, got my snake notes printed which may yet come in handy plus had two nights of free accommodation and enjoyed this town with lots of walking and some decent food, also had plenty of internet time and we are ready to move on.

So what does one need to be happy, a roof over their head, food on the table, a sense of humour and a passion, all of which I have, so we are now ready to go farming and build this new chapter in a new direction.

Sleep like a bunny guys.