Growing up on a farm in rural South Africa in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Our big drafty farm house on Kia Ora, in Bergville, KwaZulu Natal, was my castle and I loved it. The busy farm yard always filled with people and animals, the constant action, the veld that we looked out onto and explored during our walking expeditions, the dams that were built over time by the family and in the distance, the beautiful constantly changing but all ways present, majestic and picturesque Drakensberg mountains with Bergville nestled beneath them. This was my kingdom and I loved it. Driving through to Bergville with the contours of deep pink cosmos during the Easter season and how they would come up on the side on the road. They are resilient plants and offer such beauty in harsh conditions…. A ray of light on a cloudy day…. Blue heaven on a rainy day…a pretty weed coming up in the paving stones … pointing their faces to the sun and getting things done. Bergville, our local town, has seen many changes over the time. A real farming community. It takes a village to raise a child certainly was true of Bergville. Our tennis coach was a friend of Moms, our Sunday School teacher (on a Wednesday afternoon!) was my aunt….our teacher was the fiancé of my folks bachelor friend…
The tennis club was an integral part of our up brining. Every Saturday tennis would be our choice of sport as a family. When we were little, we always had a nanny in tow to keep an eye on us for the afternoon. When we were younger we would play on the playground for hours, as we grew up we would venture down to the slide at the river and only when we were confident with our tennis we would join the adults playing matches. Regardless of how tough times were we were never short of sporting equipment. That was something my parents regarded as very important to our growing years.
My parents only had two reoccurring arguments during our growing years. The first one was over money, usually the lack of it and the second was there different views over sport. Trying your best was a given but attitudes on the outcome varied. My dad was very competitive (unlike me!) while my mother did not have a competitive bone in her body (I take after her). The trouble came when they played mixed doubles together at the local tennis club. My father was the number one seed in Bergville for quite a few years, which of courses added to his god like qualities in my eyes. A few social drinks always followed these sporting Saturday afternoons, and so by the time we got home mom and dad were always quite jovial. On this occasion, dad was convinced that they should have won the match but my mother was not trying hard enough. At this my mother constantly reminded him about the one winner she hit that went “shoo” down the line. A demonstration followed accompanied with a sound track how fast and accurately she had hit the ball down the line.
A s a rule Saturday evening were spent at the Hotel Walter with the Dads in the pub and us kids and Moms enjoying drinks and company on the veranda and the Hotel grounds. Back in those days there was no ladies bar and the mothers were not allowed in the pub! The first winds of change were when the Hotel Walter built a ladies bar. Us children must have driven the Hotel staff crazy with all our running around in the corridors of the Hotel. If it was raining one of the favourite games to play was tok tokkie- the game where you ringing the door bell and then run and hide around the corner. We also used to follow the waiter around as he played his portable xylophone to announce supper. On clear evening we would play on the Hotel grounds. The best fun was when it was school holidays and the boarding school friend were around. We would play open gates and catches till the parents carried sleepy kids to the cars to start the trek home. When we arrived at the hotel we would be given pocket money for the evening to cover any chips, cool drinks or sweets we would need. There was café across the road run by “Nick the greek” and so we would run across the road and take our time making our selection for the night. The streets were dead quiet at that time of night and the street lights lit up the road, our mothers could see all the action from the comfort of their chairs on the veranda.
The change of seasons on the farm were so distinct so when we went to school and learnt about the sun moving around the earth, cloud formations etc. this all made sense. The seasons showed us our position in the calendar and what big celebration we could start looking forward to. The summer thunderstorms in the afternoons with the thunder, lightning and heavy rains and wind. Sitting like rock rabbits in the sun coming through the windows in the sun room and reading a book meant that it was the long July holidays in the middle of winter, destructive hail storms usually meant that it was around Christmas / New Year. Exploring the farm after big rain storms was always an exciting adventure. We would see the water rushing in streams into the dams, across the roads and through the veld. Making new gully’s or rushing through old ones and inevitably we would pile out of the truck and start doing some earth works and end up having a ball in all the mud. The fun of youth! One of these adventures actually had a purpose. Dad had built a canal to transfer water from a smaller stock watering dam into the big irrigation dam and we wanted to see this stream in action. Of course it worked perfectly! Coming home from school and joining dad at the fire-break told us it was the beginning of winter and Dad was securing the farm against run away fires. We would all get involved in stepping the small flames out and doing it in your school uniform with your school shoes and white school socks was so much more fun.
Our farm house had solid wooden floors throughout and these had been scrubbed clean and washed over the years until they resembled a dehydrated state. It has high ceilings and big rooms. These were all connected with a wide passage that linked the house with the land line telephone at the centre of the house right outside the bathroom door. The bathroom was the only one in the house and housed the bath and the toilet. This was the way it was done in “the olden days” as the plumbing went to the kitchen and so to add a bathroom to a house was easier if the bathroom was next to the kitchen. The window-sills throughout the house were large sash type that were left wide open on the hot summer evenings to try and trap any breath of air that would be moving around. The house had a wraparound veranda around two sides, one of which was closed in to form the sun-room. The big front veranda will always be the place where the family would meet twice a day for tea. The farm representatives would make their appointments to coincide with these times and join us for tea and business would be discussed while walking to the veranda but never while we were all together. The question when Greg asked my Dad if he could marry me was also asked on the way to the veranda, but tea was quickly changed for a beer at 8:00 am in the morning. Was this genuine happiness Dad or a big exhale of breath?
The outlook of our home was over a flat lawn (flattened to lay a tennis court and called, ostentatiously, to this day, the tennis court, and then through our orchard ending with a direct view of the farm yard and all the farm activities and inner working. We could see my Dad coming home at any time of the day through the orchard.
The physical layout of the farm yard was instrumental to our upbringing. The farm was all encompassing, it was a part of everything we did and everything we thought of doing.
The orchard was very productive with a variety of fruit trees dripping with their bounty. Our favourite, especially during silkworm season, was the mulberry tree. Mulberry leaves were a favourite food of the lowly silkworm and if feed solely on mulberry leaves their silk turned a shade of pink. Boxes of silkworms would be carted to school to show your friends, swop and compare. If you cut out any shape and elevated it in your box and put a silkworm on to it, the silkworm would be trapped on the shape and weave a silk shape that you could swop or use (I still have a heart shaped silk bookmark) There was always something to munch in the orchard on the way to visit Dad at the sheds.
To demonstrate this fact I can remember piles of vegetable (big white round solid pumpkins in this memory) on our front lawn waiting to be counted, loaded and sold. Nothing was untouchable by the farm work and this went right through to our water supply. The house only got water after the dairy parlor had been washed and after all the water troughs for the animals were full! My poor mother with four kids and no water! Her shouting “there is no bloody water” was heard on a few occasions.
A result of this “open-plan” farm layout was a huge rolling lawn that went right down to the sheds and through the orchard. Mowing the lawn, before the ride on mower of today, was a 3 day affair. No sooner had that all been done and mom fixed all the patches on the extension cord that had been run over and cut than it was time to start again.
chapter 1 v 1
Pink Farm Chick 