Visitors...Friends and Family

It is not often that we receive visitors to Larkwood, so when we do we tend to go all out to entertain them.  Most days are the usual hum drum of life and we keep much to ourselves, minding our own business, working with our animals, trying to keep things clean and tidy, always trying to improve on things...lol  Then suddenly one day, or one evening, we may have a call to say that we can expect a visit.  I must say that most of our visitors are people coming to look at the birds, but this last week and over the weekend it was not so.

Gill and Jerome came round on Thursday afternoon, not only to catch up with news....as it has been some months since we last saw them, but they also brought a friend of theirs who wanted to chat to 'MOI' about self sustainability and what we have done and how far have we carried self sustainability into our lives.  I must say I thoroughly enjoyed telling him about what we have done so far, our mistakes, how we have made improvements, where we are now and what our next step is.  Sure we have a long way to go and if we want to continue to enjoy the luxuries in life, like electricity and running a car, there are still things we can do to cut back on consumption and/or make our own too.

Johan remembers his grandparents farm in the karoo which was in an area that at that time had no electricity. He remembers his ouma (granny) cooking in an oven outside...although she did also have a big old coal stove in her kitchen too, as well as having a walk in cold room  made from two walls of clay and lined with coal that they would pour water on to, to keep the fresh produce inside cold. A lot of the things he learned at his oupa's (grandfather's) side he has managed to bring them into our life today, and yes there are modern ways to do things, but lets face it the older generation certainly knew how to look after themselves without the conveniences we have today.

Yesterday, Johan's cousin, Bakkies came to visit with his wife, Daleen and son, Jose.  They live in Bloemfontein in the Free State so we do not see much of each other, but when we do, we always have a fun time.  Bakkies, like Johan has a love for birds and breeds them and shows them too.  As you can imagine, most of the conversation between them yesterday was about the birds and after a braai for lunch, the two of them went off to the birdroom.  Bakkies is much more knowledgeable about the Lovebirds than Johan and he helped him to pair up some new pairs with young birds we took to be sexed last week.  Johan is the 'budgie man' between the two of them so he imparts knowledge in that regard.  So while the men were busy sorting birds, we ladies chatted, watched my nieces wedding DVD and then spent time with Titan...who was 5 weeks old yesterday....

Great to have good friends and family over, we should do it more often...who is coming next????