Jerseys and turkeys....
We had not had the farm for very long before we started to have visits from strange semi-conked out blue bakkies (pick-ups) with farmers asking us if we had any grazing for their cows. It was easy to see what attracted them as we had ten hectares of wonderful rich thick grass which had not had any animals on it for at least five months. Bearing in mind we had no fencing we were a bit cautious about letting the land out for cattle grazing. Eventually we agreed to let one of the locals have his emaciated Jersey cows graze as we felt so sorry for their thin state. We were unaware we could charge for the grazing and the crafty farmer had not told these ignorant newcomers about this possibility. We soon realised that cattle had the added benefit of picking up the millions of ticks that clung to the long grass blades and seed heads. We felt like a real farm now with some farm animals! The only other animals besides the abundance of wild life were a flock of white turkeys that some how hung around and roosted in the old fig tree at night. We were never quite sure who they belonged to, but their gobble-gobble sounds and decorative white plumage were a pleasure to watch in the rich green landscape. After a few months had passed we noticed their numbers got fewer and fewer and we wondered whether someone was eating them, in particular the noisy bunch of labourers who lived on the farm to the left of us. One weekend we came to the farm and there were no turkeys left. We decided it was probably a Caracal or Genet, rather than the farm workers that had been polishing them off, although we never did discover the true culprit. In the future we thought we would like to replace them, as they were so beautiful, like sheets of white paper on the fragile Fig branches. When we later were to keep poultry we learnt there was a good reason for them to be locked up at night.
New neighbours...
One summer morning we awoke to a loud knocking on the front door. Bleary eyed I went to open it and there in the bright sunshine was a woman with a mass of curly brown hair and a younger flaxen haired girl of about 12 years old, dressed up in smart riding jodhpurs and riding boots. The older woman introduced themselves as Ros and her daughter Candice, the new tenants of one farm away. Ros invited us to breakfast and insisted we come right away to discuss the labourer, Arnold who had been on our farm before we bought it. She said he was staying on the farm where she was and was posing all sorts of problems. Candice her daughter was also very insistent we come as soon as we were dressed. They were both very open and chatty, not at all what we had so far experienced from the reserved and suspicious locals. We hurriedly dressed and still in a very sleepy state drove over to their farm which has the Assegaai Bosch Kloof waterfall on it that serves the Tierfontein water furrow. Ros was already frying eggs and bacon when we arrived and the delicious smells of cooking filled the cool interior of the house, which was crammed full with saddles, horse tack and candles of every shape and description. At once we could tell these were serious horse people, but how the candle wax fitted in was uncertain. It turned out that their farm had also just been sold by the same Groenewald who sold us our farm, to an artist and his wife who did not live on it, so they had hired Ros to manage it. She and Candice had fled the horrors of a crime ridden Johannesburg, with all their nineteen horses and come to the Cape. En route their horse carrier had been in a terrible accident in the pouring rain and some of the horses had been killed. It was a gruesome and disturbing story and not a promising introduction to their new life. But we were soon to learn that Ros was a tough and tenacious independent woman with a great sense of humour and an unparalleled love of horses. She and Candice had come to help the owners clean up the farm which was as derelict as ours, and supervise the building of a new house. Arnold the labourer had moved onto her farm from ours and was supposed to be working there but instead had started to steal the sprinkler heads and sell them off one by one, as well as helping himself to other items around the property. Ros had been driving him to church in Elim on Sundays and he had got more and more demanding, expecting her to lift and carry him and his family at all hours. Eventually she told him enough was enough and he was asked to leave the farm. She further feared for her and her daughter's safety after the SPCA had been called anonymously to rescue all his dogs. It turned out he and his wife were only too pleased to be leaving rough rural living in favour of a life outside the nearby fishing town of Gansbaai, where he had got a job at the Municipality working in the water department.
Barking in the night....
On a wet cold July winter evening at about 9. 30 pm I saw through the front window what I thought was Ros' little VW Beetle travelling along the Tierfontein Road in front of our farm. The sharp whining and baying of dogs could also be heard coming from the fields next to our house. At first I thought they were Ros' dogs and she was driving after them, but every so often her car would stop and she would switch off her car headlights and then start up again and drive as though she was looking for something. I thought she might be in trouble, maybe she was looking for a lost dog, or her car was cutting out due to mechanical problems. Meanwhile the incessant yapping and barking of many dogs continued coming out of the darkness across the cold wet landscape. Ros drove up and down and the barking got louder and louder. Then I heard a loud whistle just as Ros drove up our long driveway to our front door. Charl was in bed and although I was in my pyjamas I was standing at the front door of our dimly lit little house holding a candle and trying to make out what the problem was. I grabbed my slippers and a jersey and said to Charl, 'Ros is in trouble'. When she arrived at the door she said 'They are hunting dogs and they have got something! Are you coming?' Without another thought I grabbed a small torch and rushed off into the pitch dark behind Ros as she headed over the fields towards the barking. 'Have you got a good torch ?' she asked, 'Mine is pathetic'. Well mine was even worse so we were both in the dark. As we got closer we could hear the pack salivating hideously and braying as they cornered their prey Whatever it was the dogs had caught was wedged up against the dam and the small wooden pump house. I was terrified and Ros kept repeating, 'These are hunting dogs and I heard men's voices with them earlier'. I asked her if they wouldn't set the dogs on us, which we could tell were very large and numbered about six or seven, or would they not even shoot at us if they were hunters? I was completely terrified as we stumbled in the rain and mud, over the uneven grass field, bumping into barbed wire, and fence poles as we struggled through the fence to get close to the dogs. ' Don't worry' she replied, 'I have got a little something'. Finally we got close to the dogs and in the dim torch light we could see them in a frenzy pawing and biting at each other to kill their prey. The next second there was an almighty bang, as a gun was fired right next to me and I thought we had been shot. I fell to the ground screaming 'Oh my God, oh my God!' I was sure I would find I was dripping in blood. Ros said 'Sorry I should have warned you, I fired the shot!' Her ' little something' had been her 38 calibre pistol which she had fired into the dam wall next to the dogs to frighten them off. Well the dogs vanished, not a sound could be heard, no murmur, no running away, not a whimper, the night was totally and absolutely pitch black and silent. I was sitting in a puddle of mud in complete shock at the fact that I had been so close to Ros with her gun shot, the deafening sound of which had now made me temporarily deaf. Where were the men, were they going to come after us? We were perfect targets standing in the dark with our little light in the field. All I wanted to do was get back inside the house as fast as I could and put some proper clothes on instead of the skimpy pyjamas and slippers I had on which by now were sopping wet from the rain. So back we walked, once more fumbling and tripping over barbed wire and unfinished fences. At the house I put on some long pants and a jacket, handed Ros a pair of gum boots although she said she was soaked already, climbed into my boots and back we set to see what the dogs had caught. Meanwhile, Charl slept dead to the world through all the commotion, he had not even heard the gun shot. When we reached the dam and the pump house we shone our torch and saw a large porcupine lying on its side. At first I thought it was dead, but Ros said, no, the dogs seldom kill, it is the men who come and do the vicious killing by using a pole to smash the only vulnerable part of the poor animal, its nose, which is not protected by quills. Suddenly it moved slightly and managed to raise its head and opened one eye and peered at us. Ros talked to it gently and it slowly shook itself, rustled its quills before righting itself. Then it unsteadily turned around and gaining balance got up and trundled away first to the other side of the pump house and then it trotted into the night. Before we left the field, we checked the hunters were not lurking inside the pump house and as we walked back to the house we heard the porcupine utter a grunt, as sort of thanks. Ros at this point left to go and check up on her daughter who she had left alone in the car, while I went back to find Charl still asleep. I woke him to tell him about my shock at the gun and what had happened and the absolute fury I felt over this hunting and how whoever it was had had the cheek to walk right over our property in their blood thirsty killing of wildlife. I could not believe how brave Ros had been valiantly getting into her little Beetle the moment she heard the dogs and her determination to stop the hunters in their tracks. Most people would have looked at the rain and just felt it was too much bother to go out, let alone take on a pack of dogs and their unknown owners in the middle of the night.
