You know what they say about hell and good intentions?

Irony is an amazing thing in life. Especially when it comes to living on a farm.

It all started with a church sale. You know, the one where people donate things that get sold for proceeds going to the church?

Yep. So weeks ago, they were asking for those donations and me and my mother (Anna-marie, who incidentally writes most of the posts on this blog) said that we'd use the cake decorating skills we'd learned so far (we're doing a course, in case you missed my telling you) and donate the cakes we make to the cake table for the sale.

Then, as things go on Rooshoek, we got so busy with a million things that it was the week before the sale was on (this past Saturday) that we remembered that we even wanted to do those cakes. But Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday was so crazy with getting things for picking, packing and transporting our flowers to the market that by Wednesday night, it was the unspoken consensus that the cakes would have to be donated next year.

But Wednesday night I went to the small group I belong to, and the lady in charge of the cake table asked if we couldn't possibly help by donating cakes.

And of course, I get guilted into saying yes to two.

On Thursday, my mother and I got to work on making the decorations. I did royal icing butterflies and my mother made plastic icing roses.

And this is where the woes started. See... it was raining. And this meant that my mother's roses didn't dry fast enough. On top of that, my icing just wouldn't work like it was supposed to to make the textured yet smooth look I was going for. In the end, these took six hours.

But hey, I figured that the worst would be over. I already learned how to cover cakes with plastic icing and it was easy. So as soon as my mother and I had time to work on the cakes together, we'd get it done, stick the decorations on and voila.

Eh... no.

We only found time to get started at 7 pm. (Anyone who knows cake decorating will groan here, since there's no way of really judging the smoothness of the icing unless you can look at it in natural light.)

And... you guessed it. It was raining. So the plastic icing was even softer than before. No problem though, since we'd just knead some icing sugar into the plastic icing until it's the right consistency.

Eh... good in theory. Except when we bought said icing sugar, we bought bulk. And where every single time before, the bulk icing was one brand, the shop we buy at had switched brands on us. And... we didn't know.

Which resulted in incredibly brittle royal icing butterflies and even worse, terrible, terrible plastic icing to cover cakes with. I mean, it tore for no reason whatsoever. 

Result: 4 more hours of work to get the cakes to look right, only six workable roses, six rose buds, and one butterfly. But, we made do with what we had. (We had to. No chance of getting better icing etc. on a farm at 10pm)

And this is what the cakes looked like (plus some of the mess that came from making them happen):

My mother's

Mine

They got lots of love at the cake sale (thank heavens), although we don't know what they sold for. We're just glad we managed to get them done in time, and that hopefully we'll never repeat the awful, awful experience with inferior icing ever again. 

Anyone else have crafty horror stories to share? 

The water on Rooshoek

Once, years ago I was on a train in England on my way from Sussex to London. It was late afternoon and the train was full. The woman sitting next to me must have found me quite a strange traveling companion and because of my accent she quickly wanted to know where I was from... On my " South Africa" answer, she informed me that she always wanted to live on an African farm. I thought it funny, because I then was living on an African farm and did not always find it so amusing or romantic ... Years have passed since then, and after a move into first a town and then the city, we are now back on a farm in Africa.
A farm, where wild animals still roam freely and this morning I decided that we have to share our story...
I hope you enjoy it... and love it as much as we love living here...

Rooshoek, the name of our farm translates to "corner of roses"... however don't be fooled, life on the farm is anything but the proverbial "moonshine and roses".
The event this morning that made me decide that I am going to keep a daily blog about our life here ( and get Misha to help writing it) was... wait for it... the coloring of my grey roots...!!
At six this morning, I was jerked awake by gunshots... not quite unexpected, because we had hunters overnight. Finally giving up all pretense of being asleep, I decided I might as well color my grey roots. Grey roots, which I for days have been trying to hide, by giving my hair more body when blow drying. The dye applied, I joined Misha for breakfast when Grandma arrived at the breakfast table and informed us that there was no water in the taps. "Not to worry though," she said " Jan has already gone to look at the water...".  Since you are all new to the farm, I have to give you a bit more back ground information.
 Jan is our foreman. To look at the water he has to drive up the mountain. Our water comes from a fountain about a kilometer away from the house. The fountain is quite a bit up the steep slope of the mountain, but twice a day Jan, or one of the other workers, will do the trip up the mountain to make sure that all filters are clean and the water is running. This trip to the water can be quite exiting as well, since they can and have encountered leopards, snakes and baboons on the way. These encounters are blogs for another day.
 Today however, I think Jan's trip was a little less exiting than what was going on while I waited for the water.
Usually the half an hour waiting time is always too long for me to be sitting around, I get irritated, but would you believe, today it passed amazingly quickly. So quickly that before Jan could get the water running again, it was time to rinse the hair and I was in trouble. I gave it ten minutes more, but still... no water.
Undressing and hoping for the best I got under the shower, but the few drops of water  in the shower pipe was just enough to have a lot of dark hair dye spread all over me. I feverishly opened the hand basin tap and lo and behold another liter of water came forth! Soon this water was just as mud dark as the dye and I had to pull the plug on that idea as well. I tried the other basin ( his and her basins) and another few drops came forth from the pipes... however not near enough to get the dye rinsed of.
Desperate now for a solution I grabbed the only option still open to me... the dog's drinking water. I didn't even stop to think about Oscar's slobber... No way.. I grabbed it and rinsed my hair. Hair that by now felt as dry as winter grass. I slathered on the conditioner because surely the water can't  be too long in coming  though the pipes. Twenty minutes later I was looking at the toilet with anxious eyes, but I could not bring myself to put my head in the toilet and rinse it. I did however open the bidet's faucet and rinsed of the conditioner with the little water still in those pipes. I  had to stand on my knees to get it done though.... And would you believe I just turban wrapped the towel about my now slightly darker, but very well conditioned hair, when water gushed  from the still open taps?
Such is the STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM.