Rural love affair

People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr. 

For thirty seven years I've been having a rural love affair. I grew up in various towns and cities across South Africa, and when my husband and I got married in our late-twenties, we couldn't wait to own our own little piece of rural bliss, somewhere in the country, far from the madding crowd. 

We bought our first smallholding in 1975, starting from scratch on a virgin piece of land covered in lush indigenous grasses and lots of blue gum trees. For twenty seven years we fenced, planted, tended animals, built our house, stables, a cottage and other farm buildings, always busy with some project or another.

And after all this time, I still have not tired of travelling the quiet country roads, spotting wildlife and farm animals en route or stopping to pick some Cosmos or wild flowers for a vase.

Driving up one of the gravel roads in and around our area always fills me with expectation - what will I find over the horison? Neat, green fields? A little stream? Or some antelope crossing the road? I can't remember how many times I've been blessed with some wonderful find, a Hedgehog sprinting for the cover of grass, a Duiker quickly leading it's fawn back to the safety of the trees, a Kestrel sitting on a fence post devouring its prey.

 

And going for a walk takes on a whole different meaning. Walks are filled with all sorts of exciting things - unknown plants that need to be identified, bird song and insects, ground-hog families scurrying about their business, the odd snake hurrying to get out of your way - an artist or photographer's heaven!

But country living is not ALL bliss and joy and certainly has its fair share of draw-backs, like the wildfires we suffer every winter, an essential part of our ecology but still with devastating effects on wildlife and properties. A country property always seems to need more maintenance than suburban properties - fire-breaks that have to be cut, fences that need mending, boreholes that either dry up or need a new pump and all the animals that need tending. 

But its a way of life that, once it gets into your blood, you won't exchange for any other way of living!

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