A bark resounded across the valley. "Baboons!" barked the old man, fumbling for his rifle.
"Are you going to shoot the baboons Oupa?" My eldest asked his grandfather
"No, I'm going to invite them to a tea party!" came another barked reply. The rifle hovered for far too long in the direction of the raiding baboons. Then an explosion filled the air. Followed by barks among the confused baboons from a dozen different places. Then they disappeared. But in no alarmed hurry. I'm sure one of them flashed the middle finger at the obnoxious old man.
"Oupa I don't think you hit any" The voice rang out; "Why do you always miss?" Before another sarcastic response could erupt from my father-in-law I grabbed the children and, like the baboons, we disappeared back to our own house.
Homesteading is not for the faint hearted. The challenges sometimes seem insurmountable. It may take us almost to the brink of despair. Self-sustainability is an ongoing journey and into the computation are thrown predators. Baboons are probably our biggest problem. Currently. If they would simply satsify their hunger and then leave it would be enough. But they are destructive. The gardens get ravished and trees broken while the fruit is simply smashed. They terrorize the animals and would rip apart the smaller animals if they felt the wicked inclination to do so.
When the baboons become a threat to all life on our homestead they get chased away. With the rifle. A lot of people don't like the idea. Neither do we but when our lives depend on it the scare tactic is necessary. My 80 something year old father-in-law is up for the task. At his age he probably would not hit them anyway. Today after the baboons exited he hitched up the brush cutter and did some cleaning up. For his age. In this heat. And considering the extent of work - it is impressive!
The change of season is always a busy one as you hover between summer and winter. With all the winter preparation I'm pruning my herbs and nursing cuttings or storing seed. Every day we harvest. Potatoes, brinjal (eggplant) figs and the last of the grapes. FarmerBuckaroo has spent days with chainsaw in hand balancing on the tractor to cut back the overgrown branches. The beautiful stumps will see us through winter.
Almost through the first quarter of the year, clean-up fills our days and is what fills this month's Garden Journal
The excavator is still cleaning up in the valley. But the new growth is evident and the flood waters flow every month.
We had a massive Cape cobra in one of the herb gardens last week. It saw us as we saw it. I'm not sure which of us got the bigger fright. We lost a rooster recently to either a snake or scorpion bite.
Living on the outskirts of the Big Smoke, how does your summer garden grow 
