Chapter 17

Morningside Meadows, Caledon District, Overberg.

There are sounds on a farm that start off long before the light of dawn graces the land. One of those sounds was the feel-good sound of cows bellowing. Well, the proper English word is “lowing.” I wonder if you ever heard the word used or know that there’s such a word. Chuckle.

Well, these farm animals with their soulful eyes were mooing, bellowing, or lowing, whatever you prefer. They are a collection of animals, each group having a complex social structure and using different pitches of sound to express their different emotions. Right now, the cows were expressing their impatience of waiting in line to be milked. Oh yeah, getting breakfast too. Usually when a cow is milked, she is fed.

Far off in the distance one could hear the intermixed sound of sheep bleating. For them the day has also started, and they each look forward to a lazy day of grazing in the harvested grain fields and moving along with the flock to wherever the most juicy morsels still hide away.

And then there was that bloody rooster. King of the yard and perched high up on some vantage point from where he surveyed his kingdom and announced the coming of dawn.

I rolled over on my right side and came nose to nose with a pillow-tasselled head. Sparkling ice-blue eyes looked at me, a smile on her lips.

“Good morning love. Time we go catch the day, before it runs away,” she announced, and then she snaked an arm around my neck, and pulled me in for a kiss.

“Morning, Goldilocks, slept well?”

“Like a log!”

“Well, we better go see what’s happening outside. The missus of the farm can’t be caught dozing!”

“Nope!” Andrea replied and sat up, stretching. “Bathroom!” With that, she was out of bed, going over to the bedroom door and opening it. She peeked out, up and down the passage, and was gone.

I closed my eyes for a moment, reliving the sight of those long slender legs. Then I followed her example and got up. Let the day begin; there’s a lot to do. I looked at my watch, it was just past 04:10. A farmer’s day starts early.

Andrea was dressed in her Wellington water boots. You always wear Wellington water boots on the farm due to the ever-present mud pools and cow p... (You know what I mean.) A short sleeve men’s shirt and short leg dungaree made up the rest of Andrea’s attire, together with that floppy khaki hat on her head as protection from the harsh African sun. With her fair complexion, I think she did need the protection. I don’t think she needed more freckles on her face, but her slight freckles are beautiful. Don’t tell her I said that. The “I hate my freckles” argument might just ruin a morning together.

She looked like a real country girl, and seeing her running up and down the milking shed together with Solomon, checking and rechecking milking the cows, was a feast for the eyes.

“Have you ever milked a cow before, Dusty?” she asked me as she wiped a stray curl of hair out of her face. Her hair was done in a ponytail, but tendrils of fine hair still framed her lovely face.

“No, I never had that pleasure,” I replied.

“Well, let me show you. I’ll cut out one of the next cows that come in, and we can have you milk her the old fashion way.”

“I thought you just used the milking contraption. All stainless steel and stuff.”

“Yeah, the modern way, but I learned the old fashion way and now I can pass on that skill to you.” Giggle. “You’ll need it if you want to keep cows on Nooitgedacht!”

“Who said I am going to keep cattle on Nooitgedacht?”

“Mister Arno De Lange!” She announced, placing her hands on her hips and representing a fuel pump, her head slightly tilted to the left, and that floppy hat half obscuring her eyes. “If you keep a farm, you must have cattle, sheep, a pig or two, chickens and geese! Even a dog or two, and some cats ... Horses! You need horses too!”

“Jeez, I’m going to be busy milking all those things...”

“Dustyyyyyy! You only milk COWS!”

Chuckle. “Oh...”

“You’re useless,” she sighed. “Here comes a cow now ... Let me cut her out of the line.”

“Now who’s useless?” Angie asked from behind us.

“This Doofus here,” Giggle. “He wants to milk all the farm animals. Maybe the males too!”

“Hopeless, maybe, but not useless,” Angie coddled. “I can tell you of some stuff he is useful for...” Angie kept a straight face, but little devils were dancing in her green eyes. Andie looked down and blushed. Then she composed herself and looked up again.

“Okay! So, show the rookie farmer how it is done,” I said, but thought: “They have a bloody machine to do it with.” And as if reading my mind, Andrea said:

“You got to learn to do it the manual way, because what are you going to do if the electricity fails, or the milking machine packs up? Then you sit with cows with full udders moaning in pain because you do not release the pressure for them.”

“Oh, boy!” I replied. “Maybe it will be better to skip the cattle and just drive up the road to Morningside and buy some milk,” I teased, smiling my most seductive smile.

For the first time ever, Andrea gave me the evil eye and smirked. “Now! You can’t milk a cow with cold hands. Go over to that wash basin and wash your hands with the soap and WARM water.”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” I said and collected a slap on the biceps. “Ouch!”

“That’s for being a doofus!” Andrea sternly said, and Angie giggled.

And so began my ordeal of learning how to milk a cow, the manual way.

During my instruction on cow milking, Andrea showed me how to do it by sitting down on a little milking stool. Then she told me to open my mouth wide. I did and was rewarded by Andrea squirting the milk from the cow’s teat directly into my mouth. Two squirts of lukewarm full-cream unpasteurised milk.

“You can’t appreciate what you are doing until you tasted milk directly from momma-cow’s teat,” She giggled.

Angie collapsed in a fit of laughter.

Breakfast came around 07:15. By that time my back was acting up. I not only had to milk the cow but had to do three others until ‘instructor-slave-driver’ Andrea was satisfied that I could do it on my own.

After breakfast the bunch of us went out to the food barn to inspect the damage in the daylight. Andrea was downhearted, but not depressed. Her farm-girl spirit kicked in, and she instructed Solomon to get some men together and start taking down the damaged beams, rafters and corrugated iron sheeting.

Three of TC’s men, all engineers, came over and offered to help get the front part of the barn reconstructed. With their trained eyes and skills of field construction in war zones, they quickly made an assessment of the materials needed, and asked Andrea for the keys to the five-ton Leyland truck that was parked in the equipment barn.

During our inspection of the burned part of the barn, an SUV with Mai-Loan, Nadia, and Darya in it pulled up.

“We thought of coming to give Angie a hand, but it looks like Andrea needs us more,” Mai-Loan said, looking over the charred remains of the front section of the barn. “What gives?” And we relayed the happenings of last night to them.

I have something to cheer you up, girlfriend,” Darya said and scratched in her backpack. “Here, you will never know where this came from, only that you got it from a friend.”

Darya handed Andrea a brass pendant on a brass or coper chain. Andrea took it and looked at it, turning it over in her hands.

“Thank you, Darya. It is beautiful, don’t you want to have it yourself?”

“Nope! You keep it and use it. Let it remind you of me. Now, what do we do to get this shed thingie good again?”

“Rebuild the burned part. The ‘TC Engineers’ have come up with a solution, and I think they are on their way to the Caledon or Greyton Co-operative for supplies,” I replied.

“Then let’s go!” Nadia said.

“Wai ... wait!” Andrea cautioned. “I don’t have an account with the Co-operative and no cash. This will cost a fortune!”

“Don’t sweat it, Andie, I’ve got a full platinum card that needs excise!” Nadia replied.”

“And so do I,” Mai-Loan spoke up. “Let’s get going. By tonight this shed thingie must be spick and span!”

“And there goes my help...” Angie sighed.

“But I’m still here, sweetie,” Ash said and placed his arm over Angie’s shoulders, hugging her.

“Yeah, my men will help too!” TC offered. “Let’s get the ball rolling.”

While the barn repair team went off to get supplies, Andrea went with Solomon to look at the sheep a little farther away. I came to the conclusion that farming takes up most of your day and energy. I did not know how Andrea could cope with the farm, be the CEO of Quad Five, complete her studies, and still find time to complete her PPL.

Quad Five could be run by a managing director, and there I have a candidate to consider. The farm could also be run by a farm manager. Again, I had a candidate in mind: someone who knows the farm and has been working on the farm for half his life. Yeah, Solomon is a good candidate. I’ll have to run it past Andrea and see if I can get her to agree. Appointing the two managers would free up much time for Andie to finish her studies and complete her PPL.

While Andie was away out to the fields, I sat down and started my tasks: getting the insurance to sort out the damage to my garage and getting a removal company to pack and transport Andrea’s apartment goods to a storage facility. There she can go through it and keep the things she wanted and trash the broken stuff that could not be fixed.

I also got hold of the rental company that rented her apartment to her, and extended the lease for another year. Where to stay while at the university should be the least of her worries.

Then a neuron fired in my brain. Andrea’s car. That thing is destined for the trash heap. I need to find her something reliable and good. Something not too hard on fuel consumption, but also not a Japanese compact. Nothing came to mind. I know she looked at a second-hand BMW 318i, but at a going price of five hundred and fifty thousand Rand, she could not afford the monthly instalment.

She’s got her 325, and a new 325i will be around eight hundred and seventy-five thousand Rand. No problem. She gets more car for a few hundred thousand more. A nice powder-blue one. Hmm ... Let’s call Erich. He can start the ball rolling and get Andrea the latest BMW 325i. Let’s call this a Christmas present.

Mid-morning saw the construction team back, and they started demolishing the damaged part of the barn without delay. A few farmhands were there to help and within an hour and a half the charred and burned remains were off and stacked on a pile.

They took just a short break for lunch and off they went again, this time digging out the stumps of the burned posts, erecting the new posts, mounting the new beams, then adding the roof trusses and side panels. I was amazed at the speed at which these guys did the work.

Andrea returned from the fields just after lunch and just stood looking at the building going on. There was an expression of disbelief on her face.

“Damn! These guys know what they are doing. They not only know how to be security, but they sure can build a barn!”

“These guys are trained to work under battlefield conditions. Building bridges over rivers, so the troops can advance is only one of their specialities.”

“And the other special skills, besides building barns?” She asked, tilting her head.

“Blowing up bridges they don’t want the enemy to cross ... Sometimes WITH the enemy on those bridges...” I flatly stated.

“So, TC and his men are ... soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“Damn, Dusty, you keep strange friends,” Andrea said and looked down at her feet. I caught a flash of light from around her neck and saw the pendent she was wearing, the one Darya gave her.

“Andie, do you mind showing me that pendent?”

“No, here...” She replied and took it off and handed it to me. “I think it was so special of Darya to give it to me.”

I took the pendent and looked at it. A flat, round brass disk that looked like it was made up of concentric rings, ever getting smaller fitted into one another. But it was the centrepiece that struck me. It was the back part of a .416 Rigby cartridge! The percussion cap of the cartridge had been cleverly replaced with a shiny red crystal. The words; “NORMA” at the top, and “416 RIGBY” on the bottom half, still clearly visible. Man, this Darya was even a clever artist. So that is how she got rid of the brass casing, but still retained the essence thereof.

I handed the pendent back to Andrea: “That is special. Treasure it.” I said, not telling Andrea that I knew where it came from.

“Oh, I will! An Angel gave it to me!” Giggle. “An angel with black wings...”

“They might have black wings, but they have hearts of pure 22-carat gold!”

“I know, that’s why I call them my friends ... and love them. Just look at what they are helping here with.”

“Treasure them. It goes to show; a stranger, is just a friend you’ve never met,” I replied.

“It sort of reminds me of the shortest ghost story by Frederic Brown. It has only two sentences, and reads: ‘The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. Then there was a knock on the door’.”

I just looked at Andrea. This girl will be my match. Clever, multi-tasking, and an IQ north of 140! She doesn’t fit the mould of “Dumb Blond” at all.

Just look at her. Gumboots, denim dungarees, floppy khaki hat, crazy blond ponytail falling like a waterfall over her back. A real, down-to-earth country farm girl that can grace the pages of Vogue magazine and any fashion catwalk in the world, but she is just Andrea, and I love her.

Then Andrea stepped closer to me, snaked her arms around my neck: “I love you, you big doofus...” Right there, in the middle of the farmyard, in the blistering sun, she kissed me, pressing her slim body hard against me.

Cat calls and whistles came from the still uncovered rafters of the barn construction as work momentarily stopped.

The work on the repair of the barn was very near to completion. A half hour to an hour more and then the feed could be brought back into the newly renovated section.

A dusty, mud smeared and tired group came back from their prospecting expedition. TC’s men made off to the showers and Angie and Ash just flopped down on the plastic chairs on the patio, not wanting to dirty the other nice patio furniture.

“You look dishevelled. What gives?” I asked.

“Besides just dust, grime and mud, I don’t see any sign of titanium or titanium oxide,” Angie sighed. “I need to go deeper and use more heavy equipment.”

“There’s a backhoe in the equipment store. If you can get it there where you want it, you’re welcome to use it,” Andrea offered.

“Thanks, girlfriend. I’ll see what we can do. But don’t get your hopes up. I think it was just a ruse.”

“You think that there ain’t any titanium stuffies there?” I questioned.

“It’s too early for any conclusion. Let me get the backhoe out there and see if I can get any valuable samples,” Angie replied.

“Yeah, let’s pack up for the day. I’m shot!” Ash complained. “I am grimy, and I smell myself.”

“I did not want to say anything,” Angie teased and pinched her nose.

“Well, you don’t smell like spring roses either, you know!” Ash fired back.

“Then come on, Piggy-wiggie. Come wash my back, and I’ll wash yours,” Angie invited, winking at Andrea.

“Sounds like a plan,” Andrea said. “I’m grimy too. Now, who can I get to wash my back?” She looked around and settled her eyes on me, a sparkling in her blue eyes and a flirty smile on her lips.

“I don’t mind...” I offered.

Giggle. “Oh sure, you won’t mind. You’re just making up an excuse to see me naked.”

“You can always wear your bikini...” Angie interjected.

“Thanks, girlfriend! You just gave me a bright idea...” Andrea replied.

“Ahhhhhh ... no,” I moaned.

“You sleep with him, and he’s not seen you naked before?” Angie smirked, and Andrea’s eyes got big. Her mouth opened but no word came out. She knew she was caught out. Andrea’s sneaking out of my room in the morning did not go unnoticed.

Andrea took a solo shower, and changed into skinny jeans, flip-flops, and a short sleeved blue blouse. This time her hair was just held back in place with an Alice band.

“I have to sell some stock,” She sighed as she flopped into my lap.

“Why?” I questioned.

“The fields can’t carry this many sheep.”

“How much?”

“Sheep?”

“Yeah, how many sheep?”

“About four hundred.”

“And what will you get?”

“I’ll let them go for a nine hundred a head. A bargain for the buyer, but I need to clear the fields. There’s too many of them.”

“Well, if you keep on wanting me to take over Nooitgedacht, I might as well start getting stock. I’ll take them.”

“Dusty! You can’t go on shovelling money into the bottomless pit called Andrea!”

“No, not shovelling money into a bottomless pit. Stocking up Nooitgedacht, is the general idea.”

“Okay...” She sighed.

“Good.”

“You haven’t seen the sheep yet.”

“I trust you...”

“There’s four hundred and seventy-five sheep grazing Nooitgedacht right now.”

“I’ll take all four hundred and seventy-five. Then it saves you having to move them.”

“But it doesn’t solve the overgrazing problem. You give me money for them, and it becomes your stock, but they are still there on Nooitgedacht. Still grazing the fields...”

I realised that Andrea was thinking like a businesswoman. Her object was to move the stock OFF the land, and not just getting money for a few head of sheep.”