Doc and I took my oldest daughter to the farm with us for the weekend. That’s the oldest child – the one who thinks she was a tomboy growing up and is ‘outdoorsy’ now.
How do children have these memories? She went through a phase when she was ten years old where she had a short (but very stylish) haircut and wore baggy clothes. But that was as tomboyish as she got. And it only lasted as long as it took her hair to grow again.
And outdoorsy? When they were kids we never went camping, or fishing, or horseriding, or hiking, or any of those pursuits that might be called ‘outdoorsy’. Unless you count playing netball – I suppose that’s done outside!
But she wanted to spend some time with her mum, so she decided to come to the farm with us.
By the time she finished work and got down to our place Friday night it was already dark, so when we got to the farm it was dark, and very late. And very, very cold.
But despite the cold we stood around and admired the night sky and the full moon shining on the lake. The sky out there is amazing. I remember standing in our backyard when I was a kid and looking at the milky way. That’s not something you ever see any more in cities, but out there it’s thick and milky white. And you’re guaranteed of seeing shooting stars.
We unpacked, made up the beds, lit a fire and toasted the stars with a glass of champagne.
Because we went to bed late, and it was so cold, we all slept in the next morning. Yet when we finally got up there was still a thick fog blanketing the house,
Our house is at the top of a hill and looks out over the valley and the lake. So in winter when I get up I often see fog. It’s thick over the lake but at the top of the hill it’s much less. You can actually see it swirling, gradually moving away from the house, turning into clouds the evaporating completely as it lifts into the sky. But this one was different. Enclosing the house and yard in its own secret world. The bare winter trees looked eerie looming out of the fog, like something out of a suspense movie.
It was spectacular to experience, but presented Miss Outdoors with her first challenge. There is no toilet at the farm, so you either have to just go and squat somewhere, or venture across the paddock and dig a hole. And Miss Outdoors needed to go and dig a hole
I think that was the point she decided she wasn’t so outdoorsy after all!
Doc thinks we spend far too much time talking about poo in my family generally, so you can imagine how much the conversation centred on it when going to the toilet was an adventure! I’m not going to go into the details here, but at least in winter there are no blowies. And if you followed our adventures on the Cape you’ll know what that means!
