Christmas at Maizefield

We celebrated a BIG family Christmas at the Farm. We spent the days down at the dam;sailing and skiing and fishing and spent the evenings braaing and sitting around a camp fire.The weather played ball for the most part, with very little wind and only a bit of rain at night. The Woluters and the Shorts came up from Durban, Daryn and Gosia from London and the Fishleys, Sandersons and Nortjes from Joburg.  On Christmas morning the main house was abuzz with activity with all the present opening and cooking and we had our Christmas lunch in the Party Barn; all decked out for the occasion. It's so wonderful to spend great time with family and friends and words can't convey the joyful, exciting time we had. It's all about making happy memories.

Summer of Love

After a very relaxing week at Zebula with Ann and her family, we headed off to the Farm for 12 days. Initially, we worked really hard getting the place ship-shape and Neil spent a lot of time sorting out boats, yachts and canoes as well. The new motorbike zipped all over the place. What is wrong with walking from the house to the barn? For anyone who has never visited Maizefield, a bit of background. Maizefield is in the Free State on the banks of the Vaal Dam and 20kms from the closest village, Oranjeville. 2013 will be the 25^th anniversary of friends visiting the farm. In the early days there was no electricity and only the main house for sleeping, so we all used to pile in and share rooms, sleeping on rows of mattresses on the floor. In 2000, the Barn was cleaned out re-named the Millenium Dome and we had the first party there to usher in the new millennium. Since then, 3 cottages have been added, some outbuildings have been converted into rooms and we have electricity. In SA 16^th December is a public holiday and by that date hardly anyone is left in Gauteng, everyone is heading for the coast for the holidays. We had a great long weekend of parties and braais, skiing and boating and sailing. Alfred, the catamaran, takes a few hours to assemble, but once on the water is a good substitute for the raft, which was left high and dry after a storm one year and is no longer in use.