Thursday, November 5th We continued with the course and after successfully cutting our first dove-tail joint Ferdi felled his first tree. It was quite an adrenaline rush, leaving his arms a little weak. We planted four big logs as a foundation for the structure we will build during the course. The structure is the top part of the gable-end of the roof and covers every technique needed to build your entire log home. There was also a bit of tension in the group because two of the guys has very strong personalities and lots of tree felling experience and tried to dominate every aspect of the build, dispensing advice as if they were the teacher. Bruce, by no means unfamiliar with this kind of situation, handled it well. We had to cut the foundation logs so ... read more

Friday, October 30th Happy birthday Lize! Hope you have a fantastic day and an awesome party! May you have a blessed and amazing year. We slept late then spent a few hours catching up with the blog. As we were preparing lunch Paul came by and asked if we could help to catch the sheep because they needed to be sheered. It took two tries to get the sheep in the pen because on the first attempt they ran at one of the girls who got a fright and ran away. While Ferdi was helping with the catching and sheering Talita and Tim caught a chicken that wandered into the house and they safely deposited her in the chicken tractor. Before the sheep sheering started Ferdi helped to catch the lambs and Paul would put rubber ... read more

Saturday, October 24th We slept late then went to the Saturday market. It’s only the second market event so far with about ten stalls selling farm produce, making music, face painting, hand made clothing etc. The market was on the lawn next to the Global Gypsy and we spent most of our time chatting to Bruce and getting to know some other interesting folks. After sammies we went to the Last Resort and Paddy explained to us, in his great Irish accent, exactly what he has in mind for his barn/house/workshop. It's an American style barn with the upper level as his house/gallery and the bottom floor his workshop. It's gonna be awesome! With the meeting done we went home and Ferdi built a quick 3D model of the barn just for fun. After dinner we ... read more

Saturday, October 17th Nicol made a delicious omelet breakfast after which we continued preparing our van. Ferdi went to the shop in search of a few more items. We fitted the last few parts, glued the carpet in place, put the mattress and bedding in, followed by our packing containers. The Boesman was coming together great! Keira had a nap so we waited until she woke before we left. At 15:30 we said goodbye to Team Smit, stopped at the Pack 'n' Save to pick up supplies, then set off for Hamilton. We were in a daze. We couldn't believe that we were finally on the next leg of our journey. We arrived at Siubhan and Tony's new place in Hamilton around 7pm. It was great to see those two again. They had moved up in ... read more

Sunday, October 11th We woke to a gorgeous, sunny, Sunday morning. Nicol made a big egg, hashbrowns, bacon and toast breakfast. Afterwards we borrowed his car and drove to the far side of the city again. We were going to see a campervan that looked great on the website. Through some misunderstanding we ended up waiting for more than an hour for the owner to pitch up. When we saw the camper we were not impressed. It is ancient and has a weird column shifter for changing gears. It has a pop-top which is great cause you can stand upright inside the van when it is up, but after a test drive we "did not feel it". There was another van we wanted to check out while we were in the area. We took an instant ... read more