Why the Rain Wont Fall


One of Rustle Crow’s relatives – or it could be Rustle himself! – has set up a maternity unit in Rustle’s old home.

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From the various clicks, caws and chuckles that have started to drift down from the nest it would seem the happy event has taken place and we have some proud crow parents on the property once again.

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If you look very carefully at the top centre of the nest, you can just about make out a baby crow beak peaking out

On Friday, while I was peering up at the nest and trying to see if I could spot our new arrival, Raymond – our garden helper – sidled up to me, shaking his head and tut-tutting.

“What’s wrong Raymond?”, I asked, expecting him to tell me that worms were eating the oranges again, or that he needed more fertilizer to put on the cabbage seedlings.

Instead he pointed up at the crows nest and answered ” Those birds, Madame. They are bad. We must chase them”.

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What?!

“Oh? Why? What is bad about them?”

“They are keeping the rain away. Every time the rain starts to come they flap their wings like this” and he demonstrated, a pretty good impression I thought “and then the rain is afraid and it goes away”

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“Rain rain go away, come again another day”

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A crow with a view; making sure the rain has gone

Not so Neighbourly


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We are now on the warmer side of winter; nights are not as cold and days are getting longer. There is not long to go until the wheat starts to senesce and we begin preparing for harvest.

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We have not had any rainfall since March and it’s pretty dry, so until the drying out period for the wheat begins it’s important that we keep on top of our irrigation program.

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Power outages are normal around here. They happen almost daily and although we usually receive notification in advance, they can be quite disruptive to farming operations. When we woke up to no electricity this morning – with no prior warning – Piet contacted our local electricity supply company (ZESCO) who told him that power was out for maintenance. He then posted a question on the WhatsApp ZESCO chat group and got this response:

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Which was quickly amended to:

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Having elephants as neighbours can be rather trying at times!

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