I was busily collecting small glass jars for the jams and canning I proposed to do once the fruit was ripe, and I was going to try a method of canning without electricity that I had found on the forum of 'Modern Homesteaders'.
But in the meantime I was tending my veggies, and I could be found many a morning jumping around like a lunatic on my new veggie patch, but it was not because I was doing some ritual, or a strange dance, but because I was squashing the mole tunnels! I had hoped that with Nina's Chinese wonder mole catcher I could manage the moles, and had against my better knowledge, made another patch without laying a piece of shading net underneath, and had planted some beetroot and a few spinach seedlings.
They came on beautifully, and after about a week without any tunnels, I relaxed, sure in the knowledge that the mole catcher was keeping the moles out, although I never caught one.
Then one morning I did my inspection rounds, and found a lot of my plants wilted, and knew that the bally moles had a field day catching earthworms during the night. On further inspection I saw that once more they had just made a new tunnel next to the mole catcher, and I could kick myself for being so silly as to think, after I first tried the thing out without success, that it would actually work in a real patch.
Jan's wonder chicken coops, the ones that gets moved every now and then, giving the two hens and a cock inside time to fertilize the spot, did not in my eyes do a lot of good, as our sun is just too hot. I moaned to the kids, and they said they had already put additional shading over, but it still bothered me, and I lost a bit of my trust in the teachings of the newly emerging, new age organic disciples.
I myself try and do everything as organic as possible, making my own compost, and planting only organic seeds, but when it comes to anything as strange as cooping up living things that love to scratch and roam around in such a small space, I feel uncomfortable.
I had tried to get out most of the Jerusalem Artichokes, as I had planted them in the wrong spot, and they were invading my whole back garden, but the plants just kept on emerging from the soil that I thought cleared. So I decided to thin them and try cooking them, as I read also on the forum, that it could be eaten if cooked correctly, although, thinking about my first try the previous year, I wasn't sure that I would become an addict! Strange that the moles never caused this invader any harm, as even a few of my smaller fruit trees died off while I was in Scotland, the soil having been taken away around their roots by the little pests! But my garden plants were getting on nicely as I had made it hard for the moles by using a lot of rocks.
I had a good laugh at the strange and descriptive language of our villagers, when a young farm worker called 'prokureurtjie' ( barrister), because he could come at the most inconvenient times and talk endlessly and animatedly about his fellow villagers and their  problems, but this time he came to inform me with great gusto and big tears dripping from his eyes, that he had thirty eight chickens, and this chickens were like his children, and they were fabulous layers, and now they were all stolen! I nodded my head and faked the necessary sympathy, knowing his powers of hitting upon a brilliant scheme to relieve unsuspecting people of their hard earned money!
Taking my faked sympathy as a sign to start on his mission, he asked very solemnly, and with even more tears flowing, if I would not like to relieve his heartache by sponsoring a box of wine to drown his sorrows!