Today started with quite a bit of excitement in the family: we were going to the Strawberry Farm to..... well, pick strawberries. A few weeks earlier, when visiting Cape Town, my husband and I visited a strawberry farm there: Polkadraai. My mind painted a similar picture: rows and rows of strawberry bushes, golliwog-faced scarecrows scattered all over, and of course: buckets of sweet, blood-red strawberries....
You can very well imagine our surprise and disappointment when The Strawberry Farm had no strawberry fields! Yes, there is a little shop and café with everything even remotely related to strawberries, but no fields of them. And there hasn't been for the past five years. Instead, there is a little camp and paddock with two sheep, a few goats, a calf and a few geese. For a couple of dollars you can buy pellets, carrots, or a bottle of milk.
Now my farmer's daughter's instinct is to give the carrots to the goats, the pellets to the sheep, and the milk to the calf. Clearly the animals and kids didn't share the same instincts. The goats and sheep got milk. The calf got pellets. Everyone wanted carrots and then no-one wanted the last one. And it didn't seem to matter. It also didn't seem to matter any more that there weren't any strawberries to pick.
Sometimes it would be good if we as adults can go back to that youthful enthusiasm to embrace whatever adventure comes your way: if you expect to pick strawberries and get to feed sheep: be happy and enjoy it!
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| Feeding sheep at Strawberry Farm |
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| Scarecrow at Polkadraai |
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