{"id":312,"date":"2011-04-10T23:32:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T21:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=312"},"modified":"2011-04-10T23:37:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-10T21:37:05","slug":"back-on-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Back On Track"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday 10th<\/sup> April – Part Two<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Outside, the moon has just lost it\u2019s race with a bank of cloud in the West, the rest of the sky is still twinkling clear, and Windows media player is stupidly blinking \u201cUnknown Artist\u201d to Ofra Harnoy\u2019s rendition of Vivaldi\u2019s Cello Concertos. Three weeks after arriving, I\u2019m finally back to something approaching the reasons I come to Boggy Pond…<\/em><\/p>\n

I gleefully cancelled all alarms last night and awoke calmly when I had rested, then enjoyed a bowl of oats porridge on the step of the cabin before setting out to walk the bounds of the property. Just behind the huge old Blue gum tree that I call the \u201cTree-House Tree\u201d I found the foundations of a structure which was once either an animal shelter or a very small house. The back part is very overgrown, so it is difficult to tell the exact size. The area in front of the structure is relatively clear, so it could either have been a small farmyard or a chicken run. Finding foundations is useful in this area – it is slightly easier to get planning permission to re-build an old structure than it is to start from scratch.<\/p>\n

The intrusion of Bureaucracy and the mindless application of Regulation in rural communities may yet prove to be extremely frustrating. For most of the past 200 years Tesselaarsdal has been abandoned or ignored by Government. As one local fellow put it \u201cWe\u2019re not a Dorp and we\u2019re not a farm, so the Government doesn\u2019t know what to do with us!\u201d Unfortunately that has meant that The Department of Agriculture and the Local Authority have been able to toss the settlement to and fro, either ignoring it or meddling with it according to the expediency of the moment.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I was not allowed to register this property in both Christa\u2019s and my names, because that represents \u201cnotional sub-division\u201d since we are married under Ante-Nuptial contract, and Ministerial permission is required for the subdivision of Agricultural Land. On the other hand, the property is one of the boundary properties of the Town core, and although it is large enough to be classified an agricultural smallholding, it seems I need building plans passed by the Theewaterskloof regional Council. The Council has been known to demand \u201cEngineers Drawings\u201d for a straw bale house – at about R6,000 it hardly seems the way to encourage impoverished rural communities to better their lot!<\/p>\n

For now, I have other priorities. Progress here will be very slow while living conditions are less than ideal, so today I did some work on the biogas digester. After tinkering away on my writing-table at making just one of the valves for the agitation system, it was clear that a workshop \/ store room is a higher priority even than getting the ground in shape. That will not happen this trip though, so for the rest of the week I shall tinker away the best I can.<\/p>\n

As for local authorities and how to deal with them, I should perhaps pay a visit to a near-neighbour I met last year at a get-together. She and her husband have apparently been the whole nine yards with the local authorities about traditional building methods. By a Dickensian coincidence, she and I have actually met before – about thirty-eight years ago!<\/p>\n

But that is another, weird, story for next time!<\/p>\n

The stars are now hidden behind an overcast of cloud from horizon to horizon and the moon has also surrendered to the smothering blanket, so it is time for me to snug under the wonderfully warm woolly blanket Vianne sent me as a coming of winter present – just in time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outside, the moon has just lost it\u2019s race with a bank of cloud in the West, the rest of the sky is still twinkling clear, and Windows media player is stupidly blinking \u201cUnknown Artist\u201d to Ofra Harnoy\u2019s rendition of Vivaldi\u2019s Cello Concertos. Three weeks after arriving, I\u2019m finally back to something approaching the reasons I come to Boggy Pond… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}