Camping At The Farm Guest House .....

The children slept in small tents dotted throughout the guest house garden .....

In the afternoons they had 'free time' & would play ball games and 'hide & seek' in the guest house garden

We recently hosted one of the local schools out to our farm for a 2 night field trip. There were around 65 kids in total, plus around 10 teachers who accompanied them. The children were aged around 10 years, and came from schools in 2 different Tanzanian towns.

They all camped up at our farm guest house (you can read a post I wrote about our guest house, and see more photo's of it over here). The children slept in small 2-4 man tents in the garden - as did some of the teachers, and I think that a few of the teachers slept in the guest house (I don't blame them !)

The school came with their own kitchen tent which was pitched at the back of the guest house (which has it's own fenced garden) and a team of cooks - all 3 meals a day were prepared 'bush style' on open fires for the kids and served in a 'dining' tent. They even had special 'toilet' tents set up at the back of the garden ('long drop' style but not quite as primitive as the toilets I showed you over here last year !)

The kids had a great time on the farm, splitting in to smaller study groups and taking part in various activities/going on outings on both our farm and in the surrounding areas. Hubby got to take a small group around and discuss 'Commercial Farming' with them, followed by a picnic afterwards and our daughter got to join in on all of this (aswell as many of their 'free time' activites), which she of course loved !

This group of pupils, in a few years time when they are a little older, will eventually have a school field trip which involves climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and the teachers were telling me that small field trips like the one they held at our farm - which involve things like pitching their own tents, using bush kitchen and toilet facilities and sleeping out under the stars - are an introduction to what they will experience when they climb Kilimanjaro one day.

Interestingly, the youngest person to ever (illegally) summit Mt. Kilimanjaro was a boy aged 7. The minimum youngest age to (legally) climb the mountain is 10 (and this record is currently held by someone, too) and the oldest person to ever summit was a 79 year old man.

Crazy ! Crazy ! The whole lot of them.

And .... did you hear about the lady who holds the world record for gazing at Kilimanjaro from her back garden every day for the past 5 years and repeating to friends/family 'I will never climb that mountain, so don't even ask !' She has a blog and did have everyone - momentarily - fooled though, when she wrote this post last year.

A Recipe For Rustic Ham & Pineapple Pizza

Homemade Pizza is always a hit in our family - here's one we had for lunch last week, eaten out on our veranda ....

Everyone loves pizza, and living really far away from any type of pizza restaurant means that I often have to make pizza myself, else we’d never get to eat it ! I use a really simple recipe for the base – made with baking powder instead of yeast (so there’s no endless kneading and waiting for it to rise etc …) This base is more ‘biscuit-y’ than crispy, but we prefer it that way.

I usually make this to serve as a lunch dish, with a nice salad. I’ve included the topping ‘recipe’for the ham and pineapple pizza pictured, but you could use any topping of your choice. (If you’d like to see my recipe for homemade pizza with a crispy yeast dough base, click here).


Rustic Ham & Pineapple Pizza

Base:

250 gm Flour
10 ml Baking Powder
3 ml Salt
3 ml dried Mixed Herbs
60 gm Butter or Margarine
1 Egg, beaten
a little Milk

Topping:

1 x small tin (around 45 ml) Tomato Paste (Optional)
1 x tin (around 425 gm) Tomatoes (Optional)
250 gm pkt Sandwich Ham slices
½ fresh Pineapple, cubed (or around 1 cup tinned Pineapple pieces, drained)
1 cup Cheddar Cheese, grated
Seasoning to taste (salt, freshly ground black pepper, dried herbs)

Sift flour, baking powder & salt together. Add the dried herbs. Rub in the butter (or margarine) until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Mix into a soft dough with the beaten egg and a little milk. Roll out to dinner plate size/shape. Spread the topping over the base (in the order listed) and bake at 200’C/400’F/Gas Mark 6 for around 30 minutes. Serve with a nice fresh salad.

In My Garden ......

I have a few unruly flowerbeds (above) ..... but I rather like them that way !

Some 'delicious monster's' which provide a cool, shady and quiet place for the cats to rest under during the heat of the day ....

Colourful flowers ..................... and an almost hidden daisy, or two .....................

Magnificent views ........................

And tall, shady trees .....................

Splashes of colour, now that Summer's here ..............

Delicate Linseed (Flax) flowers .... this variety is called 'Blue Dress' .......

And a lovely bunch of freshly picked flowers from my precious daughter ................

Aswell as a cat hiding up high in the cool branches of a tree ............. (that's our resident tiger - incase you were wondering !)

And as always, to end ............ a veranda view.

I think I'll just settle here for a while and enjoy the peace ..... and you're welcome to join me !