Fire in the CCF neighbourhood!

We spent most of yesterday fighting fire on the farm Lamont, which is in the middle of (or between) two of our farms, Boskop and Cheetah View. We were able to help contain it and it only got on a bit of Boskop, but luckily we had made fire breaks a few weeks before on all our farms. This saved our lands. Fire breaks are like roads that are along our fence lines –-they are critical to helping contain fires.

View of Farm Lamont

Cleaning the firebreaks annually is a big job, but also a very important one. Most all of the farm Lamont burned, so our neighbors will not have any grazing on that farm this year. It is very dry now, and due to the heavy rains during the early part of the year, there is a lot of standing tall grass. August and September has a lot of high wind days and then there are also lightning storms that will take place in September and October when the short rains might come (I say might, as sometimes we don’t get rain). So, over the next couple months we are on high alert for fires.

One of Penda's puppies being shown to his meal.

Also yesterday Penda's puppies were introduced to solid food! Earthwatch Volunteer, Valentina Prott, helped with feeding the 3 week-old puppies. The puppy food was mixed with warm water, milk and whey and made into a paste that the puppies could easily lap up. They all enjoyed it and will receive this feeding once daily for few days and then later the frequency of feedings will increase.

Laurie