At the fishing competition a couple
weeks ago, I met someone else that drove a Defender and built his own
little house (with earthen floors) from sandstone collected from a
nearby river. Through someone else, I was given the idea of
searching for sandstone at the same place, so Tuesday, Sticks and I
went looking. Took the wrong road at first, but stopped for
directions, and found we were close, but had to go all the way back
to the tar road and take another, pretty rough road.
About 2 km in the right direction, down
a couple steep drops, we came upon on old (sandstone) farmhouse. We
explained what we were looking for (sandstone, that was up for grabs,
that this other guy used), and the old man got in the Landy with us,
and we drove off to the neighbor's house (through rough
roads/pastures). When I explained what we were looking for, again,
through his explanation, I realized we should have been talking to
the old man! However, a bakkie had followed us the last bit road,
turned out to the the police because the old man had reported some
stolen stock, and he went off with the policeman! Back at the house,
we spoke with the grandmother. She pointed out some sandstone across
a small field. We checked it out, and it wasn't much better than
what is left on our place. When we got back to the house, she told
Sticks about someplace else. We walked part of the way around the
koppie (hill) that they live on to a barbed wire fence, and she was
talking on and on and pointing off into the distance. Sticks didn't
translate much, just that some stone was out that way. Made a plan
to come back on Thursday. It didn't look too promising, but thought
to go ahead and check it out. It had been nice driving around parts
of the surrounding area that I hadn't seen before, and was fun in
that way, so even if it didn't work out, it had been a bit of
exploring.
Thursday, Sticks and I headed out. At
the farmhouse, a young guy joined us to show us where to go. We
drove literally through the yard, between a gap 4 meters between the
house and a barn. They pulled open a wire gate (these are
“temporary” gates, were the wire is cut and some kind of
attachment made to allow it to be open and closed) and we started
driving off through a pasture. It was fairly rough, and we kept
going and going. I was wondering if this was really worth it. We
went up a bank, and then I finally saw it. It was a very old, broken
down, sandstone house! One gable end of the house was still
somewhat standing, probably about 1.75m high, mortared only with
earth. On the ground all around were many pieces of squared stone,
great for building with. Our guide took us about 50m away to another
sandstone rubble pile. Short ways off, there was the rubble of
another building! All around me, I was looking at enough sandstone
that could have made our stemwall!!
We loaded up quickly and easily, only
15 minutes or so, and made our first delivery to the house. The plan
is to cut the stone for windowsills. Laurence, from Rosa, offered
his industrial grinder to lend, and Sticks is familiar with cutting
stone. So, we made a couple of trips, and got a nice pile here at
the house. After lunch, while loading, I looked over aways, and saw
cut stone lying out on the ground! We went over to look at it. Some
of the standing stonework is just amazing! Our last load was all cut
stone, delivered to de la Harpe to help hold down the plastic against
my most recent enemy, the wind!
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| Just impeccable work! Love the lintel. |
Looking at the stone, I felt a bit
peculiar taking it away. Taking down stones someone else put up over
a hundred years ago just felt odd. However, there is good reason to
believe the stone may become “lost,” and might not be recoverable
in the near future. So, if we take stone someone worked at so hard,
and give it new life in our home, I feel I'm treating the stone with
respect. Leading up to where the door was at the first house, there
are 4 large stone set in the ground as paving stones. I was thinking
of pulling a few out to put as stepping stones at our house. There
are a couple pieces that have notches, one where a hole has been
carved into the stone 8cm deep or so. Would like to save these
pieces too.
The last two weeks we have been really
blessed in many ways. Financially, we've had some gifts come through
that send us out of surviving into thinking of things we can purchase
for our new life here (like an energizer for our electric chicken
fence-we'll have chickens soon!) To come across this much great
stone is another blessing. We would some day like to build a guest
house, and now we just might be able to get enough sandstone for the
stemwall. The next several weeks will have me driving back and
forth, collecting sandstone, with a smile on my face.
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| This is 3 loads worth of stone. |
