Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Friday, May 21, 2010

My Office

Since my last post I haven't had any braais, I have had a few beers but I haven't been out on the bike so I thought I would just tell you a bit about the boring stuff; work.
Ok so this is the view from my office;
We leave the jetty at around about 06h30 and this vessel is anchored in the middle of the bay, it is a De Beer's diamond dredger which has been here for many months on refit and is apparently going to be in the bay for another two years! We pass this on our way out.
I couldn't help taking these pictures because it has been so lovely and calm for the past week, it makes going out to the farm a real pleasure. Here you can see our little maintenance vessel "Mytillus" accompanying us out.
I got this yacht passing just before sunrise, it was so calm that he was motoring along, not a breath of wind so he didn't bother to hoist any sails.
We have had a "red tide" in the bay for just over two weeks now, "diarrhetic shellfish poisoning" which as it's name suggests is not particularly dangerous but it could give you the sh... it could cause serious stomach problems.
Because of this we are not able to harvest so we have taken the opportunity to sort and grade our oysters, actually some work that had fallen behind and now I have approximately 40,000 market ready oysters. Check out these beauties! We don't let our oysters get this big normally, you would need a knife and fork to eat something like this! I have got about forty oysters that I have put aside just to see how big I can grow them.
They would be really good to use in soup (Janet makes a to-die-for oyster soup) or for smoking, I will see how big I can grow them and then maybe take one home each week!
I have to supply 10,000 oysters for the upcoming "Whacky Wine Festival" in Robertson which takes place over the first weekend in June, we first attended this wonderful festival in 2008 and were not able to get accommodation last year. Well this year we have managed to get a place to stay so we will be back enjoying all that the Robertson valley has to offer, and let me tell you it's plenty!
I will be going in the bakkie (pronounced bucky - which is our "Ute" or "Pickup" depending on where you live) because a) it's easier to balance a bakkie after a day's wine tasting and b) I'm going to be buying a couple of cases of Robertson Sauvignon Blanc to bring home, not easy for Janet to carry on the bike!
That's still two weeks away....I'm sure we'll ride before then.
Stay on two wheels and stay safe.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How would you describe the taste of those oysters, they look fantastic. I want some.

Dan

the rider said...

Hi Dan, they are wonderful but just a bit too big for one bite and swallow, our mediums are the best with good meat condition now in the winter months. I eat oysters pretty much every day, I carry lemon juice and tabasco sauce in my bag out on the boat. Hey it's a tough job but someone has to do it!

Geoff James said...

Wonderful photos Andrew, our two photos have so much in common! We had a great BBQ last night of snapper and trevally we caught at lunchtime!

Geoff James said...

Oh, and congratulations on the rugby results - thoroughly deserved!

Have a beer on me :-)