STANDING in a beer tent outside George with strawberry-coloured cocktail in my hand listening to a one-man-band covering I'm On My Way To Amarillo, I wondered if following my instincts had been such a good idea after all.
My obsession with strawberries could be directly linked to my entering a nondescript corrugated- iron structure at Buffalo Hills game reserve near Plettenberg Bay one afternoon some days earlier.
We were herded through the dark doorway by bush-survival expert Kurdt Greenwood. Moments before he had been rubbing noses with a boomslang from his pet collection and I was curious to see what he had in mind next.
It turned out to be an attitude-shifting experience. As my eyes grew used to the dark, I could make out a battered copper urn complete with pigtail piping befitting any self-disrespecting hillbilly household.
Formerly the abode of infamous Garden Route adventurer and wildlife champion Jack Mudd, who secretly served citrus-mampoer as Jacks Jungle Juice from the bush still, it was now a more respectable, legalised venture under the banner of Nyati mampoer-liqueurs.
And Greenwood was dishing them out ice-cold. The buchu-and-apricot blend was pretty enticing. So was the whiff of naartjie emanating from the Van der Hum. The plum was good too. But I was smitten with the very first sip of the smooth strawberry-chilli combo. With a surprisingly delicate after-bite, it was everything a high-end mampoer-based bush liqueur should be.
The strawberry, much more so than the apple, is heaven sent. But, as I found out, it should not be taken lightly. And it is prone to deception.
For a start, it's not a berry. In the same way we are asked to believe that the dassie is most closely related to the elephant, we are expected to accept that the strawberry belongs to the rose family.
With a name derived from the wild woodland version first cultivated in early 17th-century England - which appeared to be randomly "strewn" across the Earth's surface - the strawberry is the Scarlet Pimpernel of the fruit world.
It was created inside-out with its most intimate sexual organs on prominent display. Unlike most fruit, the fleshy part is not derived from the ovaries, but rather acts as receptacle for many little ones (the myriad of tiny yellow knobs on the outside), each with its own seeds.
The flower itself is downright deviant. It can function as either male or female when the time is ripe.
Even the pests that attack strawberries sound inelegant enough to feel at home in any garden's red-light patch, with more than 200 regular irritants including varying sorts of slime mould (not my term),Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, the dreaded verticilum wilt .Get information on Air purifier from the unbiased,.. and, God forbid, rhizopus rot.
There is a reason the strawberry is so commonly mixed with legendary sex-accessories such as chocolate, cream and other dairy products that can be languidly licked off a willing surface.
But the strawberry is not all sweaty concupiscence. Its heart shape, passionate hue and close relationship to the rose all provide romantic credentials to counter any excess appetence.
With all this fresh in mind, I started seeing strawberries everywhere.A mold or molds is a hollowed-out block that is filled with a liquid like plastic, And one evening, as I was telling anyone who didn't want to hear that in parts of Bavaria country folk still tie baskets of strawberries to cow's horns - as an offering to the elves who will ensure the farmers have healthy calves and milk in return - my partner yelped and pointed to the paper she was reading.China yiri mould is a professional manufacturer which integrates Plastic Mould design and manufacture and plastic product development. "Strawberry Festival - Redberry Farm," it said.
Redberry Farm to the west of George lies in the heart of the Garden Route strawberry industry.The magic cube is an ultra-portable, A drive around the area shows strawberry fields stretching to forever.
Redberry itself is open to the public and was started some 10 years ago by one Mark Miller as a commercial venture. On a regular day you can pick your own berries, wander through the third-largest hedge-maze on earth, ride through the fields on a pony, or stick you kids in a huge big bubble-ball that churns around on the dam.
But on this day there was much more. It was hot in berry-land with the mercury rising to 28°C.
Hundreds of people were having strawberry-related munchies, browsing the stalls or watching the owner, sporting a sun-burned complexion not all that different from the fruit he promotes, raising his voice on the walkie talkie over a version of Black Magic Woman.
In the shop you can buy everything from strawberry body butter, jelly soap, hand lotion and bath jelly to strawberry-patterned bookmarks, candles, dishcloths, necklaces and earrings.
Everywhere strawberry icecreams, slush, yoghurts, syrups and sorbets, as well as jams, condiments and salad-splashes, line the shelves alongside fridge magnets, baby-slippers, greeting cards, faux strawberry lips and the obligatory strawberry T-shirts. There's even a basket filled with strawberry rugby balls.
And of course Redberry's very own strawberry liqueur, which you can purchase in large or small quantities and consume while wading through the strawberry overload. I chose the former option.
A while later, the world looks considerably different from when I first entered the shop. Everybody is friendlier and well, redder. The competitors in the strawberry-eating competition resemble an audition line for a vampire movie.
At one of the stalls I meet Bob and Ina van der Westhuizen. They have given their strawberry liqueur a combo-name without the Van der Westhuizen part: Bobina. They ply their trade on a farm across the (Outeniqua) berg, they tell me. I buy a bottle while the one-man-band launches into Living Next Door to Alice.
I end up on the little choo-choo train that runs through the strawberry fields. It's a pretty sight - people merrily picking their berries in the sprawling fields with the blue-green Outeniqua mountains as backdrop.
My obsession with strawberries could be directly linked to my entering a nondescript corrugated- iron structure at Buffalo Hills game reserve near Plettenberg Bay one afternoon some days earlier.
We were herded through the dark doorway by bush-survival expert Kurdt Greenwood. Moments before he had been rubbing noses with a boomslang from his pet collection and I was curious to see what he had in mind next.
It turned out to be an attitude-shifting experience. As my eyes grew used to the dark, I could make out a battered copper urn complete with pigtail piping befitting any self-disrespecting hillbilly household.
Formerly the abode of infamous Garden Route adventurer and wildlife champion Jack Mudd, who secretly served citrus-mampoer as Jacks Jungle Juice from the bush still, it was now a more respectable, legalised venture under the banner of Nyati mampoer-liqueurs.
And Greenwood was dishing them out ice-cold. The buchu-and-apricot blend was pretty enticing. So was the whiff of naartjie emanating from the Van der Hum. The plum was good too. But I was smitten with the very first sip of the smooth strawberry-chilli combo. With a surprisingly delicate after-bite, it was everything a high-end mampoer-based bush liqueur should be.
The strawberry, much more so than the apple, is heaven sent. But, as I found out, it should not be taken lightly. And it is prone to deception.
For a start, it's not a berry. In the same way we are asked to believe that the dassie is most closely related to the elephant, we are expected to accept that the strawberry belongs to the rose family.
With a name derived from the wild woodland version first cultivated in early 17th-century England - which appeared to be randomly "strewn" across the Earth's surface - the strawberry is the Scarlet Pimpernel of the fruit world.
It was created inside-out with its most intimate sexual organs on prominent display. Unlike most fruit, the fleshy part is not derived from the ovaries, but rather acts as receptacle for many little ones (the myriad of tiny yellow knobs on the outside), each with its own seeds.
The flower itself is downright deviant. It can function as either male or female when the time is ripe.
Even the pests that attack strawberries sound inelegant enough to feel at home in any garden's red-light patch, with more than 200 regular irritants including varying sorts of slime mould (not my term),Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, the dreaded verticilum wilt .Get information on Air purifier from the unbiased,.. and, God forbid, rhizopus rot.
There is a reason the strawberry is so commonly mixed with legendary sex-accessories such as chocolate, cream and other dairy products that can be languidly licked off a willing surface.
But the strawberry is not all sweaty concupiscence. Its heart shape, passionate hue and close relationship to the rose all provide romantic credentials to counter any excess appetence.
With all this fresh in mind, I started seeing strawberries everywhere.A mold or molds is a hollowed-out block that is filled with a liquid like plastic, And one evening, as I was telling anyone who didn't want to hear that in parts of Bavaria country folk still tie baskets of strawberries to cow's horns - as an offering to the elves who will ensure the farmers have healthy calves and milk in return - my partner yelped and pointed to the paper she was reading.China yiri mould is a professional manufacturer which integrates Plastic Mould design and manufacture and plastic product development. "Strawberry Festival - Redberry Farm," it said.
Redberry Farm to the west of George lies in the heart of the Garden Route strawberry industry.The magic cube is an ultra-portable, A drive around the area shows strawberry fields stretching to forever.
Redberry itself is open to the public and was started some 10 years ago by one Mark Miller as a commercial venture. On a regular day you can pick your own berries, wander through the third-largest hedge-maze on earth, ride through the fields on a pony, or stick you kids in a huge big bubble-ball that churns around on the dam.
But on this day there was much more. It was hot in berry-land with the mercury rising to 28°C.
Hundreds of people were having strawberry-related munchies, browsing the stalls or watching the owner, sporting a sun-burned complexion not all that different from the fruit he promotes, raising his voice on the walkie talkie over a version of Black Magic Woman.
In the shop you can buy everything from strawberry body butter, jelly soap, hand lotion and bath jelly to strawberry-patterned bookmarks, candles, dishcloths, necklaces and earrings.
Everywhere strawberry icecreams, slush, yoghurts, syrups and sorbets, as well as jams, condiments and salad-splashes, line the shelves alongside fridge magnets, baby-slippers, greeting cards, faux strawberry lips and the obligatory strawberry T-shirts. There's even a basket filled with strawberry rugby balls.
And of course Redberry's very own strawberry liqueur, which you can purchase in large or small quantities and consume while wading through the strawberry overload. I chose the former option.
A while later, the world looks considerably different from when I first entered the shop. Everybody is friendlier and well, redder. The competitors in the strawberry-eating competition resemble an audition line for a vampire movie.
At one of the stalls I meet Bob and Ina van der Westhuizen. They have given their strawberry liqueur a combo-name without the Van der Westhuizen part: Bobina. They ply their trade on a farm across the (Outeniqua) berg, they tell me. I buy a bottle while the one-man-band launches into Living Next Door to Alice.
I end up on the little choo-choo train that runs through the strawberry fields. It's a pretty sight - people merrily picking their berries in the sprawling fields with the blue-green Outeniqua mountains as backdrop.
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