Welcome to Chapter Three.
We left Pieter staring down a debt that felt colder than any Karoo frost. Every day, the financial weight of his world tightened, pushing him toward the breaking point. This chapter is the reckoning, the three-day vigil where survival depends on nature, instinct, and a child’s quiet will. If you want to truly understand the impossible odds Pieter faces, and why the fate of his farm hangs on every shivering, newborn lamb, we urge you to start from the beginning. Every crisis has an origin story, and you can find ours in Chapters One and Two linked just below.
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Chapter Three: The Lambing Stake
The frost came early that July, laying itself over the Karoo like a frozen blanket. It was the kind of cold that made metal sting and breath hang in the dark. Pieter held his mug of koffie, grateful for the warmth against his hands.
He stood at the study window, the lamp behind him throwing a faint reflection onto the glass. His thoughts hovered and tightened; the debt, the Boerevereniging, the heavy ewes due to lamb. He pictured the kraal out on the ridge - too far for quick checks, too exposed to the wind that blew in off the plains with cruelty. They would have to bring the pregnant ones closer to the house. Build a makeshift enclosure. Hope it would hold.
He drained the last mouthful and took the mug to the kitchen. After fuelling the kaggel he walked down the passage, pausing at the boy’s door where the child slept in the soft, unaware way of those who trust the world. Then Pieter moved on to Blaze’s room and pushed the door open.
“Pa, you’re still awake,” she whispered, book half-raised.
“You should be sleeping, kind. It’s past ten.”
“I just wanted to finish this chapter. Lindiwe helped with the difficult words.” She tucked the blanket up to her chin.
Pieter sat on the edge of her bed. “Tomorrow, we move the pregnant ewes to the front veld. Closer to the house. Safer. I’ll have the men build a temporary kraal. It won’t be perfect, but it must work.”
Her eyes brightened. “Can I help, Pa? Bliksem and I can keep them from scattering.”
His instinct rose - the automatic no, the protective father, but he remembered how steady she’d been the week before. The way she counted the ewes without error. The small things she saw before he did.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “You can help. But stay close. Don’t wander off. Not tomorrow.”
Her smile warmed the cold room. “I won’t, Pa.”
He brushed her hair once, gently, then left before he changed his mind.
By morning, the frost lay thick and white, crunching under boots. The kitchen smelled of warm bread and Lindiwe’s wood polish. Sonja chatted lightly about her Vroue Landbou Unie plans, barely noticing Pieter’s silence. Blaze, half-dressed and bouncing on the balls of her feet, tried to finish her roosterkoek and tie her laces at the same time.
Lindiwe worked quietly by the kaggel, wrapping thick sandwiches in greaseproof paper, filling the flasks, moving with the same soft-sure rhythm she used to braid Blaze’s hair. Blaze finished her chores quickly - the milking room, the vegetable patch - and ran to the stable. Bliksem snickered as she arrived.
Pieter had already briefed the farmhands. Tools were gathered, kruiwagens filled, and the men moved toward the front veld close to the homestead to start the new kraal.
Blaze called Jantjie to tighten Bliksem’s girth. Between them they saddled the horses, and the three riders set off across the frosted earth.
The work was hard. The sheep resisted, preferring the familiar kraal. The wind cut straight through their wool. Blaze rode the fence line, nudging stragglers toward Pieter and Jantjie. She rode tall, cheeks flushed, hands steady. Bliksem behaved better for her than anyone else.
Together they coaxed the heavy ewes toward the homestead. Tough going, but with Blaze quietly herding from behind, they managed.
By late morning, the flock was in the front veld. They ate quickly, koffie steaming in the icy air while the ewes settled. Blaze counted them twice. The number matched her earlier tally.
A few sheep were pawing the ground.
“Pa,” she murmured, “those ones… I think they’re close.”
Pieter watched a moment, then nodded. “You’re right.”
Something eased in him - just a small drop, but real. Blaze had an eye.
The men worked through the afternoon on the temporary kraal. Brushwood, mieliesakke, old straw, patched fencing - nothing pretty, but good enough to break the wind. Pieter checked every post twice, then a third time.
That night, after supper, Lindiwe carried a sleeping Blaze to bed. The brief domestic peace evaporated the moment Pieter checked the thermometer outside. The temperature was plunging. The real work - the quiet, sleepless vigil, was only beginning.
The next days drifted into each other. Cold mornings, brittle nights. Pieter, Jantjie, and two trusted labourers worked in shifts. The farm dogs formed a shivering perimeter. Sleep became a word without meaning. Tin drums alight with fire to keep the predators away and provide some warmth dotted the area around the kraal.
Pieter took the midnight-to-dawn shift. On the third night he found Jantjie hunched over a small braai drum, coaxing dying coals.
“Movement?” Pieter whispered.
“Too cold, Meneer. They’re holding on.”
Then, slowly, the signs began.
One ewe lay down and stood up again, pacing in distressed circles. Pieter called for Jantjie. Lanterns came closer. Breath froze on the men’s beards.
The lamb came quickly, small, wet, hitting the frozen ground with a gasp. The mother was exhausted. Jantjie rubbed the newborn, Pieter holding the lantern close. The sight of the tiny ram trembling released a quiet, fierce protectiveness inside him.
“A ram, Meneer,” Jantjie said, wrapping the lamb in hessian.
One life saved.
Four more ewes lambed before dawn. When the sun rose, the kraal was alive with thin bleats and shivering mothers. Pieter sent the other men home. He stayed a moment longer, letting the exhaustion settle. What rose in its place wasn’t triumph, but relief.
As he walked away from the kraal, something inside him finally exhaled. He looked back at the lambs suckling, their legs still shaky, and for the first time in days allowed his shoulders to drop.
Blaze ran to the kraal before breakfast, banana in hand. She climbed the gate, breath puffing white. When she saw the lambs pressed against their mothers, something in her chest loosened. She didn’t go in - it wasn’t her place, but she stood there a long while, eating slowly, reverently.
Pieter had worked enough lambing seasons to know when trouble was coming. He felt it in the quiet before dawn, in the way the ewes shifted their weight, in how the air held its breath. Blaze felt it too, though she didn’t yet understand what to call that knowing.
She had been born the farm but already she moved as if she’d always been farming, boots in the dust, her silver streak tucked behind her ear, slipping between chores without complaint. Some children were loud with their wanting. Blaze carried hers quietly.
That morning the clouds sat low over the veld, a soft grey lid with a promise of rain that would almost certainly break its word. Blaze followed Pieter to the front field, keeping close but not crowding him. She had learned that he liked silence, the kind that wasn’t sulking or frightened, just spacious.
The herd was restless. One ewe in particular paced the fence line, bleating with that thin, urgent pitch that warned of trouble.
Pieter clicked his tongue. “First birth. She’s young. We’ll keep a watch.”
They did. Most of the morning passed in slow circles: the ewe pausing, pushing, sliding down into her own fear and instinct. Blaze fetched water and stood ready with the old towel Pieter handed her, though it was far too big and frayed for such a small bundle of life.
The lamb finally arrived just after midday, small but perfect.
Blaze’s face softened into wonder. Pieter allowed himself one small smile. “Another ram,” he said, though not unkindly. Rams meant work. But this little one, with his knobby legs and damp curls, tugged even at Pieter’s weathered ease.
Blaze crouched to watch the ewe nuzzle her lamb. The ram blinked, sneezed once, and then sagged, exhausted but alive.
By late afternoon, the light had shifted, thinning into the long gold of Karoo dusk. Blaze was rinsing the tin pail near the kraal when she heard Pieter’s voice tear across the field.
“Blaze! Come quick!”
She ran.
Pieter was back on his knees beside the same ewe, but something was wrong. A second tiny ram lay still in the grass - too still.
“Here,” Pieter said, passing an old towel to her not looking up. “Rub his ribs. Firm, not rough. Keep him warm.”
Blaze knelt opposite him. The dust rose like a breath between them. She placed her hands on the lamb’s narrow chest, his heat faint beneath her palms.
The ewe let out a soft, pleading bleat.
Pieter wiped the lamb’s nostrils, clearing the mouth, urging breath, coaxing life from the stubborn quiet. “Don’t stop,” he told Blaze, his voice thin with concentration. “Let him feel you.”
She didn’t stop. Her small hands worked steadily, patient, certain.
For a long moment nothing moved.
And then…
A tremor shivered through the lamb’s body.
Not the twitch of something ending, but the spark of something deciding to begin again.
Pieter froze. Blaze felt it too, a vibration, an intense glow.
The lamb let out a wavering bleat.
Pieter sat back, the breath knocked out of him.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered, but gently, as one speaks in a church.
The lamb pushed, faltered, pushed again, and then stood, wobbly but determined. Blaze hovered her hands near him protecting without touching.
The dusk seemed to quiet itself around them.
Pieter stared at Blaze, not with suspicion, not with that old Karoo superstition he had shaken off years ago - but with a dawning he couldn’t yet name. Something in the child was steady beyond reason. Present in a way grown people seldom managed.
He rose slowly, brushing dirt from his knees.
“Good work, meisiekind,” he said, his voice softer than usual.
Blaze nodded, her palms still warm from the lamb’s returning heartbeat.
In the last slant of sunlight, Pieter knew two things with absolute clarity:
the lamb would live,
and this child - this strange, quiet child - was a gift he hadn’t asked for but would now have to protect.
July rolled on in a blur. The Merinos thrived. The Dorper lambs grew stronger. Bessie birthed her brindled puppies, and Blaze chose the runt, a tiny boy with one white foreleg. Everyone said he wouldn’t make it. Blaze simply shook her head. She sat with him until Bessie accepted him.
The final count at the end of July: one hundred and twenty-five living lambs.
Pieter brought the number to Sonja after supper.
“That is good news,” she said, eyes on her embroidery. “It will go well for you at the meeting.”
He didn’t answer. His thoughts had already moved onward to the Vleisfeest, the Boerevereniging, and the whispers he knew were coming.
Blaze sat near the kaggel, reading, the silver streak in her hair catching the firelight. Pieter watched her a moment, an ache moving through him.
The cold had been survived.
Now comes the harder season: people.
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Chapter Four will be an exciting one. Here we introduce the meeting that Pa Pieter is worried about and the Vleisfees - a yearly event. A letter arrives which leaves Blaze bewildered.
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Glossary
Afrikaans Word English Translation
Koffie Coffee
Boeretroos Farmer’s comfort (slang for strong coffee)
Kaggel Fireplace / Hearth
Kraal Pen / Enclosure / Corrals
Veld Open field / Grassland
Roosterkoek Grid-baked bread (a type of flatbread)
Kruiwagens Wheelbarrows
Meneer Sir / Boss (respectful address)
Meisiekind Little girl / Daughter (term of endearment)
Nonna Little one / Dear child (term of endearment)
Boetie Brother
Boerevereniging Farmer’s Union / Agricultural Society
Vroue Landbou Unie Women’s Agricultural Union (Women’s Institute)
Vleisfees Meat Festival (a large community agricultural event)
Bakkie Pickup truck
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This chapter pulled me right in. The tension, the tenderness, the cold, and the stakes all feel so real. Beautiful storytelling.
Interesting and excellent 👍