So, yet another week at Kamberg Valley Hideaway. We have been working on clearing the invasive wattle trees from our river frontage the past week or so and it is looking stunning. Obviously there is still quite a bit of work to do (always is a work in progress at first), but we can now see some of the beautiful stretches of the Little Mooi River that we have bordering the property.

Bryan and I took a stroll to the river on Saturday and here is a short video of one area of the river along our River Walk. It is one of my favourite spots.

This week we also had our first guests staying in the new Forest Cottage. They decided to try a spot of fishing from the island in our dam and they managed to catch one of our new stock of rainbow trout! Very exciting for our budding fisherman! Not so good for our trout!

As well as our guests enjoying a spot of fishing, the birds seem to be enjoying the dam and the reeds too. Lots of red bishops are flying around, as are the resident Egyptian Geese and this darter that seems just a l;little bit too interested in our trout!

The other exciting thing that I don't think I have mentioned before, but that we have in abundance at the moment, are porcine mushrooms. I am going to try to dry some of them because we just have too many to get through at the moment. These are some of the ones we picked this weekend. It certainly was a delicious breakfast!

So that is all for this weekend. We have another busy week ahead of us so I shall update you on all the news next weekend. Hope everyone has a fabulous week ahead.

Last week i mentioned that I was determined to have photos of Forest Cottage this weekend, and by the skin of our teeth, we managed to!  There are still a couple of bits n bobs to finish, but for the most part it is done, the builders are barely around and we have managed to get furniture in and have taken some photos! So pleased!

There are still soft furnishings to be added (curtains should be ready this coming week) and obviously there is some work to do on the garden and outside area after having builders around for so long, but that we hope this will all be fun work!

​So here are the photos...

As well as pushing to get Forest Cottage finished, we have also had lots of excitement with our dam this week.

We have had ridiculous amounts of rain this week. One night 40mm fell and that was after 18mm had fallen a few hours earlier. As a result your dam has been more than full and the water flowing over the dam wall and down our waterfall has been quite spectacular. Here was the water flowing out of the dam on Saturday morning!

What was most exciting this week with our dam though, was the arrival of 100 rainbow trout!

​Yes, Bryan and I are now parents and have 100 fish to look after. Since the dam is newly filled we are supplementing the food in the water with fish pellets to make sure our fishes get big and fat and stay happy!

​It was great fun watching the fish being released in to their new home. Here is one of the videos and some pictures of the new inhabitants of Kamberg Valley Hideaway!

Well that's all the news for this weekend. Things are looking good and now we are just preparing for the December season. We have some nice bookings already!

An update on Kamberg Valley Hideaway's progress is well overdue! I had been hoping to post photos of the new cottage completely finished and ready for rental, but unfortunately we are still waiting on a couple of finishing touches to be done, so all I can show you at the moment is this photo of the outside!

Next weekend I will be posting the finished photos! I am determined!

So today I am going to focus on the dam! We opened up a channel from our small pond to the newly cleaned up main dam on Thursday 27th October. This is what the dam looked like then.

Henry and Bryan opened up the channel and the water started to flow in. It was flowing at a steady rate until we had a couple of huge thunder and lightening storms during the past week and today the dam looks like this!

Fortunately both storms were on a Friday. One last Friday and one yesterday, so in between the rains we were able to complete the jetty and most of the deck. There are still a couple of things we need to complete, like the work on the island, but basically the dam is finished.

We are so pleased with how the jetty looks and after having to varnish the 140 planks, it looks even better to us, knowing the work and effort that has gone in to it.

The deck just needs a couple more planks to be screwed in and then that is finished, and the island needs a little more earth, then we can remove the metal sheeting.

​Next we have to sow some grass seed and then, the dam is going to look even more stunning, but we are so pleased with how it has turned out. It has been a big project, and it is great to see it 95% finished. Now we just need some trout!

So, that's the latest news. Next week the cottage!!!