Life on the farm? Not much sign of any!

I can see why farmers have a long hard life, eating all the delicious goods they produce takes some doing!
What a great change of scenery and pace of life. Four extremely pleasant days were passed up in the West Usambara mountains at Irente Farm. We did our best to try as many of the farm's goods on offer but I think we would have needed a few more nights to have hit the 100% mark.
It all started with some plain cheese on the first afternoon and proceeded to freshly baked rye bread, passion fruit jam, quark mit herbs, chilli cheese, a large block of butter, and bottle of passion fruit juice that a young German couple we met could not finish! No we didnt scavenge it. They were just 2 of the many people who hike up to the farm for a picnic lunch and they offered it to us after we had made them some fresh coffee as we chatted after lunch.
We did manage to extricate ourselves from our four day feast on a couple of occasions. A short stroll across to the amazing viewpoint out over the plain below one morning, and a longer hike around the area the following day to another better viewpoint and other sights accompanied by our guide Joseph, a 14 year old from the village who speaks excellent English and takes tourists on hikes in order to help pay for his school books.
The climate in the hills is pretty cool although the sun was still very hot when out, but the evenings were very chilly and our cold weather clothes that we had packed just in case justified their existence. Anyone who has the misguided idea that Africa even in the winter is scorching hot needs to reconsider! Thankfully hot showers were on offer, well sort of. Our man at the farm would on request heat up buckets of water on a fire and fill up the shower's hot water tank with them! It was however an art using both a hot water shower and a seperate cold water shower at the same time in order not to get scolded!
We managed to escape our mountain retreat today but not before securing 2 more rye bread loaves, quark, and cheese to keep us going for a couple of days! The market at Lushoto on the way down to the plain assisted in filling up our depleted stores. Fruit and veg is just so cheap. The princely sum of just Tsh4000 secured us; tomatoes, potatos, onions, cabbage, carrots, oranges, passion fruit, bananas, and avocados! Oh thats just a mere £1.70! We also decided to buy a small Jiko stove to ease the burden on our gas supplies. It can be used with charcoal or wood and is an hour glass shaped metal case with a ceramic insulator in the top half that holds the fire, and has supports for your pot or pan on top. The idea is that more heat from a smaller fire can be used to cook with and thus reduce the amount of fuel used and thus the amount of trees cut down to produce it. We shall see!
So yesterday we have progressed from the beautiful Usambaras to the majestic Mt Kilimanjaro, and there is not a cloud anywhere near it so our view of it as we approached from over 100km away to the camp tonight at Moshi was stunning and quite unusual! Oh and before you ask, no we are not climbing it, not this time anyway.
From here we pop along to Arusha and perhaps a tour of the Serengeti depending on how much they want to fleece us for one, and then north to Kenya and beyond!
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