The Donderkop rain book — Merweville, Central Karoo, kept since 1961
Read the log
05 Apr · 19 mm · Donderkop
17 Mar · 0 mm · Donderkop
11 Mar · 46 mm · Grootfontein
02 Feb · 27 mm · Donderkop
09 Jan · 38 mm · Donderkop
Merweville, Prince Albert, Beaufort West, Laingsburg, Fraserburg, Sutherland, Loxton and Murraysburg.
Eight districts, forty-one gauges, one book. Some farms have sent numbers every month since the seventies.
Read at eight in the morning and write down what fell in the last twenty-four hours.
Empty the gauge after every reading. One left standing all week is a guess, not a reading.
Write 0 when nothing fell. A nought is a reading too, and the dry months are the ones we argue about later.
A plain 127 mm plastic gauge on a post, a metre off the ground and well clear of the shed, the windpomp and the pepper trees.
If yours cracked in the January hail, say so — there are spares in the bakkie and we get to most farms twice a year anyway.
My father Willem started the book in 1961 with a coffee tin and a school ruler, and I have kept it since he died in 2004. I farm Donderkop with my son, forty kilometres out of Merweville on the Sak River road, and I still write the numbers in pencil before they go anywhere near a computer. Willem Aggenbach 1961–2004 · Marlene Aggenbach 2004–
It came over the ridge at nine, and by twenty to ten there was ice standing in the sheep tracks.Danie van der Merwe · Rietfontein, the night of 9 January
Read at eight, write it down, send it through. The month closes on the last day and the book goes out to every reader in the first week.