naturegirl
Enjoys Recycling
Hello there, Selfsussers!
I am very new on this forum, so let me introduce myself and my hubby.
Firstly, we are in the Western Cape, South Africa, and our little farm is in the village of Riversdale, or rather 12 km's outside of Riversdale. We have just bought it, and I cannot wait to move there permanently.
I am not South African from birth, but was born in Belgium to 2 parents who have always been involved in the selfsufficient way of life where feeding their families was concerned. My dad came from a very old farming family, and used to tell many stories of the farm and what they got up as kids, including to getting up to nonsense and not being able to resist peeing on his sister's head one day while being high up in a cherry tree, and his sister did not know that he was in the tree as she walked past! His mother was a little tiny spitfire of a woman, and he immediately got into trouble about that. He decided to stay in the tree for the rest of the day, thinking that his mother would eventually forget about it. He climbed down after sundown, due to hunger, and walked into the house as if nothing had happened, and was grabbed by the ear, and given a good walloping and sent to bed without supper! The last time his mom smacked him was when he was 16 (for back chatting!) and she had to get onto a chair to box his ears! She was less than 5 feet tall, but she ruled the house! My grandfather was a peaceloving man, very gentle, who towered almost one and a half foot over his tiny wife.
My mom's parents lived in a very old village that dated back to Roman times, in fact its origin was that it was a farm where horses were bred for the roman army, hence it's name "Quevauxcamps" meaning horse camp. The house that my mom grew up in was extremely old, it having originally been the house that the priests serving the village lived in. The Church itself was over a thousand years old, and the first written down history of the house was dated over 700 years ago. My grandpa had a huge allotment behind the house ringed by high stone and chalk walls, where he grew all different types of veggies, fruit, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and also had racing pigeons. The original stables were also part of this land, and he housed his pigeons in the loft of these stables.
Both my parents were fed entirely from the proceeds of the farm and the allotment, never having to buy any food apart from flour and fish. When we came to South Africa in August 1962, my parents carried on with their family traditions, and always grew vegetable gardens and growing chickens and rabbits for the pot. So for me to carry on this tradition is normal. My brothers and I have inherited my mother's love of gardening, and we have carried on doing it through our lives.
I am the eldest of five children, the only daughter, and also the smallest, with 4 huge brothers! Luckily I am taller than my paternal grandmother, but still pretty small compared to my brothers, being only 5 ft 3 inches, and my brothers are all 6 foot and taller. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I have inherited some of my grandmother's nature, as I let nothing get me down and will fight hard for my family and my values.
When it came time for me to finish school, I had no idea what to do with my life, except that I knew that I did not want to follow a normal way of life and become a teacher, or secretary, or nurse or anything like that! My biggest dream as a little girl was that I wanted to marry a farmer and help him farm. A few weeks before I finished school, an article on the SWANS appeared in the local newspaper. SWANS stands for South African Women's Auxcillary Navy, and I thought that the girls looked so smart, and I was very attracted by their way of life, and yes,
, the very pretty uniforms! What can I say, I loved the look and the idea that I would be doing something completely different!
I spent 7 years in the navy, and then left, wanting to experience something different. I first went to work as a housekeeper in a very famous hotel in Johannesburg. I hated it! I lasted 3 months, and then went home to my parents and started working as a bookkeeper for a large veterinary hospital in Cape Town. I loved every single minute of it, especially dealing with the sick and injured race horses, or with the animals in the small animal division. The vets and animal nurses quickly learned that I could be counted to give any help that was needed, from hand raising orphaned puppies and kittens, to calming scared horses. I grew up in a house where animals were certainly a huge part of the family, so it was an absolute pleasure for me to do so! I have no idea how many kittens and puppies that I handraised, and there was a certain horse that I would have given any thing to own. Unfortunately I did not have the space to keep a horse, and did not earn enough to be able to keep one!
During this time I met my husband, and lo and behold, he joined the SA Navy at exactly the same time I did, and we were even in the same place for Basic Training, in Saldanha.
My seaman has never had any interest in any form of gardening or farming, but understood that I needed to grow things. Through the years that we have been married (28 years!) I have packed and followed my seaman, raised our 2 children virtually on my own, seeing that he was away at sea 3/4 of the time. My son has inherited my love of gardening, and both he and our daughter love animals. In our household right now we have 3 dogs, 3 cats, 2 parrots, 2 budgies, and I have given up counting the fish! Luckily my seaman also adores animals!
I have always dreamed of owning a large piece of land somewhere in the country, and finally my husband decided that seeing I have done so much for him and our children, it was time for me to realise my dreams now that the children are educated and out of the house. I had also reached the stage where I hated living in built up areas, being able to hear the next door neighbours in their houses, and the hated Hated HATED their undeisciplined dogs! He told me to start searching, with 7 or 8 requirements needed! 1. We had to find a farm/smallholding near to a town with a golf course! 2. It had to have good fencing. 3. It had to have water rights. 4. No invader bush or plants. 5. There had to be a hospital nearby nearby (for me, as I have a bad spine). 6. He did not want a huge farm, he wanted to be able to see the corners of the land from the middle! 7. THere had to be electricity on the farm, as installing electricty on rural land is extremely expensive! Lastly 8. there had to be a house on the farm. The last requirement was that I had to do the search, as I would be the one who knew what was needed. Whoo boy, what a tall order that was! Oh yes, I forgot to add the most important requirement - the farm had to be near no squatter camps, as he was worried about theft and farm violence. Read up about farm violence in South Africa, you will understand why he was worried. The very last wish that he had was that the farm/smallholding be close enough to Cape Town for the kids to drive up and spend weekends with us whenever they wanted to.
It took almost 2 years of searching, with estate agents trying their luck in showing me all different types of farms and smallholdings that hardly fulfilled any of the requirements, or only some of them. Eventually I decided that Riversdale was just the place to be (3 hours away from CT), and actually started searching on my own, without using estate agents. I made friends with the farmers in the vicinity, and one farmer put me onto a small farm that was being sold, because it was part of a divorce case. It fulfilled every desire that my husband had, apart from accomodation. There are 2 small workers cottages, 2 rooms each, with an outside toilet halfway between the cottages, and an open air shower and toilet! Extremely Luxurious! The land is 6 hectares in size, pasteured in kikuyu and rye grass, no invader bush, it does have electricity, 3 dams, with water rights of 6 hours on a saturday from a canal coming down from a water scheme in the mountains above the farm. My seaman was happy, just worried how I was going to get the farm going again, as it has been lying fallow for the past 3 years, with another farmer using the land to graze his heifers, paying no rent.
Anyway, we have bought it, and I have already spent several weeks on my own on the farm. What absolute and total bliss! No TV, No telephones or Cellphones, No next door neighbours dogs barking constantly day and night, No loud music coming from next door, just bird song, the mooing of cows, the baaing of sheep belonging to the nextdoor neighbour, and occasionally the sound of a far distant vehicle going by! I am in paradise! The only bad thing is having to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, tripping over the overlong grass in the dark, not being able to see where I am going. And the worst is stepping on a scottish thistle bare foot! OUCH!
My seaman has told me that the farming is my job, as he knows nothing about it. He will do the house work, get involved with the building of a proper farm house, and play golf to his heart's content! Fair swop, as far as I am concerned. I do not like housework, have done it for the past 28 years, and I would far rather be outside doing what I love most. My seaman is dangerous in a garden, having been known to rip up very expensive plants because, according to him, they look like weeds and had no place growing where they were growing!
I have done a huge amount of research, both on the internet and asking the various neighbouring farmers. I have a huge vegetable garden, over 5000 sq metres, that was used to grow vegetables for the market. That is going to be developed into a permaculture, no dig, organic vegetable garden with companion planting, and berries and grapes growng on the fence surrounding it. We will be growing a small herd of SA Meat Merino sheep, about 10 or 20 in number, seeing that these sheep were raised to suit these weather conditions, and they supply both meat and wool. I am going to be raising 3 or 4 different types of chickens, and they will all be free range, which will help in controlling ticks and bugs on the farm. I am looking at Buff Orpington for eggs, Australorp and Potchefstroom Koekoek for both meat and eggs, and some type of broiler chickens four times a year for meat. These will be raised in tractors that will be moved twice a day. Unfortunately all my coops will have to have cement floors with impregnable sides, as we have a lot of clawed otters that live in the river below the farm, and these prey on chickens and lambs. We will also be building a stable to keep the sheep in at night, once more because of these pesterly otters! And unfortunately due to the new building laws in South Africa, all agricutural buildings, even chicken coops and pig styes, even agricultural fences! have to have a plan and building permission from the local municipalities. Believe it or not, I have to have an architect design the chicken coops or stables
!!!! if they are going to be 9,5 sq metres or bigger.
As we have 3 dams, one very large, I thought of raising ducks as well, but have to give the idea up, as there are large mouth and black bass in the dam, and they kill the ducklings. In the past the dam used to be full of wild ducks and geese, but fewer and fewer birds come to the dam, as they were never able to raise their families.
I have already started the vegetable garden, and believe it or not, there are very few snails, if not none. No amount of searching has brought any snails to the fore! With the farm, we inherited a young farm worker. His name is Jason, and he is descended from the Hottentot tribe that used to be here a couple of hundreds years ago. They were nomadic, and small hardy people. Do not confuse them with the Bushmen, they were completely different people. Anyway the Hottentot intermingled with the slaves, and these people make up the vast majority of the farm workers in the Western Cape, and our Jason is decended from them. He is tiny, also less that 5 feet tall, weighs less than 40 kilo's and is an bottomless pit of information where the farm is concerned. I am blessed to have him, as we only have hand tools to work the farm, and the occasional loan of a tractor from a neighbour.
The soil on the farm is rich black loam, rather more clay than I would like, with rain throughout the year, with the majority falling in March/April. I have never ever though that I would hear faarmers complaining of too much rain, but this winter the rivers crisscrossing the valley where we are came down in flood three time! And as there are no proper bridges crossing these rivers, when they come down in flood we are stuck!
I would love to place pictures of the farm, but I do not seem to find the method of doing so. I would love to post a URL to a South African selfsus forum that I belong to, but am not able to do so as it is against the rules. I think that you would have enjoyed comparing what we do here in SA to what you do in the States. Anyway, if you can, look at Selfsustainable dot co dot za. We are built along the same lines as your forum.
As we go along I will be placing lots more info of what is happening on our little piece of heaven. Please let me know what you all think, I am really looking forward to your responses.
Love to all
I am very new on this forum, so let me introduce myself and my hubby.
Firstly, we are in the Western Cape, South Africa, and our little farm is in the village of Riversdale, or rather 12 km's outside of Riversdale. We have just bought it, and I cannot wait to move there permanently.
I am not South African from birth, but was born in Belgium to 2 parents who have always been involved in the selfsufficient way of life where feeding their families was concerned. My dad came from a very old farming family, and used to tell many stories of the farm and what they got up as kids, including to getting up to nonsense and not being able to resist peeing on his sister's head one day while being high up in a cherry tree, and his sister did not know that he was in the tree as she walked past! His mother was a little tiny spitfire of a woman, and he immediately got into trouble about that. He decided to stay in the tree for the rest of the day, thinking that his mother would eventually forget about it. He climbed down after sundown, due to hunger, and walked into the house as if nothing had happened, and was grabbed by the ear, and given a good walloping and sent to bed without supper! The last time his mom smacked him was when he was 16 (for back chatting!) and she had to get onto a chair to box his ears! She was less than 5 feet tall, but she ruled the house! My grandfather was a peaceloving man, very gentle, who towered almost one and a half foot over his tiny wife.
My mom's parents lived in a very old village that dated back to Roman times, in fact its origin was that it was a farm where horses were bred for the roman army, hence it's name "Quevauxcamps" meaning horse camp. The house that my mom grew up in was extremely old, it having originally been the house that the priests serving the village lived in. The Church itself was over a thousand years old, and the first written down history of the house was dated over 700 years ago. My grandpa had a huge allotment behind the house ringed by high stone and chalk walls, where he grew all different types of veggies, fruit, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and also had racing pigeons. The original stables were also part of this land, and he housed his pigeons in the loft of these stables.
Both my parents were fed entirely from the proceeds of the farm and the allotment, never having to buy any food apart from flour and fish. When we came to South Africa in August 1962, my parents carried on with their family traditions, and always grew vegetable gardens and growing chickens and rabbits for the pot. So for me to carry on this tradition is normal. My brothers and I have inherited my mother's love of gardening, and we have carried on doing it through our lives.
I am the eldest of five children, the only daughter, and also the smallest, with 4 huge brothers! Luckily I am taller than my paternal grandmother, but still pretty small compared to my brothers, being only 5 ft 3 inches, and my brothers are all 6 foot and taller. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I have inherited some of my grandmother's nature, as I let nothing get me down and will fight hard for my family and my values.
When it came time for me to finish school, I had no idea what to do with my life, except that I knew that I did not want to follow a normal way of life and become a teacher, or secretary, or nurse or anything like that! My biggest dream as a little girl was that I wanted to marry a farmer and help him farm. A few weeks before I finished school, an article on the SWANS appeared in the local newspaper. SWANS stands for South African Women's Auxcillary Navy, and I thought that the girls looked so smart, and I was very attracted by their way of life, and yes,
, the very pretty uniforms! What can I say, I loved the look and the idea that I would be doing something completely different!I spent 7 years in the navy, and then left, wanting to experience something different. I first went to work as a housekeeper in a very famous hotel in Johannesburg. I hated it! I lasted 3 months, and then went home to my parents and started working as a bookkeeper for a large veterinary hospital in Cape Town. I loved every single minute of it, especially dealing with the sick and injured race horses, or with the animals in the small animal division. The vets and animal nurses quickly learned that I could be counted to give any help that was needed, from hand raising orphaned puppies and kittens, to calming scared horses. I grew up in a house where animals were certainly a huge part of the family, so it was an absolute pleasure for me to do so! I have no idea how many kittens and puppies that I handraised, and there was a certain horse that I would have given any thing to own. Unfortunately I did not have the space to keep a horse, and did not earn enough to be able to keep one!
During this time I met my husband, and lo and behold, he joined the SA Navy at exactly the same time I did, and we were even in the same place for Basic Training, in Saldanha.
My seaman has never had any interest in any form of gardening or farming, but understood that I needed to grow things. Through the years that we have been married (28 years!) I have packed and followed my seaman, raised our 2 children virtually on my own, seeing that he was away at sea 3/4 of the time. My son has inherited my love of gardening, and both he and our daughter love animals. In our household right now we have 3 dogs, 3 cats, 2 parrots, 2 budgies, and I have given up counting the fish! Luckily my seaman also adores animals!I have always dreamed of owning a large piece of land somewhere in the country, and finally my husband decided that seeing I have done so much for him and our children, it was time for me to realise my dreams now that the children are educated and out of the house. I had also reached the stage where I hated living in built up areas, being able to hear the next door neighbours in their houses, and the hated Hated HATED their undeisciplined dogs! He told me to start searching, with 7 or 8 requirements needed! 1. We had to find a farm/smallholding near to a town with a golf course! 2. It had to have good fencing. 3. It had to have water rights. 4. No invader bush or plants. 5. There had to be a hospital nearby nearby (for me, as I have a bad spine
). 6. He did not want a huge farm, he wanted to be able to see the corners of the land from the middle! 7. THere had to be electricity on the farm, as installing electricty on rural land is extremely expensive! Lastly 8. there had to be a house on the farm. The last requirement was that I had to do the search, as I would be the one who knew what was needed. Whoo boy, what a tall order that was! Oh yes, I forgot to add the most important requirement - the farm had to be near no squatter camps, as he was worried about theft and farm violence. Read up about farm violence in South Africa, you will understand why he was worried. The very last wish that he had was that the farm/smallholding be close enough to Cape Town for the kids to drive up and spend weekends with us whenever they wanted to.It took almost 2 years of searching, with estate agents trying their luck in showing me all different types of farms and smallholdings that hardly fulfilled any of the requirements, or only some of them. Eventually I decided that Riversdale was just the place to be (3 hours away from CT), and actually started searching on my own, without using estate agents. I made friends with the farmers in the vicinity, and one farmer put me onto a small farm that was being sold, because it was part of a divorce case. It fulfilled every desire that my husband had, apart from accomodation. There are 2 small workers cottages, 2 rooms each, with an outside toilet halfway between the cottages, and an open air shower and toilet! Extremely Luxurious!
The land is 6 hectares in size, pasteured in kikuyu and rye grass, no invader bush, it does have electricity, 3 dams, with water rights of 6 hours on a saturday from a canal coming down from a water scheme in the mountains above the farm. My seaman was happy, just worried how I was going to get the farm going again, as it has been lying fallow for the past 3 years, with another farmer using the land to graze his heifers, paying no rent.Anyway, we have bought it, and I have already spent several weeks on my own on the farm. What absolute and total bliss! No TV, No telephones or Cellphones, No next door neighbours dogs barking constantly day and night, No loud music coming from next door, just bird song, the mooing of cows, the baaing of sheep belonging to the nextdoor neighbour, and occasionally the sound of a far distant vehicle going by! I am in paradise! The only bad thing is having to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, tripping over the overlong grass in the dark, not being able to see where I am going. And the worst is stepping on a scottish thistle bare foot! OUCH!
My seaman has told me that the farming is my job, as he knows nothing about it. He will do the house work, get involved with the building of a proper farm house, and play golf to his heart's content! Fair swop, as far as I am concerned. I do not like housework, have done it for the past 28 years, and I would far rather be outside doing what I love most. My seaman is dangerous in a garden, having been known to rip up very expensive plants because, according to him, they look like weeds and had no place growing where they were growing!
I have done a huge amount of research, both on the internet and asking the various neighbouring farmers. I have a huge vegetable garden, over 5000 sq metres, that was used to grow vegetables for the market. That is going to be developed into a permaculture, no dig, organic vegetable garden with companion planting, and berries and grapes growng on the fence surrounding it. We will be growing a small herd of SA Meat Merino sheep, about 10 or 20 in number, seeing that these sheep were raised to suit these weather conditions, and they supply both meat and wool. I am going to be raising 3 or 4 different types of chickens, and they will all be free range, which will help in controlling ticks and bugs on the farm. I am looking at Buff Orpington for eggs, Australorp and Potchefstroom Koekoek for both meat and eggs, and some type of broiler chickens four times a year for meat. These will be raised in tractors that will be moved twice a day. Unfortunately all my coops will have to have cement floors with impregnable sides, as we have a lot of clawed otters that live in the river below the farm, and these prey on chickens and lambs. We will also be building a stable to keep the sheep in at night, once more because of these pesterly otters! And unfortunately due to the new building laws in South Africa, all agricutural buildings, even chicken coops and pig styes, even agricultural fences! have to have a plan and building permission from the local municipalities. Believe it or not, I have to have an architect design the chicken coops or stables
!!!! if they are going to be 9,5 sq metres or bigger.As we have 3 dams, one very large, I thought of raising ducks as well, but have to give the idea up, as there are large mouth and black bass in the dam, and they kill the ducklings. In the past the dam used to be full of wild ducks and geese, but fewer and fewer birds come to the dam, as they were never able to raise their families.
I have already started the vegetable garden, and believe it or not, there are very few snails, if not none. No amount of searching has brought any snails to the fore! With the farm, we inherited a young farm worker. His name is Jason, and he is descended from the Hottentot tribe that used to be here a couple of hundreds years ago. They were nomadic, and small hardy people. Do not confuse them with the Bushmen, they were completely different people. Anyway the Hottentot intermingled with the slaves, and these people make up the vast majority of the farm workers in the Western Cape, and our Jason is decended from them. He is tiny, also less that 5 feet tall, weighs less than 40 kilo's and is an bottomless pit of information where the farm is concerned. I am blessed to have him, as we only have hand tools to work the farm, and the occasional loan of a tractor from a neighbour.
The soil on the farm is rich black loam, rather more clay than I would like, with rain throughout the year, with the majority falling in March/April. I have never ever though that I would hear faarmers complaining of too much rain, but this winter the rivers crisscrossing the valley where we are came down in flood three time! And as there are no proper bridges crossing these rivers, when they come down in flood we are stuck!
I would love to place pictures of the farm, but I do not seem to find the method of doing so. I would love to post a URL to a South African selfsus forum that I belong to, but am not able to do so as it is against the rules. I think that you would have enjoyed comparing what we do here in SA to what you do in the States. Anyway, if you can, look at Selfsustainable dot co dot za. We are built along the same lines as your forum.
As we go along I will be placing lots more info of what is happening on our little piece of heaven. Please let me know what you all think, I am really looking forward to your responses.
Love to all
from New Jersey in the USA. Sounds like you'll fit right in.
Welcome! And congratulations!
