Pebblespring Farm (Port Elizabeth South Africa - 34 deg South)

28 December 2015

The Lady Frere district is dry and barren. I fear for the future of the people living here.

It really helps a lot now that we are able to pump water out of the spring. We have planted a number of trees that need water in these hot dry months.

The supply seems very reliable, but we will have to monitor through the year.

The first setup we tried was not great; required complicated priming and the use of non return valves.

The second, improved arrangenment involved improving the spring and running 10m of 40mm pipe into 15m of 25mm pipe downstream to ensure about 500mm of head by the time it reaches the 370 watt pump.

The videos should give n idea.

Octagonal Chicken House at Shimmering Farm

My sister Lindi has been a great inspiration to me. Many of the projects I dream of for Pabblespring Farm have come out of long early morning coffee chats with Lindi at here beautiful home in the cool forest of South Africa's southern coast.

The chicken house and garden that surronds it have been productive for almost 10 years now. Have a look. I tried as best as possible to capture it on video.

Mohair Project at Shimmering Farm.

I have slaughtered a goat once, but have never kept them for their wool. My sister Lind has a lovely wool project that I thought I would share with you.

Its gonna take us a long time but we will persist in reclaiming the pasture from the terribly invasive Port Jackson (Acacia Saligna)

Returning carbon to the soil by chipping the alien invasive tree species that have cluttered up the pasture and the wetlands

I thought I had this one on my watch list... Guess I missed a message. Anyway, It looks like things are going well. I have some things to catch up on.

Being a little slow with technology, I have just discovered that there was an "African" forum, and have spent the last hour perusing your thread here.  Great writing, photography and really inspiring!  I'm sad that there haven't been any updates for 6 months or so.  Please, continue!  I am an American ex-pat, now in Kenya for almost 6 years now... working a tiny 2.5 hectare farm.

More return in rural infrastructure

(I worte this piece for the Herald here in Port Elizabeth this week - I thought that Permies people may enjoy it was well)

I try at the beginning of each year, during my break from office life, to pull off at least one lasting “capital infrastructure” project at home or at the farm. I do this because I’ve seen that a change of work routine is much more refreshing to me than “vegging out” on the couch. For the last few years I have been focusing of farm projects rather than home projects. A few hundred metres of fence, replacing the rusted roof on the old cottage or installing solar panels for off grid electricity. I insist to be “hands on” with these projects, so I spend the time physically working, lifting, hauling and digging.
It’s a kind of a therapy I suppose. This year I spent time running the heavy duty electrical cables that bring the municipal electrical supply from the roadside to the cottage. You make ask, “What do you need and electrical supply for when your previous project was installing your solar panels for off grid power?” A good question; and one with a very unfortunate answer. The panels were stolen (twice in fact) causing me painful financial loss and even more painful self-flagellation for allowing this to happen. But I don’t want to talk about going off grid today; I don’t want to talk about crime today. I rather want to talk about what goes through my head as I haul cable, as I dig trenches or as I cool down under the tree by the dam.
I’ve spent a good part of my professional life working on capital projects that provide infrastructure to those of use trapped in poverty. I am really grateful that we live in a country where we are able to attempt to provide infrastructure that addresses basic needs.  I am grateful that our system is able to build RDP houses, roads, electrical supply and sanitation. I am glad that the less tangible “infrastructure” of birth registration, identity documents and title deeds is in place and working reasonably well.  My concern is that while this infrastructure makes the urban poor a little more comfortable (and maybe relieves the middle class of a little guilt) it does not make the poor any less poor. The infrastructure does not offer any real improvement of the prospects of the urban poor of entering the economy which doggedly continues to exclude them.
I know it’s completely different, but what I see in my holiday farm infrastructure projects, is that every little investment of time and cash dramatically increases my potential to support revenue generating projects. When I install fences, I am able to keep cattle that will give me beef and milk. When I install electricity, I can brood my day-old chicks that will become free-range drumsticks and chicken fillets. When I install pipes to pump water from the spring I can irrigate my Pecan Nut trees in the dry months and generate revenue from a nut harvest. When I spend time and cash on replacing the windows on doors on the derelict farmstall, I can generate revenue by selling, pecan pie with fresh cream, free-range eggs and chicken soup. What I have come to see is that investment in basic rural infrastructure has the ability to give a much greater “bang for the buck”, especially if we measure that “bang” in terms of its ability to continue to provide regular revenue. This is especially true if we consider that the infrastructure that is currently being provided for the urban poor has all kinds of revenue generating potential, if only it were installed in a rural location where it could unlock the ability to enter the agricultural economy, if even on a micro scale. I’m talking about giving individual title to well located, small acreages with basic water supply, basic fencing and electricity. Just the essentials to allow people that would otherwise be stuck in poverty to at very least provide some of their own food, but with very little extra effort be able to produce a modest surplus. It’s not rocket science, especially when we live in a confusing reality where millions of us are unemployed yet millions of us eat chicken everyday imported from the Brazil and the USA. Perhaps it’s time that we get out of the mind-set where we believe that the only route out of poverty is 12 years of formal schooling and a 4 year degree. The truth is that many “unemployable” urban dwellers actually possess motivation and skillset that can be geared into real income and wellbeing in a reimagined agricultural economy on the periphery of our towns and cities. Let’s give thought to providing infrastructure in locations where our people can be productive in the agricultural economy. We must give this thought because our metro and every other municipality in our province includes much more rural land than urban land. We must give this more thought because our democratic process  is skewed  in such a way as to allow urban dwellers to direct public spending, through the IDP process, to the urban areas where they currently live and effectively away from any future possible improved rural existence perhaps just 10 or 20 km  away. We must give this thought because it is foolish delusion to think the city is separate from its rural hinterland, or that “they” are not separate from” us”, or that you are separate from me.

Great article!

Well, you said you don't want to talk about your stolen solar panels - but I'll share what we had to do anyway - we had to build a steel cage which fit around the panel like a picture frame, holding it securely, but not obstructing it.  We then bolted the cage to the roof.  I see your panels aren't on a structure, but perhaps you could find a similar solution that would make it a little harder to snatch?   Theft is a constant problem here, but we haven't lost a solar panel yet.

Hi Timothy, I have followed your journey for the past year or so. You have a great talent for narrative-keep it up.

I am with you on empowering the poor rural communities. I have a million ideas running around my head. I firmly believe that (in my neck of the woods anyway) there is enough unused/under utilised land either owned by local government or marginal no-mans land to begin projects incorporating food production, bio char, and using rotational grazing instead of continually overgrazing a large area. I think community is already in place, it's organising and motivating that community that is the challenge. I listened to an interesting speaker on community who emphasized understanding local culture in getting started, progressing and withdrawing from projects. Granted, he was funded by an organisation and could pay wages, buy plants/infrastructure etc, but I think there is a lesson to be learned non the less. I think community is important to build infrastructure especially in informal settlements. I am mulling over plans using local materials -wattle & daub/thatch/rammed earth etc to build community centres like a communal kitchen and ablution facilites-water provided from the roof supplying showers & loos, biodigester providing fuel for cooking. I am hoping to create a network of volunteers and goods donation-ie asking people to consider donating their old bathrooms/gas stoves/table and chairs to the project, maybe getting builders involved for plumbing surplus/offcuts etc Even the big builders supply companies to donate damaged goods. Garden services could drop off "carbon" at designated points. Garden centres could donate old seed, unsaleable plants etc. Farmers could provide mulch in the form of unwanted/spoiled bales. As you said, the middle classes feel guilt-here's a way they can "assuage" that guilt by being generous with the stuff they no longer need and those with an interest could volunteer/collect and drop off donations etc. It's a momentous task and one that requires more than me to get going and keep afloat so it's on the back burner for the mo. I'm just putting out feelers, making connections, planning. I may start small, maybe approach a school/church and just start veggies with greywater or such. We have so much to do.....

On a personal note, where did you get your pecans? Having just purchased a derelict farm in the Port Alfred area, we are busy setting up a food forest and are sourcing crop trees. I am sure you know already but  FYI Builders Warehouse in PE has a good selection of fruit trees-Figs, bananas, pomegranates (Less than R100ea) olives(too expensive for me at the mo R300ish), many varieties of peach, apricot, nectarine, apple, pear and plum R130-R190ish),grapes, blueberries. They have almonds but just one variety and they need to cross pollinate. They can get other varieties of grapes, apples and pears etc-speak to the supervisor. I have her email if you want it and she offered a discount on orders over 20 trees. However I am looking at alternative sources especially for mangoes, guavas, kiwi, avo,citrus etc  

I shall soon be setting up a projects page for our site, hopefully I can be as entertaining, thought provoking and educational as you!

(this piece first appeared in Port Elizabeth's Weekend Post on 1 July 2017)

Elon Musk is dead wrong about Mars!!

I am inspired by the phenomenally innovative work of, California based,  Elon Musk. You may know him as the founder and CEO of the ground-breaking Tesla Company. You may know that in spite of Elon growing up with the smell of mind-numbing bureaucratic paralysis in the Pretoria air, his thinking on electric cars and battery storage is proving to be hugely disruptive. His bold ideas will absolutely and fundamentally change the way we all live and work. This dramatic transformation will happen very soon and I am very excited to see it all pan out.
But I heard Mr Musk speaking the other day about his planned missions to Mars to build a colony there. I just can help feeling that that this kind of thinking is just a lot of crap, perhaps not unlike the kind of thinking of other technologists like (the American) J. Robert Oppenheimer,  who applied his incredible skill to enable our species to blow up Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


I can see that I think a little differently to Musk and Oppenheimer. In my reading and in my quiet time, I have come to see that we, as a species, have evolved here on this planet and are an integral part of it, perhaps like our gut bacteria are an integral part of us. To just plonk us somewhere else, is misunderstanding just how integral we are to our ecosystem and to what extent we are a product of it. I see this in the writings of brilliant and enlightened souls and I see this when I watch my cattle going about their business in the pasture.
Pasture and grasslands are a fascinating subject, but I do understand that it  is quite possibly more interesting to me than it is to you. Books have been written about pasture. Entire library shelves filled. The important thing to take from our knowledge of pasture is the undeniable fact that we are dealing with a living interconnected system. In a very real and observable way cattle and grass and soil are part of the same “organism”. Grass has evolved to thrive on nutrient provided by herbivore manure, which in turn is digested by specifically evolved  soil based mycelium and bacteria. Grass had evolved to look, taste and behave the way it has because of grazing animals like cattle. Cattle have developed their size, shape and biology because they have evolved in the pasture (alongside their predators) eating the grasses that they do. These are not just curious facts of anatomy and biology. These are fundamental truths. They are absolute “laws”, that whether we choose to or not, are a governing force in all of our lives. It may appear to me that I, as an individual, am a separate organism to the people around me and to the things that I consume and to the things that try to consume me, but in truth, with the perspective of evolution and of time, I am not.
So much of what I see around us attempts to convince me that I am a separate organism, that I am able to survive even without this planet; that I am separate from the earth. The spectacular 1960’s project to send a man to the moon, walk around up there and take photographs of the blue planet from that far off position, is one in a sequence of events, since the beginnings of consciousness, that have made us feel more and more comfortable with the argument that we, human beings, are a separate and distinct organism.
But when I sit in the pasture. When I observe the earthworm magically building soil from excrement, when I appreciate the cattle, I let the picture remind me of who I am. I let the picture remind me that I am a part of an organism that is beginning to show signs of disease caused largely by  people (people  very much like me) that have somehow come to forget the obvious truth that they are only a small (yet very important) part of a big and complex organism. Perhaps, with time, we will come to see that the disease afflicting our planet is like the disease of cancer that afflicts so many of our bodies.( A disease that killed my own father.)  Some doctors say that a cancer cell is a cell that has forgotten that it is part of body, that it is part of an organism. A cancer cell consumes energy and replicates very rapidly, but it has forgotten its function within and as part of the organism. Cancer cells grow and grow until they kill the very same body that it forgot that it was integrally part of. Cancer cells form tumours that are fuelled by excess sugar in the system. In the same way perhaps as our bodies make up rapidly growing populations that cluster in cities that have become distorted way beyond any useful shape and size by the injection of excess energy in the form of over exploited fossil fuels.  Perhaps tumours, cities and Elon Musk behave in this way because they have forgotten what our species has known since it has first emerged from the cradle of human kind all those years ago.
So what do we do about all this? I can only suggest that you come sit with me in the in the pasture one afternoon. Perhaps we can be still, observe and help each other remember.

Sarah, Good to hear of your Project in Port Alfred. I sourced my Peacans from a farm in the Freestate called Sandvet. They cost me R170 each dry root. I bought 100 of them. Please send me links to the page your setting up. Also contact me by email tim@noharchitects.co.za

Timothy Hewitt-Coleman wrote:
Elon Musk is dead wrong about Mars!!

I am inspired by the phenomenally innovative work of, California based,  Elon Musk. You may know him as the founder and CEO of the ground-breaking Tesla Company. You may know that in spite of Elon growing up with the smell of mind-numbing bureaucratic paralysis in the Pretoria air, his thinking on electric cars and battery storage is proving to be hugely disruptive. His bold ideas will absolutely and fundamentally change the way we all live and work. This dramatic transformation will happen very soon and I am very excited to see it all pan out.
But I heard Mr Musk speaking the other day about his planned missions to Mars to build a colony there. I just can help feeling that that this kind of thinking is just a lot of crap,

The whole thought process is based on fear. If one has fear for life on Earth... life on Mars would be much more fragile. However, if he has the money to go... not my place to say no.

The point for me though is to look at my own fears and look to see how I can step beyond them so I can progress.

we can only hope that the technology needed to get onto mars will give some kind of spin off /return for the earthlings ,  i hope musk has studied the EDEN project , we could not get that to work here on earth how does he hope to do better in the near vacuum of mars then it would still have to work with the biggest flaw in the system ---us humun beings,   plus eden  had a huge advantage of an extremely simple escape plan---break a window , jump out and run away screaming into the night.

I love design, I love simplicity. I love the idea that we can rethink cheap readily available materials and use them in a way that was not imagined by the manufacturer. So in the video below I show how I use 75 mm diameter PVC down pipe as a guttering system. Building a rain water harvesting system normally takes a complicated range of fittings brackets screws and masonry anchors.But very often the same objective can be achieved using only 75 mm diameter PVC down pipe and elbow fittings.Watch this short video to see how we use this idea at Pebblespring Farm.

Friends Its been really dry here so I have had to think of clever ways to test the system without waiting for rain.

I sometimes like to say that "Architecture is where building meets consciousness."

The great Roman Architect Vitruvious speaks of Architecture comprising 'Firmness, Commodity and Delight".

We look at this delightful little chicken coop/ Rabbit Hutch combination at Pebblespring farm and share the very real and universal architectural design principles that guided its construction and can be applied to small projects like this and much bigger ones.

Comparing the Husqvarna 440e with the Stihl Ms 250





Husqvarna 440e


40.9 cc 1.8 kW 4.4 kg

Paid R3400.00 incl vat in March 2014




Stihl MS 250

45.4 cc 2.3 kw 4.6 kg

Paid R3900.00 incl vat in March 2015



I am already enjoying the MS 250 quite a bit more than the 440e. Make no mistake, I really enjoyed the Husqvarna. It gave me many hours of pleasure clearing bush, felling small trees, cutting fire wood and fence poles. The MS 250 is more powerful though and the additional weight is not really  noticeable. I suppose it is an unfair comparison, I should be comparing the  45 cc Husqvarna with the MS 250. The truth though, in my part of the world, is that the Husqvarna is a more expensive machine. Right now the new 440e sells for R600.00 more than the MS250. So the expectation is that the ....(read more)

When I set out contour swales at Pebblespring Farm (or when I help my sister Lindi to do the same at Shimmering Farm), I like to use a simple "A - Fram"  DIY leveling device.

These two short videos will help explain how to build one and use it on your own project

Its Springtime here at Pebblespring Farm. We are planting trees. One of our favorites is the Coral Tree (Erythrina lysistemon)

[b]Aquaponics in a Suitcase anybody?[b]

Tim,

I appreciate the posts. This is pretty similar to only a few of my projects, but many of my ideals. What is interesting is the musings, I hate to say. I keep my musings to myself by and large, but I appreciate you putting yours out there.

I guess my musings are expressed in my projects. You get both, which has to be more fulfilling. Kudos on documenting this, that's a strength. I am very good at making excuses why not to document stuff, almost world class.

Thanks for Reading TJ - To be honest, I have a lot more "musings" going on in my head than I have the time (or the courage) to write down!!!

I learn from contrast. I only know warmth by contrasting it to cold. I only know wetness by contrasting it to dryness. Perhaps in the same way I love the city because of the farm and I love the farm because of the city. Make sense ??

Tim,

I think you have nailed it with your contrast idea. It is funny, we try to get edges in our ecosystems, and we forget that those are simply inflection points between two or more biological regions. Why not in our life as well? I try to develop a new skill each year, and I may lay aside a skill I used before to accommodate it, but that is still something in my makeup. This allows me to see things from a new perspective.

This is not metaphysical BS, this year it is large equipment maintenance, last year it was mushroom cultivation. I am not tanning hides this year because it is the same time of year I will be clearing the junk trees. Each has allowed me to understand better the goal of habitat restoration in a new way, for instance. Sure I could have hired out the machine work, but it would have been prohibitively expensive and meant it remained in the "possible" category instead of moving into the "concrete" category. I will make mistakes and pay for them. That is part of the learning experience.

Professionally, it has given me a chance to interact with people I would not have likely interacted with. This is part of making me a more valuable part of the community.  

BTW, your tree planting ideas are great. Stalin is supposed to have said "Quantity has a quality all it's own". I am careful not to vegetatively propagate from less than six unique specimens because I want to keep some diversity around (and I'm working on improving some varieties so I want to limit feral genetics for, say, thorns) but overall it is a very cheap way to go. I start out with brush piles for a year and then plant my hardwood cuttings directly in the rich soil to compensate for the likelihood they will never get tremendous root systems.

Thanks for the reply TJ - the honest truth though is that living in two worlds is really tough. I try to put a brave face on it, But I really, really, really would like to be able to committ more, time effort and money to my farm projects. I run a busy little office in town though and in the past when I have neglected that life and not put 100% in there it has come back to bite me. Within a short time I begin to loose money and see things going back wards. I push on though and continue to find ways in which I can make my life work for me.

Night Patrol 27 October 2018

I hate it when my night Patrol duty falls on a Saturday night. That means I must leave Poppina in the cottage alone with Tank. And another thing – this was the third Saturday Patrol I’ve had been allocated this year. It doesn’t sound fair. In fact I had almost forgotten about the patrol and just remembered 30 minutes before I was due to report at 19:00.

The way it works here, it that the patrol vehicle is parked at the Service Station just up the road from me at Cow’s Corner. So I drove up, bought some snacks for the road and signed for the keys with the lady in the shop. My co-driver didn’t pitch. I contacted him, but his was pissed off because he didn’t receive the email roster that sets out the dates for all the night patrollers. I am perhaps more forgiving. I admire the volunteer energy that the people heading up “Farmcomm” put in, including the people that assemble and send out the night patrol roster.

Normally, not much happens on my night patrol shift, but last night was different. About an hour in to the three hour shift there was a call in the two way radio. Mr and Mrs Thomas, from just over the road from us had been attacked. 4 men in balaclavas beat the two pensioners and took a shot gun, a 9 mm hand gun and cell phones. Very quickly the radio control guys stepped into place and coordinated the activities of the many “responders” who arrived at very short notice in their private vehicles. You see, each Farmcomm member has a two way radio. Many keep it on their person at all times. So if there is an emergency the response can be quite rapid. Some responders were directed to form cordons along certain roads, others were directed to launch the drone which is now fitted with a Fleur night vision camera of sorts. I was tasked to park at the corner of Kragga Kamma and Louisa roads, to direct police and other emergency personnel who were beginning to arrive on the scene. While this was going on the attackers were being pursued. The place where they cut the fence into Flanagans farm was found and as the police dog unit arrived they tried to find a spoor. The pursuit of these attackers went on until early hours of the morning. We come very close to apprehending the suspects as they took refuge in thick bush between Doorly and Destades road.

For much of the time from when the attack happened at 8ish until we received the order to stand down at 2:30, I was part of a vehicle cordon. Basically a row of cars parked along a road with lights shining so as to back it impossible for the attackers to pass. So I had a bit of time to think. At first my mind moved to how sad it is that we have this crime situation that requires all of us in this neighbourhood to lock ourselves in hour houses as soon as the sun goes down and to live behind high fences protected by viscous dogs, alarm systems and armed response companies. No it’s not nice. But I think what is good is that the community has organised itself and is taking responsibly for its own security. (Collaborating with the police of course.)
My mind also wandered to how futile it is to feel sad about this situation (or any other I suppose). The situation “just is” and I am faced with the option to deal with it or to move somewhere else where I may not have to deal with it. I have chosen to be here at Pebblespring farm. For better or worse, this is the decision I have taken. And with that mind-set, my only choice is to find joy in making every effort I can to protect my family and prepare myself as best I can to be able to deter and resist intruders. It feels better to have this mindset. It in fact feels better actively pursuing attackers at 2 in the morning. Just knowing that I am doing something perhaps. Not waiting for them to take the initiative and spoil my day.
I have a lot of work to do to be fully prepared. But that’s what I have decided to do.

By the way we never caught the guys, but we learned a lot. We are getting better with each of these “operations”

So this is a little video update you may like.

I have no "Town Water" at Pebblespring Farm - I rely entirely on natural sources, either collected off my roof, or from the spring. Submersible pumps are therefore quite important to me for three reasons:

1 - to draw water out of the spring into the aqaponics system.
2 - to circulate water in my aquaponics system
3 - to irrigate (fertilized water) from the aquaponics system to my garden and orchard.

The Davey Sump pump (DC10M-2) and the Resun King 3 are roughly the same price in South Africa (Around ZAR 1000 or USD68 ) - my feeling though is that the Davey Sump pump gives much more pump for your money!!

While the water we use in the cottage for household purposes is all rainwater collected of the 160 sq m cottage roof, water for irrigation must come from the sources of standing water we are very fortunate to have here at Pebblespring farm. Not only irrigation actually. One of the big hurdles that we face in expanding our Tilapia tank systems and bringing cattle back to the farm is a reliable source of water for them. So as you can see, my continuous trials  (an errors) of how to reliably (and affordably) harvest water are of critical importance to the continued sustainability of our many projects.

I like your water point planning. It’s so important and in a silvopasture it requires some ingenuity.

Tj Jefferson wrote:I like your water point planning. It’s so important and in a silvopasture it requires some ingenuity.

: )

South Africa is a water scarce country. We must do all that we can to harvest every last drop of rain water.

Here we explore some clever ways to work through some of the practical site specific challenges of how do direct water from the gutters to the storage tank without the complications caused by messy wall mounted down pipes

Take a look and let me know what you think.

13 April 2020

If there is one thing of which we can be certain, then it is that there is great uncertainty ahead. As I write this we are in lockdown. We have been required to “stay at home” since the 26th of March. I have left the house only twice in the last 18 days. When I have left, I have kept the outing short. I wear my trusted “buff” as a facemask and spray sanitiser on my hands when I enter and when I leave a shop.
A lot has happened at Pebblespring farm since the previous chapter. I came to live full time in “Kok’s Cottage” in April 2017. My marriage of 23 years came to an end with a very messy divorce that dragged out for over two years. My daughter Mandisa came to stay with me at the farm, two weeks on and two weeks off. I am in a new relationship with the beautiful, profound and perplexing Poppina. Together we have, under very difficult circumstances, made Pebblespring Farm a home. We have been joined by two lovely Great Danes: Tank and Nakia and two (mostly irritating) cats: Hamilton and Eliza. (Yes they were both named by Mandisa, a musicals nut!)




I managed to move the last of my stuff with only a few hours to spare before the 23:59 commencement of lock down on 26 March 2020
But today, as I write this, we are not at Pebblespring Farm. We are living through the lockdown at my office premises in the leafy suburb of Walmer. I am very fortunate to have a little flatlet on the site that has actually proved to be very comfortable. My thinking is that by making this rushed move, I am most likely to keep my office going through the lockdown. Being an Architect (as opposed perhaps to a waiter or a pilot) is useful I suppose in this time, because I can continue to prepare designs and documentation without having to come into physical contact with anyone. There are only seven of us in our team, so it really is a very small operation and a lot easier to keep going than the massive architectural offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg with maybe 200 or 300 employees or those of US, UK, China and Japan that employ thousands. By being here at the office, I can much more comfortably hold on to the reins at what has become “mission control”. Each of our team members is linked to the office server via VPN and each one, except of course Tafadzwa the general assistant, has moved their workstations with them to what has now become their home offices. I am very happy to say that the last 18 days have been a great success. The output in terms of quantity and quality has been good. We meet every morning at 9am with Zoom and review our progress and plan the work ahead. During the day we share our progress on the office Whatsapp group that we set up some time ago. I would perhaps post a diagram of what I have been designing on the drawing board, my colleague Chris or Siya may post for my comment of for Graham’s comment the latest version of a drawing that has been prepared on Revit (the very powerful design software we use). In this way we continue – “business as usual” I suppose. Except of course it is not business as usual. I have been in business for my own account now for 25 years. What I have seen in this time is that when there is trouble in the economy the first thing to be put on hold is any future construction project developers may have had in mind. A construction project can almost always be delayed so that they can “wait and see”. We can always live a little longer on the same old house. We can always wait a little longer before we build the next hotel in our group We can always squeeze in a little tighter into the existing office space until the crisis passes. So, right now, I am facing a great uncertainty. While I am reasonably certain that I will not die from the Corona virus, I do not have any certainty at all that my business and my means of supporting my loved ones will still be here in a year’s time.
That’s really what I want speak about today. I want to speak about uncertainty and how it is that we can come to make peace with it or even embrace it. I find it difficult because as I write these words, I am still trying to figure out for myself my own way forward. What I do know is that there is only one way to begin to make friends with uncertainty and that is to accept that it exists. Perhaps like the great Buddha tried to teach us: that it can only hurt us if we do not accept it. It seems to me though that in this time, what government and leaders are trying their best to do is to give certainty to the people. To give a guess as to when the “curve” will “peak”. People everywhere want the certainty to know if they will be getting their salaries or if they will be able to return to work or when they will be able to buy booze and cigarettes again. The horrible truth is that no-one can be certain of any of these things. What we are reasonably certain of is that about 115000 people have died of this disease so far. What we are told is that 25 of these are South African deaths. What we can be even more certain of is that we are in lockdown and will be until the end of April and that alone will devastate the economy in ways, in all likelihood, not seen in my lifetime.
Perhaps though what this crisis has brought more clearly into focus than ever before is that the certainty we thought we had was an illusion all along. There has never been certainty. There have only been those that have tried to calm the herd creating for them the illusion that there was certainty. It is very sad, but unfortunately true, that of all the people that I have ever me in my life, I am able to categorise either has having a “herd mentality” or a “herder mentality”. Others, like Fredrich Nietzsche have been perhaps only slightly more blunt when saying we either have the minds of “masters” or of “slaves”. I would guess, like everything else, the truth, as inconvenient as is, is probably a little more nuanced. In the same way maybe that each of us at times display more of our feminine spiritual energy and other times more of our masculine spiritual energy, we lean in some days toward “slave thinking” and in other days toward “master thinking”. Now though, is the time for us to discipline our minds and to discipline our thinking to the thinking of the “master”. To train ourselves to think noble thoughts. The noble soul does not seek certainty because it knows that certainty is an illusion. It knows that just because events have been seemingly predictable looking back, that does not in anyway help to predict the future. No, the noble soul knows that it must embrace the uncertainty, not only today in this crisis, but at all times. It must accept that we are present in a living universe and must be ready to make changes in its life in order to respond to this reality.



I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know when I will come again to live at Pebblespring Farm. I don’t know if I will come to build my dream house with a deck that looks over the spring. I don’t know if I will come to graze my heard of Nguni Cattle through a beautiful pasture and shaded food forest. I don’t know if I will be able to make the decisions in this time that will see Pebblespring Farm grow in biodiversity and being passed down through the generations of caring and deep-thinking custodians that will follow behind me. I don’t know, because I am not certain. But because of the noble soul inside that is battling and fighting off the slave-minded demons, I will learn to embrace this uncertainty and with practice and discipline come to love it. Yes, to love my fate including all that is uncertain about it.

Lock down is time to do those projects we’ve been putting off for a while. I thought this rust old tank was worthless, until I found that it had a perfectly sound concrete lining. I cleaned up the years of junk that had collected inside and installed a DIY tank connector and valve - all in the course of a Saturday afternoon. And you know what!!! it works!!

1 October 2021

Back to the Land - Again

So, I have told you before about how what I thought was going to be a 3 week “camp” at the flatlet at my office for the Covid lockdown became a slightly extended affair. I very soon realized that I would not be able to get back to Pebblespring Farm any time soon. So, I made the very painful decision half way through last year to let out the cottage on the farm. I was relieved to find a tenant and was very happy to see that they were even able to do some small farming in the time they were there. If I had left the place unattended I have no doubt that it would have been vandalized and overrun by vagrants and poachers (in the same same way it was when I found it before buying the place). As we speak though, the tenant’s 12 month lease now comes to an end on the first of October and I am eagerly counting down the days until I can restart my adventure at Pebblespring Farm.


But some things have changed in my thinking over the period of Covid and the various categories of lockdown we have lived though. Firstly, I have really gotten quite used to the idea of living where I work. While I know that for many people across the world this has meant that they have been able to work from home, for me it came to mean that I was required to live at the office. But the point is that I quite like it that way. I quite like the idea of not having to commute. I quite like the idea of having only one internet connection, one armed response, one garden to rake the leaves up out of, one bathroom to keep clean, on fridge in which to keep the milk for my tea…… I think you follow my thinking here.

So as I write these words (and perhaps the reason I am writing these words) is that I am thinking through the detail of my next step. What I am sure of is that I will begin to get the cottage ready for me to move into it as soon as the tenants move out. What I am equally sure of is that I will then move back to the farm. What I am not sure of is, if, how and when I will get the office to follow me there. There are a number of things to think about:

1 – I will have to beef up security here at my office, if the dogs and I are no longer sleeping here. But this is of course a short term problem. While I can see that there may be a transition period where I am again sleeping at the farm and commuting to the office, the idea is to remove myself from the the Walmer property completely. (if I do remain involved with it, it will be as a developer and and investor, not as a tennant)

2 – My colleagues working for me, may not be too happy about commuting out to the farm every day, but then again its only 20 kms or so and it is against the flow of traffic. I do quite like the idea of physically working together in one space for a good portion of the day. While I have found that during hard lock down, we could work apart, I see that there are definitely some efficiencies that come from us being just a “shout over the shoulder” away from each other.(in fact I am even a little worried about making this post because – I have not yet sat down with and spoken through the detail of the move, mainly because I am not clear on the details)

3- What I have noticed is that the need for a boardroom for client meetings has drastically reduced. And also, if there were a need for a client meeting, it can easily be redirected to another venue (what I am saying is there would be no need to inconvenience clients by having them drive out all the way to Pebblespring farm for a meeting.)

4- It is also really quite handy to have an easy to reach address (like sixth avenue Walmer, where things can get dropped, either by Takealot or Checkers sixty60 or by clients, contractors of suppliers)

5- Then the other concern I have is the “what will they say?” concern. And I suppose that is one of those questions that lurks in the back of my mind and then once I expose it to scrutiny kind of evaporates. Who is the “they”? Why do I think that “they” will have anything to say at all? I do suppose there is something to say for PR – It would not be useful to me in business if the “talk” was that my moving out of Walmer was to be understood in some way as me closing down or scaling down my business.

6 – There are a whole lot of things that I like about living in Walmer – I like to be close to the gym. I like the place where I drink coffee in the mornings. I like the fact that I can get things delivered quite easily here.

So if those are the top 6 things that are bugging me. Let me think through here what options I have.

Firstly I think it is important to have some presence in town. I suppose I can achieve that by partnering with a friend in business – Perhaps put up some signage at their office gate – so if someone were to drop something for us they would see us. Maybe even a place where one of us could work for a short while, though, I think a coffee shop is perfect for that. Or perhaps we have no presence at all (in terms of signage) – We simply have a “drop box” an address in Walmer from which things can be collected or at which things can be dropped. The more I think of it, the more that I see that it is really not a very big issue.

There may be a need for a boardroom table from time to time, but these events will happen with such advance notice that theses meetings could very easily be held at the offices of a friend in business or at at coffee shop, or in extreme case at hired meeting spaces.

The problem of my colleagues commuting: The obvious answer there is to clear my vision in my head as best as possible and then to sit down with each of them individually and work out a solution. It may be that I need to increase a salary slightly to accommodate the increased monthly fuel bill. It may be that I would need to agree to greater “work from home time” I don’t know, but the meetings will guide me.

Then there is the matter of what is the PR message here? And I thing that can play out very well. I think the idea can be celebrated as a time appropriate response to the times. I can be celebrated as a leveraging of the technology that we not have to begin to live and work more where we choose and not where we are compelled to because of convention. Yes – I think I can get this message out there in a way that it is seen as positive and progressive.

But on a personal level. What do I do about my gym routine? What do I do about my coffee routine. I quite like the light an loose social interactions here. I don’t see myself driving all the way in the morning to the gym here. That would be counter-productive. I suppose the answer is, we will just have to see what new routine and rhythm grows up out of this change – and you know what – worst case scenario – move back to Walmer – for heavens sake – all of this is undoable!!

05 October 2021

Self and other


I have been spending evenings lately listening to Alan Watts. He has a whole bunch of stuff on YouTube, all recorded before he died in 1973, but lovingly uploaded more recently to the internet by followers from all over the world. He speaks so incredibly eloquently about matters of Zen and Tao an so much of what we says resonates very deeply with me.


Alan Watts – one of the great thinkers of our time.
What I am thinking of tonight is the phenomenon that Alan Watts speaks of in our tendency to for us to obsess about separating our “self” from the “other” and how actually if one looks closely enough, we begin to see how it is we are in fact a lot more integral with the reality around us than what we say we are. It seems to me that we make attempts all the time to play this game of separation: We see ourselves as separate from nature, even to the point where forget we are animals. We see ourselves and different and distinct from the thousands of gods we have embraced across many civilizations and cultures. We see our gods as the “other”.

We take this idea of “self” and “other” even further into the game we play within our own species where at a group level, we separate, our class, our religion, our nation as distinct from the other. We have often even made war along these lines. Killing and maiming ourselves in the process.

But is it not interesting to see that we are not happy to stop even there. Rather we insist even in our individual selves to create separation. We great a separation between our role as son and as father, as lover and as worker. We even wear separate “uniforms” at work and at home. We have a separate uniform for going to church and for playing golf, we even have pajamas as our “uniform” for sleeping. All of this in a desperate attempt to convince ourselves of the illusion that everything is separate. Well it is not! Everything is part of everything else. This is just the simple truth.

So in a small way perhaps, I see the move back to Pebblespring Farm and other lifestyle design steps I have taken, as an attempt to work against the drive toward separation. Because if there is no separation between work and home, perhaps it is a simpler task to get to a point where these is no separation between attraction and action or work and leisure. Where there is no separation between my health and the health of my business and there is no separation between the health of my business and the health of the people I employ and there is no separation between my prosperity and the prosperity of my clients.

There was a time when I was self conscious of over thinking things or sounding “too philosophical” But now as I am older. I am wiser. I realize that actually that is exactly the game I like to play. The game of “seeing the world in just one grain of sand” The game of treating what comes to me in my life every day as having some special, mystical meaning and significance just for me. Life’s just more fun this way! It makes me take everything that much more seriously!!!

The Forgotten Art of Subtraction

06 January 2022

Though it really seemed impossible to me at times, I have eventually settled in back at the cottage at Pebblespring Farm. I had set for myself the clear intention of having Christmas lunch with my family at the cottage. I am happy to say, we achieved this objective.


We had a lovely Christmas Lunch in the Cottage

Its been a lot of work getting the cottage into a semi-livable state again . I am not at all happy at all with the way in which the tenant I had treated the place. But I get the sense now that we will chip away at this project in our own time for as long as it takes.

There is something deeply satisfying about being here. Committing my energy to projects that feel that I “own” in someway. I am not exactly sure about why it feels so good, but the “why” of theses things is never really as important as just observing and taking note of the energy as it presents itself in my body and in my sense of well being.

I have been resting as much as I can in between the various cottage and farm projects. In my resting time at the dam in the morning, with my coffee, I have time to think a little. This morning I spent some time thinking about the work I love doing on the farm and in the forest. I notice that this work, over the last few years, has largely to do with taking away what I don’t want. It has largely to do with “subtracting” and not to do with adding. When I am working with the chainsaw removing the alien invasive Inkberry (Cestrum laevigatum) or the Long Leaved Wattle (Acacia longifolia), my strategy has been to remove what I don’t want, quite surgically, then sitting back and watching as the new forest, new life and new beauty emerges. In the forest, I do not plant the new trees. I do not introduce the new life or the new beauty. It simply rises up, as if by magic, after my work of removing and subtracting what it is that I did not want.

When I take the time to sit and think, I notice how so much of what is going on in my life, with Pebblespring Farm for example , is some kind of metaphor, as if though,(in ways I can not possibly understand) my life is “fractal”, where the part reflects the whole and the whole reflects the part. Let me explain what it is that I think I mean. I can see that in my life my task becomes to remove those elements that do not suite me, that are not beautiful to me. Because my life, this existence, what I experience as reality is a living dynamic organism. The forest has a life of its own. It creates new and beautiful things all the time, especially if I can just help it along be subtracting that which is not good and which is not pleasing. (if the forest were pristine, and not infested and invaded by unnaturally introduced alien species, I would of course not need to intervene at all!) The forest is not inanimate. I must do my part, but the forest responds by making making beautiful spaces and views and habitats. I did not make these beautiful things, but here they are, clear as the light of day. And so perhaps in my life, I must be less anxious about what new stuff I feel I should build for myself, but rather spend time focusing on what it is that I must subtract.

I have seen that there are people that have followed a path of “spiritual” discovery that took the dramatic step to remove all the things from their lives. In the ancient way of the Sharman or the Monk, they give up all of their possessions, their loved ones, everything that they may have valued. But is this not perhaps the equivalent of bringing bulldozers to Pebblespring farm and flattening everything down to barren sand and rock. (Incidentally this is exactly what my late neighbor, Richard Hall, did next-door about five years ago at his place and I can tell you the land is lifeless and dead to this day.)

That is not the path I have chosen for Pebblespring Farm and that is not the path I have chosen for my life. Rather than flattening everything I have chosen rather to specifically and surgically remove those parts that do not work for me. In my life and at Pebblespring Farm I have also not opted for an “anything goes” approach. I do not just let the unsightly alien invasive bush take over, I do not allow my life to be taken over by social media or booze or carbohydrates or people that abuse me me. Perhaps the way I have chosen is a “middle way”?

In spite of all of what I have already subtracted, I am acutely conscious that there is still a lot in my life that does not work for me. Commuting does not work for me. Mindless admin does not work for me. Inhuman bureaucracy does not work for me. And people who do not love me. People who do not respect me. People who I do not “vibe” with. (“Vibe” is actually quite a nice word to use in this instance. It hints a the mysterious and unfathomable vibration that is beauty and attraction.)

I have already done a lot in the last few years to make my life simpler. (COVID has been helpful in this regard actually!). There is still a lot of work for me going forward to remove these unwanted aspects from my life. I am conscious that it will take a lot of time. But I must work methodically and consistently, but not so hard a that I loose myself, and that I forget what I am trying to do in the first place. I must not allow myself to become so numb and so beaten that I cannot see the beauty. Because if I cant see the beauty, I will loose the energy I need to continue in the exercise of subtraction.

Perhaps I will report back on my progress here on this blog from time to time. Who knows??

Staying here at the farm now, and spending a lot of time working from my home office, has allowed be to develop a routine of 1 hour "gardening" a day. I mean sometimes it gardening, sometimes it cutting trees in the forest, other times it working with the pumps at the spring or with the chickens.

I made a little video to show my progress with building a banana circle, which I plan to become a central feature of my veggie garden.



https://youtu.be/sYHldHNeJho