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!!
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.
Thank you very much to my dear friends at Permies who have entered into this discussion. The comments have been interesting and educational. I wonder though if the events of 2020 and the Covid-19 crisis have helped any of us to re-think the validity of our current global political situation and its curious obsession with national boundaries? It seems curious to me that in spite of the fact that all the current and credible threats to our species are of a global nature (Here I think we can safely include Covid-19, Climate change, Poverty, Water Scarcity, Human Trafficking, Sanitation, Habitat destruction, Population and Migration) we have continued mindlessly to organize ourselves using the very same political tools and tactics that were dominant at the end of World War 2!!!
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
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 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!!
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”
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.
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 ??
(This piece by Tim Hewitt-Coleman first appeared in The Herald on 24 October 2018 . I am not sure if this post will make sense to people reading from outside of South Africa - or even outside of Port Elizabeth - but I'm a firm believer in the idea "Think Global - Act local"...)
Sardinia Bay on a Sunday morning is perhaps my favourite place in the world. Sometimes we walk “Tank”, our enormous Great Dane. Sometimes we go for a swim in the choppy surf. Other times we simply sit on the dunes taking in the panoramic view of Indian Ocean. There is something rugged and untamed about Sardinia Bay. Its massive sand dunes refuse to bow to the our feeble plans to build a road to the beach, perhaps rejecting the vulgar and boorish club house structures, maybe like a body would reject and vomit out that which is foreign and that does not belong. But, while the dunes may move steadily in their path and the ocean may look different every Sunday, what is unchanging in this landscape has been “Gunter’s Wurst Wagen”. Yes, that’s right, for as long as I can remember, this little german sausage “Food Truck” could be found in this remote little piece of Africa regardless of the weather or the time of year. A winter morning run would not be complete without huddling in the car park against fake tudor trailer from the blustery cold wind with a warm cup of Gunter’s hot chocolate (with those little marshmallows floating on the top.)
Seems cosy and perfect doesn’t it? Except, since 13 October, Gunter’s Wurst Wagen is nowhere to be seen. ”Did Gunter die?”, I asked, “No!” said the ubiquitous, lumo-vested car guard. “Did his trailer break down?” “No!” He said again……“His Permit Expried!”
As it turns out the “Wurst Wagen” was not at its usual Sunday spot, because there has been some delay at the Municipality in issuing the permit required to trade from this remote and dusty car park. The chatter among the Sardinia Bay car park regulars descends very quickly to baseless rumours of corruption, general winging about administrative inefficiency and about how we should see to it that more rules are put in place to stop municipal officials being slow to administer the rules that have already been put in place and still more rules should be put in place to ensure that people like Cheryl Zondi cannot be raped by people as evil as Pastor Timothy Omotose’s accusers say he is.
As I pretend to listen to all this, my thinking drifts, as it especially tends to do on a Sunday, to the Constitutional Court and the recent ruling of judge Zondo, legalizing the smoking of Dagga. My humble attempt to paraphrase that part of the ruling that interests me is that “…there is no science that has been presented that can show that dagga causes harm to the extent that South African individual’s privacy and freedom, as envisaged in the constitution, should be curtailed and limited.” So, though parliamentarians may have believed differently, they are in fact not free to dream up random legislation without having considered the science of the matter. What judge Zondo’s ruling says is even if 100% of parliamentarians believe that you and I should not smoke dagga, they are not permitted to pass legislation to prohibit us from doing so in the absence of scientific proof that harm will be caused by the activity that the legislation is attempting to outlaw.
But back to our friend Gunter. What worries me about this story is that so many of us are completely happy that a “permit” should indeed be issued, and that Gunter should just be patient. I, on the other hand, rather think we should be asking the question?: “ What harm would be caused if all the sellers of German Sausages, Ice cream cones and hot chocolate were free to decide for themselves whether they should try sell their stuff at Sardinia Bay. What if we allowed beach goers and tourists to decide for themselves who they would rather buy their Hot-dogs from??? My guess, it that there would be chaos for a few weekends with a dozen “Wurst Waggen” clones trying their best to offer their wares to a half a dozen windswept beach goers. But then, with time, the natural order of things would sort things out. The truth is we do not know how it would work out. We cannot see the future, but luckily in this case we are under no real pressure to be able to see the future. There is nothing of any real consequence at stake. There is no science anywhere than any person can quote that predicts that anyone while die at the Sardina Bay car park or that anyone will even be harmed if the municipality just backs off and lets people be as free as the constitution of the republic tells them they are.
So while the constitution is clear to me and to our esteemed friend, Judge Zondo, the sorry reality is that it is completely unlikely that our friend Gunter has saved up enough over the years from the sale of Sunday sausages from to be able to afford the fancy lawyers that will be able to take this case to the Constitutional Court. But while it is sad, it does not mean that those of us who value freedom are defeated. No. I take courage from something I heard an old farmer quote the other day: “Tend the garden that you can reach,” he said. Right now, through this piece of writing, I can reach you. Who knows, maybe tomorrow you can reach your mates around the braai. Who knows, maybe the next day Gunter and others like him will be arguing for their Freedom at the Constitutional Court.
My sister, Lindi has a "Cottage Industry' with Angora Goats on her beautiful farmlet in the forest near Wildersniss in South Africa.
She has five goats that she grows alongside her three horses, a little flock of chickens and a surprisingly productive vegetable garden. Lindi is a proponent on the Permaculture way of doing things.
She cares deeply about her animals and about her land.
I thought you may like this little video we made when I visited.
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
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)
On our way to swim in the ocean on Wednesday morning, we were chatting in the the car about Human Rights day. As we drove, I gave a little lecture explaining how on the 21st of March 1960, 69 unarmed protesters were gunned down outside a police station in Sharpville. “Why were they protesting?” asks Mandisa. “They were protesting about the “pass laws”. They burned the papers that they were required to carry as evidence that they had permission to leave the “homelands” in order to seek work in the city”. Mandisa silently nodded her head in the backseat as she continued to flip through Instagram, but Poppina said: ”You know, come to think of it, not much has really changed since 1960! If you walk down any Hillbrow street today, you run the risk of being thrown in the back of a police van if you don’t have the correct, ID papers, Refugee papers or Asylum papers”
I thought about this statement as I bobbed in the ocean that morning. Mandisa and I swam to the end of the pier. Poppina strolled on the beach. “What has changed since 1960?” I asked myself. Yes, things are much better for a whole lot of people that happen to have the right papers, but really, we have fallen into exactly the same thinking of the apartheid government. Then, the state said: “If your ancestors come from the wrong side of the Kei river, you go back there and do whatever your ancestors did there” All that has actually happened since 1960, is that the state has now just changed the rivers that they choose to use as reference points for their cruelty and brutality. “You dare not set your foot on “our” side of the Limpopo River. Go back to where you came from! Go do there whatever it is that your ancestors did there!”
We feel good about ourselves and justify our cruelty by referring to concepts such as “The Constitution” or “The Sovereign State”. My friends, I am writing to you today to remind you that these, and many such like fabrications, are merely “concepts”. They are just ideas formed in the minds of people. They are neither real nor tangible. What is real and what is tangible is the tremendous suffering of many millions of people across the globe and especially in africa that are unable to flee drought, famine, war, rape and slavery because of the notional concept of a “sovereign state”, with borders that cannot be freely crossed without risking death and imprisonment. People are dying (and worse) for the sake of these concepts. The “lucky” few that make it out of whatever desperate situation that has driven them to give up their ancestral home and their families, find themselves in a situation in a country like South Africa perhaps, where they are, at best, treated as second class citizens. They struggle to get a bank account, they struggle to own land, they struggle to get the same wages as those who have the “correct papers”, they struggle to access education. They are harassed by the police, they are exploited by the criminal underworld.
As we speak, right now, somewhere north of the Limpopo, young girls are being captured by rebels and sold into slavery. As we speak, right now, children are embarking on foot on a thousand mile journey in the hope of escaping the hell that has driven them to find the courage to flee. As we speak, in this town of ours, young girls from Somalia or Zimababwe, or the DRC or Sudan, with no papers, no means of support and no hope, are trapped in a living hell of drug induced sex slavery. Tell me my friends, why, why, why do we think of this unspeakable injustice in different terms to the way we have come to think about the crime of apartheid?
We are deluding ourselves to think that this is in any way OK. It must stop now!
I am not a prophet and I do not pretend to be one, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that we will look back at this time and we will judge ourselves for tolerating this situation. We will be embarrassed that we committed our energy to attempts to rid the oceans of plastic, arguing against backyard dog breeders and whether our leaders should be permitted to smash each other’s heads with water jugs. We will judge ourselves for dedicating our time to this pettiness while this tragedy of human suffering continues as the result of our silence in condoning the rubbish idea of “Sovereign” borders.
The reality is that our species is a wandering species. From the time when we first emerged from the Cradle of Humankind near Krugersdorp, we have wandered. We have moved our families on to new lands when the conditions we were facing became unpleasant. This movement over thousands and thousands of years was a gradual process, but a fundamental ingredient to our continued success as a species.
Impermeable national boundaries are unnatural! They cause untold suffering and must abolished without delay. We are a species gifted with profound intelligence. We split the atom. We send our representatives to the moon. We have credible plans to colonise Mars. Trust me, we can figure out how to overcome the challenges that emerge out of the removal of national boundaries. What do you think?
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.
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.
Friends Its been really dry here so I have had to think of clever ways to test the system without waiting for rain.[youtube][youtube]https://youtu.be/C3JnDxz7MiQ[/youtube][/youtube]
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.
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.
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
(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.
(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.
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.
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.
My sister built this chicken house about 10 years ago and the gardens around it have continued to become more and more vital. I tried to capture it on the video below:
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.
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.
