Overwhelmed by Tuesday before 9am

At seven we were asked to share something with the more than hundred workers. Before we had breakfast at nine we were already overwhelmed by what we saw and heard. Wilhelm spend his morning taking us around. We visited the cow stables, the calves, the manure processing plant, the dams, the compost, the dairy, the orchards, the fields, feed stock piles and the creche.

He showed us in detail how the fruit trees were pruned and tied up. All thirty plus varieties under shade net. Every part of the 900 hectares farm is interlinked and well managed with a highly sophisticated computerised system, too much to mention here.

The reason for our visit was to see a commercialised farm make compost and manure slurry to put back into their fields and orchards, the soil being restored. The aim being to invest in their soil. The challenge of commercial farmers to be regenerative is the financial challenge.

They had to invest in very expensive equipment to do the switch over from plowing mere fertilizer to spreading compost and still achieve high quality produce for export market in this case. It was seeing how they had done it viably on large scale which initiated our visit.

It was however their investment in their staff who live on the farm which was the unseen factor. Training was only part of it. The crèche was one way of caring. The underlying principle was that every one had to look forward to go to work every morning.

We were disappointed to learn at Tulbach nursery that we do not qualify to register. We however met Cobus and Ruan who invited us to see their project on Friday.

Montpellier was our next stop. This early 1700's farm has a beautiful garden. We had a quick tour with Linel's friend, Ilande. How amazing to see the huge 300 year old trees planted by early settlers.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at Mac and Susan at the Waterval Campsite outside Porterville. We visited the beautiful waterfall and by the time Mac and I had caught up with the ladies Susan had already given them trees and invited us to stay the night.

Intrigued at Mac's knowledge of populating plants from cuttings, Clara took her book out to take notes, saying she will have to come camp to learn from Mac.

While the ladies went to town to buy pizzas Cousin Mac and I caught up.

What a day! Could Wednesday get any better?