I THINK I’ve mentioned this before, but my wife’s brother runs a farm in the New England district of the north eastern Cape, up in the southern Drakensberg, and every now and then we get an opportunity to join them for a bit of a farming experience.
I’m not going to discuss the road to get there, that is not a good experience, although it’s always interesting to see the rather dramatic change from a countryside dominated by sugar cane and bananas to one of mealies and cattle, not to mention villages, endless villages.
The fun part of the journey for us really begins at Elliot, when one starts up the dramatic Barkley Pass to reach the high land beyond.
The pass cuts its winding way up through great sandstone buttresses and imaginative rock formations, standing watch over the low lands, bursting out at the top at 1,990 metres.
One can now see the full glory of the southern Drakensberg and specifically its Witteberg range, which is where we were headed.
Another pass, the Kraai River Pass, takes one higher and closer and it’s just wonderful to be driving past mountainsides resplendent with fat, shiny, contented cattle, flocks of grazing sheep and the occasional paddock of fine-looking horses. This is prime, black soil farming country and that’s exactly what it looks like.
On the farm, which was established in about 1875 and is still one of the best-known original homesteads in the district, we are at nearly 2000 metres and it feels like it.
My sister-in-law’s family has lived there since 1902 and the prize-winning gardens and the surrounding forest are all her doing.
I was allowed to drive and we explored much of the farm in (on?) the Gator, an American John Deere invention that can best be described as a 4×4 golf cart, a go-anywhere, do-anything vehicle that is next best only to a horse.
We manoeuvre up to and through various camps to inspect the many herds of cows and in some cases their attendant bulls, for the most part magnificent Borans.
I have to confess at this stage that I love cattle, an obvious hangover from the years I spent growing up on a farm in Devonshire, England, and I was very much at home among these animals.
We also inspected flocks of sheep, the horse paddock (for the most part working horses) and the lands under lucerne. I loved every minute of it.
We were spoilt bird-wise too. Spurwing geese, crowned guinea fowl, a secretary bird, white storks, grey herons, lots of sakabulas (red-collared widow), sacred ibis, hadedas of course and a jackal buzzard.
As we were leaving we were treated to a very special spot, two blue cranes and their chick and as we were watching them, two crowned cranes took off and flew over us – how special is that? We also saw mountain reedbuck and slender mongoose.
All-in-all a great experience, thank you all concerned. I wonder if I might consider copying my sister-in-law and use a small flock of sheep to mow the lawn. Cheers!
