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Forest Bathing at Pebblespring Farm
Letting the Land Lead: How We Build Swales at Pebblespring Farm
If you spend any time in permaculture circles, you’ll hear one word more than almost any other: swale. And for good reason. The swale is one of those quietly brilliant ideas that, once you understand it, changes how you see every hillside, every ditch, every rainstorm.
What Is a Swale?
At its simplest, a swale is an earthwork — a channel or berm — built on contour to capture and slow the movement of water across a landscape. The goal isn’t to drain water away quickly; it’s the opposite. A swale is designed to keep water as high up in the landscape as possible, for as long as possible. That single shift in thinking — from drainage to retention — is what makes it such a powerful tool.
The Pond and the Pope
Here at Pebble Spring Farm, the swale system begins at the pond. A dam wall runs along one edge, doubling as the driveway to the cottage, and the pond’s water level is kept in permanent equilibrium by two “popes” — a local word for a standpipe: a 110 mm PVC pipe with an elbow joint that runs beneath the road and emerges on the other side.
The first pope maintains the dam at its ideal static level. The second handles the overflow during wetter periods. It’s a beautifully simple, passive system — no valves, no pumps, no moving parts. The water finds its own level and spills when it needs to.
From that spillway, the water enters the swale channel, and the real work begins.
Reading the Water
One of the most common questions we get is: how do you find the contour? How do you know exactly where to dig?
The honest answer is that the best tool we have isn’t a laser level or a surveying instrument — it’s the water itself.
In wet times, we dig a narrow initial channel — roughly the width of a spade — and allow the water flowing from the pond to run through it. Then we watch. Where the water moves, we follow. Where it stills completely, we know we’re level. Where we can perceive even a slight current, we know we’ve dipped too fast and need to correct.
This is the gold standard. No instrument can match the precision of water finding its own level in real time.
Wet Times and Dry Times
This approach does come with one significant constraint: you need water to work with.
Our region doesn’t follow a predictable seasonal rhythm. Wet periods and dry periods can each last months or years, and they can arrive at any time of year — our wettest months have historically been mid-summer, mid-winter, and spring. There’s no fixed calendar to plan around.
That means when the water is flowing, we move. We work quickly, extending the channel as far as the water will carry us, cutting through dense bush with a chainsaw, clearing with a hoe, and then trenching in 5 to 10 metre sections to see exactly how the water wants to run.
The Leveling Frame
For the sections we push ahead of the flowing water — scouting the path, marking the direction — we use a simple leveling device: a triangular timber frame with a spirit level fixed across it.
The frame is calibrated on a known-flat concrete floor, so when the bubble sits dead centre, we’re on contour. It’s low-tech, quick to use in dense bush, and accurate enough to guide the chainsaw cuts and earthworks that follow.
The combination of instrument-guided path-finding and water-verified channel-building is what makes the system work. The frame shows us where to go; the water confirms whether we got it right.
Why It Matters Beyond Water
There’s something deeper happening in this process beyond water retention, though that alone would justify the effort. The swale — following the true contour of the land — sets the primary geometry of the whole farm.
Paths follow the swale. Driveways follow the swale. Fences follow the swale. Instead of imposing a grid or a straight line onto the landscape, the land’s own hydrology becomes the ordering principle. The geometry that results is complex, winding, and responsive — because it’s informed by the actual shape of the ground.
And the water held high in the landscape doesn’t just sit there. It creates habitat. It feeds soil moisture across a broader area. It supports the kind of layered, biodiverse ecosystems that a rapidly drained landscape never can.
An Ongoing Practice
This is slow work, and it’s seasonal work. We extend the swale network when conditions allow and wait when they don’t. Each wet period gives us an opportunity to push a little further, to read a little more of the land’s character, and to let the farm’s geometry evolve in response.
It’s one of those practices that rewards patience and attentiveness more than machinery or speed. The land will tell you what it wants — if you’re willing to let it lead.
We’d love to hear how you approach swales and water management on your own land. Every landscape has its own logic, and there’s always more to learn.
Has the time come for us to start re-ruralising?
(This piece first appeared in THE HERALD on 16 June 2022)
It’s a grey and dreary winter’s day. My thoughts go to Youth Day as I drive down Buffelsfontein road toward my regular Walmer coffee spot. My mind dwells on the sad truth that the passenger seats in my car are all empty. My children have now grown and left this town for a brighter future. No youth in my car this youth day.
My gloomy sadness is interrupted though, by an unfamiliar sight by the side of the road. A makeshift water station on the verge with a number of emergency taps on light blue plastic standpipes. Our answer to “Day Zero,” I am told, has been to drill boreholes in strategic spots and allow people to fill containers of water enough to drink and cook and clean with. Later, over coffee, I can’t help but think, that if ever there was a monument built to mark the failure of government in this town of ours, then these blue standpipes are it. No political argument, no beaming Politian’s picture in the press or free pop concert for the masses can argue away these pipes. They are there standing boldly as monumental evidence of our inability to manage the affairs of this city region. The unavoidable truth is that government is failing at the most basic and fundamental level. Running water and flushing toilets are not rocket science. Running water is the most fundamental and non-negotiable starting point of what we have come to expect from urban living.
I am sorry to tell you though that I really don’t have any answer to the water problem. I’m simply using this very visible failure as an excuse to talk about a question that’s interesting to me right now:
Is it not time we begin to re-ruralise?
Is it not time that we accept that our current system, just does not have what it takes to effectively manage towns and cities? I mean, have you driven down the main road in Humansdorp lately? It’s one continuous pothole. Makhanda has had water problems for years. Mthata is chaos!!
Is it corruption? Is it white monopoly capital? Is it the construction mafia? Is it lazy officials who earn fat salaries but don’t deliver? I’m not interested in those questions right now. I am interested rather to zoom out a bit and consider the slightly larger question of why it is that we, as a civilisation, have decided to build cities and towns in the first place and whether the conditions that seemed to make cities and towns a good idea way back then, still prevail.
I can completely understand why the first towns and cities must have sprung up all those thousands of years ago in Iraq and elsewhere. Back then it was so much easier to get all the cool stuff you needed by living in a city like Eridu. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker were all right there. By contrast, your rural cousin had to figure out how to make what ever cool stuff he wanted all by himself. Living in the countryside was a ball ache!
With time, through the growth of civilisation, the industrial revolution and right up to the 21st century, cities became increasingly sexy. The city meant, running water and electricity. It meant education for your kids. It meant music and entertainment. It meant fun church and religious activities. It meant access to more potential romantic partners. It meant access to better health care. City living though (for all but the very rich) came at a huge price. City dwellers contend with crime, bad food, air pollution, overcrowding and worst of all; jobs to pay for all these conveniences and cool stuff. But perhaps the biggest price we paid was the loss of our connection with the land, the fresh smell of rain on the soil and the feeling of being part of the glorious living organism that is our mysterious planet.
What I see lately though is a glimmer of an exciting shift brought about by rapidly advancing technology. A discernible adjustment in focus from urban to rural. Thanks to solar and battery technology, we no longer need to live in a city to run a fridge or computer. Thanks to cheap electric pumps and plastic piping, rural homes can have running water and flush toilets. Very soon, even remote rural areas will have super-fast satellite internet. This will give rural people access to the highest quality education through apps like Udemy, the highest quality preaching for the religious-mined though apps like YouTube. It will give access to a huge pool of potential romantic partners through Tinder and Instagram. Sure, living in the city will still give you somethings that you just don’t get in the country, but I am open to the idea that the scales will begin to tip. As city living becomes increasingly less bearable, as we are no longer able to shower or water our tomato plant and as rural living becomes slightly less tedious, we make be shocked to see a landslide of people beginning to Re-ruralise. Of course, this trend will begin with the rich, but as we have seen with all technological change, these trends spread very, very fast to the poor. (Remember how cell phones were first just for millionaires and rock stars?)
I am very excited to see all this unfold in the very near future. Are you excited too?
Expect Nothing. Receive Everything. — Forest Bathing at Pebblespring Farm
Here’s something you might not expect a forest bathing guide to say: expect nothing.
No miraculous life change. No measurable improvement in your health. No spiritual breakthrough. When you arrive at Pebblespring Farm for a forest bathing experience, please — leave your goals at the gate.
That might sound strange in a world that treats every activity as an opportunity for self-optimisation. We do yoga to get flexible. We meditate to get focused. We hike to get fit. Everything is a workout, a practice, a step toward becoming a better version of ourselves.
Forest bathing — shinrin-yoku — asks you to step off that treadmill entirely.
Human Beings, Not Human Doings
My very wise mother likes to remind me of something simple and profound: we are human beings, not human doings.
We are not doing forest bathing at Pebblespring. We are not doing shinrin-yoku to get better. We are just being — in the forest, with the forest, as the forest.
We are being with the sounds that drift through the trees around us.
We are being with the smell of moisture settling in our nostrils.
We are being with the soft, shifting light as it filters through the blue gums just after sunrise.
We are even being with the distant sound of a chainsaw — because being present means being present to all of it, not just the parts that feel poetic.
A 90-Minute Permission Slip
Life doesn’t stop when you walk into the forest. The stressful thing happening next week is still happening. Your responsibilities to your children, your partner, your work, your own long list of life goals — none of that disappears.
But for 90 minutes, you have permission to delay it all.
Not forever. Just for now. Stress when you get back. Strive when you get back. The to-do list will be waiting. For these 90 minutes, you simply don’t have to do any of it.
That kind of rest — the rest of not trying — is rarer than we think, and more nourishing than we realise.
The Accidental Gifts
Here’s the quiet irony: when you stop trying to get results, results have a way of finding you anyway. A sense of calm you didn’t chase. A thought that untangles itself without effort. A body that breathes more deeply, almost without noticing.
But — and this matters — your expectation shouldn’t be to receive those things. The moment you arrive with an agenda, you’ve started doing again.
Come to Pebblespring. Walk slowly. Breathe. Look up at the light. Just be.
That’s the whole practice. That’s enough.
Forest bathing experiences at Pebblespring Farm are offered as open, unhurried invitations into nature. No experience or fitness level required — only a willingness to arrive as you are.
The Rules of Forest Bathing at Pebblespring Farm
There aren’t many of them. But the ones there are, matter.
Shinrin-yoku at Pebblespring Farm is a specific thing — not the only way to practice forest bathing, not the “correct” way, simply our way. If that way calls to you, here’s what you’re signing up for.
We Start at 7:00 a.m. on Sundays
Not 7:05. Not “around seven.” Seven.
It doesn’t matter if it’s raining. It doesn’t matter if your car gave you trouble on the way. It doesn’t matter if you sent a WhatsApp to say you’re running late. We start walking at 7:00 a.m., and the forest doesn’t wait.
The hour matters. The day matters. The commitment matters — because showing up, fully, is already part of the practice.
We Walk in Silence
Before we set off there may be a word or two, a greeting, a breath. But once we begin walking, we walk in silence.
No conversation. No pointing things out. No nudging each other when a bird calls or a spider web catches the light. We notice those things — of course we do — but we hold them privately, inside ourselves, rather than reaching out to share them.
We are in a group. We carry warmth and care for one another. We simply don’t express it with words or signals while we walk.
We Leave Our Devices Behind
No phones. No earphones. No cameras.
The analytical mind — the part of us that wants to name the tree species, identify the bird call, photograph the mushroom — gets a rest. That part of us is brilliant and useful and has its time. This is not its time.
During shinrin-yoku, we observe. We breathe. We notice what we’re walking past, what we’re walking through, and — perhaps most interestingly — what is happening inside our own heads as we move through the forest.
You Follow My Lead
I’ll show you where to walk. When I find a place for us to sit and be still, you’ll know — because I’ll be sitting and being still. When it’s time to move again, I’ll simply begin walking. No whistle. No alarm. No announcement.
You won’t need to ask questions. I won’t be explaining the centipedes or the trees or the birds. That’s not what we’re here for.
When It’s Over, We Share
At the end of the walk, there’s space — if people want it — to share what each of us noticed. What arose. What surprised us. What settled.
But that conversation happens after the shinrin-yoku is done. Not during.
What This Is — And What It Isn’t
Pebblespring’s version of shinrin-yoku is one version among thousands practiced around the world. The words shinrin-yoku point toward something true, but they are not the truth itself. Every practice, every forest, every guide shapes the experience differently.
What we are not doing here is competing. We are not trying to be the best at forest bathing, or more enlightened than the person walking beside us, or more attuned to nature than we were last week. Those ideas — of striving, of comparison, of improvement — are precisely what we are setting down for the duration of the walk.
They are also, not coincidentally, exhausting.
So if you’d like to join us — Sundays, 7:00 a.m., Pebblespring Farm — that’s what you’re joining. The silence. The forest. The stillness of just walking, without agenda, without performance.
It’s a simple thing. And it’s a beautiful thing.
Shinrin-Yoku: Why I Walk in the Forest Every Morning
Have you heard the term shinrin-yoku?
It’s Japanese. It translates, roughly, as forest bathing. And the moment I say that, I can already feel people picturing something they’ve probably done — a long hike, binoculars around the neck, ticking off bird species. That’s not what this is.
Let me tell you what forest bathing is not, because I think that’s the clearest way in.
It’s not hiking. Hiking is about getting somewhere — covering ground, reaching a summit, experiencing new terrain. I walk the same route almost every morning. The path doesn’t change. What changes, subtly, is everything else. The angle of the light. The quality of the silence. The way the sunrise sits differently on the horizon than it did the day before.
It’s also not naturalism. I’m not cataloguing tree species the way a dendrologist would, or straining to identify birdsong the way an ornithologist might. When I hear a sound in the distance, I try not to name it. I just hear it — and notice, somewhere inside me, what it does.
That’s closer to it. Noticing.
I observe the trees, but not in the way you’d observe something you’re trying to understand. It’s more like appreciating light, or beauty — and then laughing at myself for trying to describe what that even means. I notice the smell of coolness. Does coolness have a smell? I don’t think so. But I try to notice it anyway. I let myself feel something when I come across a tree, or a bug, or a mushroom pushing up through the ground.
And I don’t time myself.
What I also notice — and this is perhaps the most useful part — are the thoughts. The anxieties that surface. Will there be enough money for salaries this month? What does the day in the office hold? They arrive uninvited, as thoughts do. But I try not to fight them. I let them pass the way I let a tree pass through my field of vision as I walk. I don’t beat myself up for having the thought. I just observe it. Ah. There it is.
A Japanese professor — I can never remember his name — didn’t invent this idea. People have walked in forests and felt better for it for as long as there have been forests. What he did was document it. He gathered scientific evidence showing that shinrin-yoku has measurable biophysical benefits — reduced cortisol, lower blood pressure, improved immune function. He made the case so compellingly that health insurers in Japan now cover it when a doctor prescribes a certain number of hours of forest bathing.
That’s remarkable. But here’s the thing: that’s not why I do it.
I don’t walk in the forest because it’s good for me. I don’t think of it as a wellness practice, or a prescription, or something I’m optimising. For me, it’s more like flying a kite. Or swimming in the ocean. Or dancing. You don’t do those things because of the cardiovascular benefits. You do them because they’re beautiful things to do.
The fact that there are health benefits is good. But it’s not the reason.
The reason is simpler than that: it’s a beautiful thing to do.
And some mornings, that’s enough.
Could the Garden Route Become South Africa’s Next Wine Region?
A visit to two impressive wineries near Plettenberg Bay raises a question the South African wine industry can’t easily answer.
The conventional wisdom has always been that serious South African wine comes from the Western Cape — Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, the Winelands. But a recent visit to two estates along the Garden Route suggests that geography may be selling the rest of the country short.
Bitou Winery: Wines Worth Taking Seriously
Bitou Winery sits near Plettenberg Bay, tucked alongside the Keurbooms River, and it produces a range that would hold its own in far more celebrated wine regions. Their Malbec stands out, as do two excellent Cabernet Francs. The whites and rosés round out a lineup that is, frankly, impressive for a region most South Africans wouldn’t associate with viticulture at all.
These aren’t novelty wines. After tasting them, the verdict is clear: there is nothing wrong with them. They’re very, very good.
Bramon Estate: A Sauvignon Blanc Specialist
Just up the road at The Crags, Bramon Estate takes a more focused approach. The entire estate vineyard is planted to Sauvignon Blanc, from which they produce an MCC (Méthode Cap Classique) and still wines, supplemented by fruit sourced from neighbouring farms. It’s a beautiful property with excellent food and a genuine wine tourism experience — the kind of destination that the Western Cape doesn’t have a monopoly on, whatever anyone might have told you.
The Question Nobody Seems to Be Answering
Here’s what these two visits make impossible to ignore: if world-class wine can be produced at Plettenberg Bay and The Crags, what exactly is stopping Gqeberha — roughly an hour and a half away and climatically near-identical — from doing the same?
It’s a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. The climate argument doesn’t hold up on its face, because the climate is almost the same. Humidity is often cited as a barrier on the Garden Route, but the vineyards at Bramon offer a clue as to how that challenge is being managed. Walk the rows and you’ll notice the trellising: vines are trained to spread laterally — one wire to the left, one to the right — at roughly one-metre spacing. The effect is to open up the canopy and maximise airflow, reducing the moisture and fungal pressure that humidity brings. Pair that with proper drainage and drip irrigation infrastructure, and the “it’s too wet” objection starts to look less like a hard limit and more like an engineering problem with known solutions.
A Question for the Experts
There may be soil chemistry differences, disease pressure considerations, or economic factors that explain why Gqeberha hasn’t developed a wine industry — but if so, those answers deserve to be heard. The wine-making community watching from a distance might have insights that aren’t widely shared.
In the meantime, one thing is certain: the Garden Route is already producing wines worth seeking out, and the idea that serious wine tourism belongs exclusively to the Western Cape is simply no longer true. The gatekeeping, as it turns out, wasn’t protecting a secret — it was obscuring one.
If you know the answer to the Gqeberha question — whether it’s soil, disease, economics, or something else entirely — the conversation is open. And if you’re anywhere near Plettenberg Bay or The Crags, Bitou Winery and Bramon Estate are both well worth the detour.
AI Is Your Friend
Before you boo me off stage, hear me out.
I know there are a lot of people out there — many of you fresh out of university, having been promised a good career — who are looking at artificial intelligence and feeling genuinely anxious. I understand that. But I want to offer a different way of thinking about it, because I believe AI is not your enemy. AI is your friend.
Here’s why.
Technology Has Always Done This
Every significant technology that has come along has done the same thing: it has helped us see more clearly what is truly valuable and what isn’t. That clarity can feel threatening at first, but it has always, ultimately, been liberating.
Think about the ATM. When automated teller machines arrived, the assumption was that banking tellers would become obsolete. And in a narrow sense, yes — you no longer need to queue to draw cash from a person. But what actually happened is that we began to understand how valuable our time with real bankers is when it matters. The ATM freed us up to have more meaningful engagements with the people in the bank for the things that actually require human judgment, human relationship, and human trust.
Technology didn’t destroy the value of the bank. It clarified it.
The Real Thing Always Wins
Here’s another way to think about it. You can watch a rugby match from your couch in high definition, with action replays, close-ups, and expert commentary. It is, in many technical respects, a better experience than being there. And yet people still go out in the cold and the sleet to watch the game live, because they know there is something irreplaceable about being present for the real thing.
The same is true of the Mona Lisa. Technology has allowed us to reproduce that painting with extraordinary accuracy. You can see it in crisp detail on any screen. And yet people save for years, travel to Paris, and stand in long queues at the Louvre just to stand in front of the original — because they know it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and that knowledge changes everything. The real thing carries a weight that no reproduction can replicate.
Or consider diamonds. Most people genuinely cannot distinguish a diamond from a cubic zirconia, or even a well-cut piece of glass. And yet people value the real thing deeply, sometimes fiercely. Because authenticity matters. Because knowing something is genuine matters.
What AI Is Actually Teaching Us
AI is going to generate an enormous amount of content. Much of it will be good. Some of it will be indistinguishable from the real thing. And that is precisely what will make us understand, more clearly than ever before, what human creativity, human judgment, human presence, and human authenticity are actually worth.
AI is not going to make your skills worthless. It is going to make the right skills more valuable. It is going to sharpen our collective sense of what matters.
So yes — AI is your friend. Not because it will do your job for you, but because it will help you see, perhaps for the first time with real clarity, what your job actually is.
— Tim Hewitt-Coleman
Director, noh Architects
Gqeberha, Eastern Cape
Student Accommodation Crisis: finger points squarely at mayor
This piece first appeared in The Herald on 17 February 2026
The unending panoramic landscape along the N9 through that part of the Karroo between Middleburg and what is soon to be Robert Sobukwe Town, is without any doubt the most spectacular to be found anywhere in the world. The only thing that could possibly have made this route more breathtaking would have been for there to a dramatic thunderstorm playing itself out, like the one that I was driving through on my way back from Johannesburg this Tuesday. You see my son and I had driven my daughter up to start her last year at Wits where we settled her in to her new flat with furniture we had hauled up from the farm on the back of my old Hilux.
On the miles and miles of open road between Johannesburg and Gqeberha my mind flitted between what a shit ton of money it costs to raise kids and what a beautiful privilege it is for me to have been so lucky as to earn a living in this impossible economy and ensure that each of my three beautiful children are able to make the most of their brilliant young minds.
As I drive, my thoughts also drift to the good progress we have made as a country in seeing to it that capable matriculants are no longer denied the ability to study at a tertiary institution just because their mama and papa are broke, debilitated or absent. NSFAS, I am sure, is not perfect but it does bring us a little bit closer to the kind of country I would prefer to live in.
I also know that the kind of South Africa that many of the protesting students currently being shot down by balaclava wearing private militia in Summerstrand would like to live in may not be achievable in my lifetime. Many of their demands seek to undermine the integrity of the university system. We must however recognise that some of their grievances can actually be addressed and should be attended to as a matter of utmost urgency.
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To be honest, I don’t know much at all about university admission criteria or the “NMU Meal Management System” so I will remain silent on those matters. I do know quite a bit though about student accommodation. And it is regarding the matter of the critical shortage of student accommodation, that we need to point a finger squarely at the NMBM Mayor Babalwa Lobishe. Why? You may ask. This is a university matter and nothing to do with the metro. Well, this is where you are getting it wrong and this is where those that must be held accountable hide behind their ignorance of technical and planning matters to create confusion. But don’t worry, I am here to clear things up for everybody.
You see, while there is a lot of noise around the subject, the undeniable truth is that there is a drastic undersupply of adequate student accommodation in the metro. My clever friend Aurick (one of the few MBA’s I know that are not too boring to have coffee with) explains to me that the shortage of student beds in the NMB metro runs into the thousands! That’s not Okay! What is often missed though is that a significant proportion of student housing is provided by the private sector on land owned by the private sector. This is of course where the NMBM comes in, because it is the metro that decides (through its land use policies) where student residences can be built and where they cannot be built. You may not believe this, but the NMBM have decided that almost all of the all of the private land within walking distance of the north and south campus of the NMU may not be developed as student residences. I kid you not! Sure, the NMBM may point to their student accommodation policy which permits the owner of any ordinary home to apply for the “right” to accommodate students. But even where I, in my professional capacity, have helped these private land owners jump through all the mindless and impossible hoops to get such a “special consent”, the property is still only permitted to accommodate 12 students. 12 Students! That’s a joke. In Braamfontein (withing walking distance of Wits), a property big enough to fit only one rich person’s house in Summerstrand, will easily accommodate 200 students.
Now I know that running a metro is not easy and I know that making the kind of policy decisions to remove the obstacles standing in the way of the provision of student accommodation is not easy. We also however know that it can be done and that other municipalities have already shown us how to do it. So, to Mayor Lobishe, if I am telling you something you did not know, you need to immediately (and very publicly) fire your advisors and replace them with people literate in these matters. If however, you already know and understand that NMBM policy is the largest single obstacle standing in the way of private investors solving our student housing crisis and have done nothing about it, I am sure the citizens of NMB Metro would like to know why you feel protesting students should not be burning tyres in front of City Hall instead of along University Way. Please Mayor Lobishe, take the public into your confidence. We are all in this together!
TimHewitt-Coleman.com 