Category: Freedom & Farming at Pebblespring

The real pleasure of physical work

It was my first day back at work today after a four day long weekend which started with “Workers day on Thursday 1 May. I spent much of my worker’s day weekend working. Physical work, cutting trees, hauling branches, digging, holes, building fences and fixing quad bikes. Physical work is for me a kind of meditation. I am sure that’s not the right term, but its something that is good for me. It makes me feel alive and somehow “in touch”. Working outside, with the land and the forest has a very different feeling to “working” at my desk in the office, where I am invariably, writing or designing, or delegating or managing or strategising or cajoling or apologising or berating. In fact I am no longer sure that “working” is the correct term for what I do in the office, or for what millions of white collar workers do around the world in offices just like mine every day. There is such a disconnectedness between my actions in my office and anything actually getting done physically in the real world. So much of the office energy goes toward complying with government and bureaucracy. So much energy goes into delegating what I have been tasked with to someone who will delegate to still someone else who will delegate to someone else. So much energy we put in to avoid doing any real work. Years and years of study and building our careers to be sure that we are as far as possible away from being called upon to do any physical work, and for what? Because when I am there, on the ground, wrestling the chainsaw or hammering the nail or straining the wire, it is glorious, it is satisfying
and I am in a place that I want to be.

Is it just me?

160 cc Susuki Quadrunner helping out with some fence poles.
The right tools obviously make things a little easier.

Dam and Damn Aliens.

I am still a bit upset about the three cattle we lost. I know I could have avoided it. The spray I got from the vet, really cleared up this ticks on the remaining three and they are looking much better.

We had the TLB (tractor, loader backhoe) out again yesterday. Doing some more work on clearing alien vegetation on and around the dam wall, which now doubles as the access route.  Basically what we are doing is removing poplars and inkberry  that are growing into the dam. Problem is, we made more progress than we thought we would yesterday and about a metre of wet material was added to the dam wall over about a 15 m length. That depth of material will take a while to dry out, so we cant drive on it yet. No big deal, except, I had parked my car at the cottage and now cant get it out. I had to phone Hlubi to come and pick us up and take us home.

Perhaps the route will be dry enough by Tuesday. When I checked it today, it was sill so muddy, that I couldn’t walk over it. Its like sinking sand in places. I am sure though it will be OK once it dries. We excavated the same soil last time and it dried out OK for us to drive on.

I have been spending my mornings for the last few days reading Wendell Berry’s “Unsettling of America”. What he says really resonated with me and plays over in my mind. Even when I was working with the dam wall yesterday I was reflecting on what Berry speaks of as a “nurturing” spirit as opposed to the spirit of conquest. I can see what we are doing at Pebblespring seeks to nurture, but when we bring heavy machinery on site, it is nerve racking. Perhaps it feels to close to “Conquest”. This property has been so badly neglected. It has gone to ruin. If the idea is that we nurture it in order that is can, in return, provide for us, then we will have to begin with some drastic “surgery”  But what I call drastic is nowhere near what my neighbours are advising “bulldoze the whole thing flat”, “burn it all down”.
There is a gentle, more nurturing way. I will find it.

Death and Destruction

I have delayed writing this post. Its been too painful.

Three cattle are dead. Tick born disease perhaps. Inkberry poisoning, also a possibility. I had to go out of town last weekend. I left on Friday. When I came back on Tuesday, they were dead.

I am devastated by this failure. I know all the rhymes about how we learn from failing, Its just that it feels so bad. It feels so discouraging .It brings everything into question. It brings my dream of this farm into question. I know it shouldn’t. I know I should just shrug it off, but I am just telling you how I feel. I know that I am not ready to bring animals onto the farm, I know I am not ready to but the farm I know things are too hectic with work and with family. I know all of this, but I also know that the only way to make this happen is to make it happen.

But maybe this is what this blog is about: Communicating the real struggle that it is to transition to some kind of agrarian reality. Showing that its not all about strolling in the forest and singing songs by the camp fire at night.

Its real and it gets nasty!

The Old Oak Tree

There is an old Oak Tree toward the east of the dam. It is in thick bush. I cut my way through to it yesterday. I had found it before, some months ago, when walking a different route. My neighbour, Gavin Flanagan told me some months ago that there was an old Oak Tree, he told me there were springs and a “well” I set out to find all of those and I did. But having a closer look at the tree I see that it is not very healthy.Some of the big branches seem dead. Others have broken off. There are leaves growing off one of the big branches, but not vigorously. I see some places where there is rot in the trunk and in other places I notice the tell tales marks of wood boring insects.

So I am trying to find out what can be done to help this tree. Any clever people reading this know what to do? What kind of insect is likely to be boring into the trunk? Is there a safe method to get rid of them? Are there environmental changes I can make? (getting more light on the trunk, getting more cross wind?)

I measured the circumference at 2.3 metres. I have read somewhere that a very rough estimate of an English Oak’s age would be one year for every 25 mm of trunk circumference. Our estimate therefore is that the tree is 92 years old, having started growing in 1922.

I am interested because I really like trees and because I am am interested in anything that tells the story of the farm, the various chapters of its history. This is part of the appeal of the site. Its like a journey of discovery, unravelling a mystery.

Building Procedes

Well, quite a bit of work has been done on the cottage. I have a great team on the site headed by Gavin Fortuin and his colleague Roland. The gables have been repaired a new room has been prepared inside for the toilet and the floor of the living room has been excavated in preparation for the earthen floor. I met Diane on site on Thursday. She has made and earthen floor before. In fact she has built a cob house along William Moffat drive in Port Elizabeth. You can see it here.

Water for the works is still a big problem.

In the meantime we have moved the cattle over the stream to the grazing on the road side of the property.
The grazing is good there, but I was concerned to have them close to the road not trusting that they would not want to wonder off. The have been very well behave though since I put them there on Wednesday. I just moved them to a new patch of pasture this morning.

Pebblespring Farm

In a family meeting last night we agreed on the name for the farm…. “Pebblespring“


The name, “Pebblespring farm” is a nod to the Khoisan and what they called “Kragga Kamma” lake. The surrounding area that is named “Kragga Kamma” after this lake. One of the streams that feeds the Kragga Kamma lake has as its source the spring on the eastern boundary of our property.
The most reliable source we can find (Margret Harrodene) records the Khoisan translation for Kragga Kamma as being “pebbly waters”. Our spring is at the source of a little river that feeds the “Pebbly Waters” so we called the spring “Pebble Spring” and the farm Pebblespring Farm. I love it! The name talks to the fact that this property would have been a centre of human habitation for a very long time before the dutch arrived an called it Goedmoedsfontein, in itself a beautiful name meaning “Spring of Wellness and Contentment”.

The collapsed wall is being replaced down to the foundations

In other news, the builders started today on the maintenance and repairs to the shop and cottage. All work is proceeding in accordance with a heritage permit received from the Provincial Heritage Resources Agency. (which by the way required us to do work by June this year.)

I am also glad that the truck made it up the new (still very bumpy) driveway.
http://youtu.be/CDEcVcD2OVU







Clearing Alien vegetation off the dam wall.

Today we brought in a TLB. I booked it for three hours. we started at 9am. I am trying out the TLB to see what it can do in what space of time. I am happy to say we managed to clear alien vegetation in a 3m wide strip all the way though to the cottage. We cleared Ink Berry, Black Wattle, Port Jackson ( Acacia Saligna) and Poplars. Our plan is not to surface the cleared strip we are driving on or build any culvert, as these could be understood to be  “Structure” the construction of which are “listed activities” in wetland areas in terms of environmental legislation.

I can now drive my car along this cleared strip and get all the way to the cottage. There has been vehicular access to the cottage for the last 20 or 30 years. Not since the subdivision which somehow cat off the access route and located in the neighbours property. The strip of alien vegetation I have cleared runs along the existing dam. I am sure it will be a problem in a very big flood once every 10 years, but I suppose then we will have to be cut off from the world for a day or two.

The TLB can knock down trees, move sand, dig the dam deeper. Its a very versatile tool.

It cost R300 per hour. so R900 rand in total for this morning work. We hired it from a company called Glendore Sand. The drivers name was Nathi. He was great.

To hire people to do that by hand would have been much more expensive and take a huge amount of time and management input.Its quite sad. So many people are looking for work, but it just does not make sense.

I loaded these videos that give an idea of the work.

 http://youtu.be/_dV_3S54adc
http://youtu.be/En1nsElKnwA

What’s in a name?

I have let it slowly sink in. The knowledge that the farm is now ours. We have title. Its been such a long journey. Since 2010 when I first saw the place and made contact with the seller’s agent.

The feeling I have is not relief, its more like feeling of contentment, or a sense that things are as they should be. The last year especially, has been quite intense. In March last year I secured an “option” to buy the property, since then I have been in a kind of purgatory, a “no man’s land”. In this time, the answer has been not quite yes and not quite no. If it had been “no” I suppose I could have moved on to do other things. (But then again, I have encountered a number of “nos” in this journey, but each time I heard no, I new that my task was to come back and ask the question in a different way.)

The little bit of work I was able to do on the farm, some with the help of volunteers, I had to do in the knowledge that it could all be wasted effort if the deal did not go through. But another part of me decided to continue as if the farm were mine already. Clearing paths, fixing dams, fixing roofs, building fences and grazing cattle. And I suppose that part of me won the day, the part of me that is the believer, the part of me that does not give up, the part of me that keeps pushing and does not easily tire.

Can you see the Woodpecker?

So now that the place is ours, I feel we have to give it a name. When I go out there, I say I am going to “The Farm”. Its formal name is Portion 3 of Farm 43, Goedmoedsfontein East. But Goedmoedsfontein East is the name of the “parent” farm from which this piece was subdivided. Gavin Flanagan’s farm across the road has a signboard that says: ‘Goedmoedsfontein East”, So while the farm is, I understand, the site of the original homestead of the farm, Goedmoedsfontein, it seems impractical to give that as is official name. So what is it to be then? We are in discussion as a family, but until then we will have to go by, Portion 3 of Farm 43, PE!

On the farm this weekend, working on a new “temporary paddock”, The moved the cattle this afternoon into the space marked “10” on the diagram. Perhaps 2 days worth of grazing in there. Its very small, will have to see how it looks tomorrow. The work involved in setting these paddocks up is mainly in clearing a path for the single strand electric fence to run. I then fix plastic insulted clips onto tree stumps and branches on the edge of the pasture or through the forested edge. Th actual running of the fencing strand takes only a few minutes.

paddock layout, revision 3