We picked strawberries in Hankey

I am way behind on my blogging.  Like in "get Dr Strange in here with the Time Stone and send me back 6 months so I can try to start and catch up" behind.  Life is getting in the way and life is made up of work, family, kids, sport, etc, etc, etc...  That plus having a teenager in the house that occupies my laptop all evening, which have now conked out for the third time in a year. The laptop, not the teenager.  Freekin hell, please remind me never to buy an Acer computer again.  That is if I ever have money to buy a laptop again with what Miggie's indoor cricket is costing me.  Anyhow... We picked strawberries in Hankey, in January, which is a good 4 and a half months ago already, but I would really like to share it with you. 

Madele' Ferreira has been growing strawberries outside Hankey in the Gamtoos Valley for over 20 years and for the last few years they have managed to produce strawberries commercially all year round.  With over 12 hectares covered in strawberries and supplying some of the biggest retail chains around, the Mooihoek strawberries have probably crossed your lips at one stage or another, but only from the shop to your table to your mouth.  Although they have had many requests from people to come and pick their own strawberries they have never been ready for the public to do so.  That was until Madele's daughter was looking to earn some extra money during the summer holiday and it was decided to allow the public to pick for a limited time only.  The response? Overwhelming and so much more than they ever imagined.

I headed out to Hankey with the family in tow and two teenagers who weren't very excited about the outing, mainly because they had no idea what they will get to do.  Yes, they knew we were going to pick strawberries, but I don't think they even knew how the fruit was grown and what you actually have to do. 

On arrival we bought our punnets at R30 each and received the simple instructions.  You can pick as many as you can fit onto the punnet without leaning it against your body.  Pick away!  And pick they did.  Them and many others who arrived on just this one morning.  Apparently, the farm workers could not understand why people would want to come and pay to pick strawberries in the summer sun when you can just buy them in the shop.  Nobody told them that these days it's all about experiences and not just looking at things anymore, but rather doing.

I sure hope they will open the field for picking at some stage again and perhaps on a more permanent basis as it will do wonders for tourism in the Gamtoos Valley.  For now, I can only stare at my pictures from the day and remember the taste of those sweet red strawberries, most not even making it home with us. 

Why have you never visited Nieu-Bethesda?

It feels like most people I speak to about travelling in the Karoo Heartland of the Eastern Cape have been to Graaff-Reinet, yet many didn't venture much further to also visit Nieu-Bethesda.  Nieu-Bethesda truly is a very special village located barely 30 minutes from Graaff-Reinet and have a truly off the beaten track feeling to it.  I say off the beaten track because that is literally what it is.  No tar roads in the village, no street lights, no ATM, no petrol station and no night life other than crickets in the dark and the cow you have to swerve out for when it suddenly appears in your headlights.  What the village does have are tons of character (the good kind), history, interesting nooks and crannies, even more interesting people, good food and nostalgia that will stick to you like blackjacks to wool socks long after you have left.

I was going to do a long and detailed post about Nieu-Bethesda but decided that my pictures could easily do most of the talking.  For the rest you will have to visit the village yourself to discover.

Nieu-Bethesda, a town of Karoo landscapes, history, owls, dirt roads and (rusting in) piece

Not a tarred road or street light in sight where a traffic jam means two cars reaching an intersection at the same time perhaps twice a day

Nieu-Bethesda is one of the few places that still have leivore (farrows) with water flowing in them

The Owl House is what put Nieu-Bethesda on the map and well worth a visit

The late Helen Martins spent most of her life in the town and the latter part of it transforming her ordinary Karoo home into a place of colour and light.  Over the years she and her assistant Koos Malgas, used concrete and glass to create a multi-coloured house and fantasy garden.  In the Camel Yard visitors will find statues of owls, camels, wise men and much more and one can literally get lost In your own thoughts trying to take all of this in.  Shortly before her 79th birthday, Helen Martins committed suicide by drinking caustic soda.  It is said that at the time her eyesight was failing because of damage from ground glass and that depression was getting the better of her.  

Doesn't matter how many times I visit the Owl House, there is always something different to discover or some new angle to photograph 

One can't simply visit Nieu-Bethesda and not buy one of the hand made cement owls being sold outside the Owl House.  I still have the owl I bought on my first visit to the village in my garden.

The Nieu-Bethesda cemetery has graves dating back to the early days of the village with the one of Helen Martins with its cement owl headstone standing out 

The Karoo is famous for the fossils found there and Nieu-Bethesda seems to be right in the thick of things when it comes to fossil records.  The Kitching Fossil Centre in the village is well worth a visit.  The guide shows visitors how they clean the rock off the fossils and do a walking tour to the river bed to show you fossils in the rocks.

If you really want to learn more about fossils, Khoi San artifacts and rock paintings then you have to visit Ganora Guest Farm a little outside the village.  Ganora has one of the biggest private fossil collections in the country in their fossil museum and if they ever established a Jurassic Park in the Karoo then I would want to be with owner JP Steynberg as he knows everything there is to know about the prehistoric animals found in that area. 

Yes, that is the fossilised skull of a very small dinosaur

Don't think that a tour through the Ganora Fossil Museum would be a boring affair

The Karoo Heartland is known for it's amazing hospitality and farm stays are becoming more and more popular.  At Ganora our little group were just in time to help bottle feed the hanslammers (hand reared lambs).  Not the kind of experience that us city slickers are used to or get to do every day.  

My visit to Nieu-Bethesda was way too short, taking up only a Sunday afternoon and Monday morning before the meeting I had to attend.  Way too little to explore and experience properly.  One needs at least a weekend, arriving on the Friday afternoon and leaving on Sunday after lunch, to have a chance to get to know the town properly and visit at least a few places.  If you do want to know more, do check out this very comprehensive list of things to do in Nieu-Bethesda on the ECTOUR website. 

Karoo farm scene

I took this picture on a recent visit to Lowlands Country House in the Karoo Heartland outside Cradock.  The scene just grabbed me and if I was a painter then I would have loved to paint it.  It really shows the importance of water in this arid environment and how it can change things from brown to green.

Overberg patterns at sunset

The brown stubble covered fields in the Overberg during summer isn't always perceived as the most beautiful scenery by travelers.

That is until you look a little closer, especially just before sunset. 

Overberg stubble

Driving through the Overberg region of the Western Cape in late winter and spring you are met with rolling hills covered in green and yellow.  By the time summer comes around the grains like wheat, oats and barley as well as the canola have been harvested leaving nothing more than field after field of brown stubble and scattered hay bales.

Overberg landscape

The Overberg landscape changes with the seasons with the best time to travel through the area being August and September.  That is when you will find green grain fields with wheat, oats and barley, interspersed by yellow canola fields, in splendorous full bloom.

Hart Cottage at Glen Avon Farm

I told you a little bit of the history of Glen Avon Farm and the historic Glen Avon Watermill outside Somerset East in my previous post.  Glen Avon has a number of other old buildings on the property with the oldest being Hart Cottage.  Built around 1817, Hart Cottage is the only remaining of three of the original cottages built on the farm.  It's was painstakingly renovated and is being used as self catering accommodation for visitors to the farm.  In the background on the right is one of the farm's two old homesteads.

The historic Glen Avon Watermill

A week or two three ago I got to spend an evening on the historic Glen Avon Farm at the foot of the Bosberg Mountains outside Somerset East.  A stay at Glen Avon consist of true farm hospitality like you can only get in the Karoo and the B&B's surroundings is just what you need to get away from the city and take in farm life.  The highlight of my stay though, which was way too short, was a visit to the historic Glen Avon Watermill.

 

The history of Glen Avon is closely intertwined with that of Robert Hart.  Hart first came to the Cape in 1795 as an 18 year old private.  He returned there a second time as an officer (and a married man) in 1807 and was stationed in Grahamstown under Colonel John Graham.  Robert Hart was put in charge of the experimental farm which provided supplies to the army.  In 1825 the farm was closed down and the town of Somerset East was laid out on the land.  Hart was given land next to the town where he built a homestead.  The farm was called Glen Avon and it was here where Hart pioneered Marino sheep farming and also grew citrus fruit and grain.  The grain production in the area became so successful that he decided to build a commercial mill to be used for all the neighbouring farms.  

The equipment and machinery for the mill was imported from Leeds in England, brought by ship to Algoa Bay and carted by ox wagon across the Zuurberg Pass to the farm.  Although the mill hasn't worked since the mid 1990's most of it is still in working condition. 

 

The one part of the mill that is in visible need of repair is the chute that funnels the water to the wheel itself.  Unfortunately the floor wasn't replaced properly by the contractor when it was last renovated and have rusted holes throughout the length of it.  How I would have loved to see that old wheel turn. 

 

During our tour around and through the mill I photographed a couple of interesting signs, but I have to say the one that drew the most attention was the one that said "No smoking or spitting".  I imagine it was to make sure nothing unwanted landed in the flour.

 

The mill has three levels inside and Bill Brown, a sixth generation descendent of Robert Hart, explained the whole process that was followed when the mill was in use.  On the last leg of the visit he took us up rickety steps to the top level and you won't believe what we discovered there.  The Bat Cave.  No Batman though.  Needless to so a couple of ladies in the group high tailed back down the steps to get outside at this stage.  Anyhow, Batman or no Batman, the mill was so worth visiting.

Visiting a cumcumber farm of all places

Visiting a cucumber farm probably isn't very high on anybody's list when you talk agritourism, but I'm always up for something new.  I  was in the Gamtoos Valley as part of a media tour recently and Gamtoos Tourism organized for us to visit Malan Cucumbers.  This isn't a technical post so I just want to tell you about the experience.  We were met by the farmer and his daughter who took us on a walk around the facilities situated just outside Patensie.  The first thing we got to see was the growing tunnels.  The cucumbers are grown in tunnels as they grow best in a hot environment and the tunnels don't just keep it warm but also protects the plants.  The cucumber plants themselves aren't grown in the earth but in bags with a special soil mix.  It's also amazing to hear how quickly the actual cucumber grows when the conditions are right, up to several centimeters a day.

Next up was a visit to the packhouse.  We arrived a bit late so most of the staff knocked off for the day already although a few were packing the last few vegies for the day in crates.  The cucumbers come straight out the tunnels into the packhouse to be sorted and packaged.  The cucumbers are then individually wrapped in plastic while the gherkins get packaged in punnets.  The labels of the different supermarkets that carry their products get put on right here on the farm already so the cold storage trucks deliver them directly to the shop and onto the shelves. 

 

Spending 30 minutes or so on a farm like this makes you appreciate what goes on behind the scenes and you realize how little you know about where the fruit and vegies in the supermarket comes from.  Gives you more appreciation of what you eat next time you have that humble green salad.       

Sweet juicy red strawberries at Mooihoek Farm

Sweet juicy red strawberries.... I don't need to use any more fancy words to get your mouth watering.  Actually, you just need to have a look at the pictures in this post and not read anything at all.

It's always great to get an exclusive behind the scenes look at something and in this case it was a tour around the Mooihoek Boerdery strawberry farm. Mooihoek is situated next to the Gamtoos River outside the town of Hankey in the Eastern Cape.  Back in 1998, farmers wife Madelé Ferreira planted 5 000 strawberry plants in her ailing rose garden.  This has grown and developed to a farm with over 500 000 plants and employing 90 workers that supplies strawberries to chain stores like Spar, Pick ‘n Pay and Shoprite / Checkers.  In 2012 Madelé was also named the Sanlam / Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year: Job Creator of the Year, a huge achievement for this Gamtoos Valley farmer although she was very modest about it when I asked her. 

We were met by Madelé as we arrived at the farm and taken on a tour around the fields.  Workers were busy picking strawberries and packaging them right there in the field to be shipped to a supermarket.  The first thing I wanted to know was if I could try a strawberry straight off the field and as no harmful pesticides are used I could do it.  "Just make sure you pick one on the shade side of the plant," was Madelé's advice.  You don't want to eat a warm strawberry.

After our walk through the fields we had a peek in the cold storeroom before heading to Madelé's boardroom where a jug of 100% strawberry juice and a some cut and chilled strawberries waited for us.  This is going to spoil dinner, but who cares.  I asked Madelé if they are open to the public to come and pick strawberries.  Unfortunately at this stage they aren't.  They produce strawberries all year around which means that they are always busy preparing and harvesting fields and until now there just hasn't been time to set up part of the farm for the public to visit.  Not yet.  So perhaps some time soon the Port Elizabeth folks would be able to go and pick their own strawberries less than an hour from home, just like you can do around George and Stellenbosch.  Ok, so where can I go and get some strawberries to satisfy this watering mouth of mine now?

Regyne - the biggest commercial protea farm in the world

The Tsitsikamma is more than just indigenous forests, rugged coastlines and adrenalin filled adventure activities.  I'm going to lie if I say I didn't know it, but its always great to spread the word.  Our Sho't Left in the Tsitsikamma and Eersterivier area included a visit to Regyne, the biggest commercial protea farm in the world.  Tours of the farm is organised by Oudebosch Farm Stall who does a tour and lunch as well as a tour and afternoon tea and cake option for groups. 

Joining us on the tour were fellow travel bloggers Dawn Jorgensen of The Incidental Tourist, Di Brown of The Roaming Giraffe and Linda Markovina of Moving Sushi.  We were met by Hanli Viljoen who took us on a tour of the farm and its facilities.  Regyne's protea fields cover 80 hectares and they produce flowers primarily for the export market.  Proteas are cut, sorted and trucked straight to the airport for export.  Hanli started off by showing us their sorting shed and cold room.  Because it was weekend there were no staff on site, but she explained the process they followed.  Most of the proteas were shipped out the day before but there were still an impressive variety of flowers in the cold room for us to see.  From here we moved onto the protea nursery where Hanli spends most of her day.  It was unbelievable that the proteas are actually grown from seed and how the seedlings are handled before going into a field.  We also visited one of the fields where they grow King Proteas, South Africa's national flower.  Seeing them grow like that makes me want some in my own garden.  I didn't think the KidZ would be very interested in the farm, but they actually paid very close attention and I think enjoyed it and learned as much as we did.

Disclosure: We visited Regyne Protea Farm as guests of Oudebosch Farm Stall.  I received no further remuneration, wasn't asked to write a positive post and keep full editorial control.

The Sir Percy FitzPatrick Lookout in Sunland

Sir Percy FitzPatrick, (24 July 1862 – 24 January 1931) is probably best known for writing the book Jock of the Bushveld, but also played a big role in the early development of the Sundays River Valley.  In his younger years he was involved in gold and diamond prospecting in Mpumalanga where Jock of the Bushveld also plays off.   In 1895 FitzPatrick became the secretary of the Reform Committee in Johannesburg which conspired to overthrow Paul Kruger's South African Republic.

 At the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) FitzPatrick helped to establish the Imperial Light Horse Regiment but was prevented from active service by ill health.  He was knighted in 1902 as a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.  He served as one of eight Transvaal representatives in the national convention of 1908–9, where four British colonies were consolidated into the Union of South Africa and went on to serve as a member of the parliament of the Union of South Africa.

After coming to the Sundays River Valley he established the Sundays River Settlement Company which encouraged people to settle in this area.  He also played a very big role in the establishment of the citrus industry in the valley and the amazing irrigation system of this area was his brain child.  His idea was to channel water from the Orange River, six hundred kilometres away from Sunland, into this arid area thus enabling agriculture to flourish here, as it does today, providing employment for the many local people.

 

FitzPatrick bought a piece of land next to the river from where his guests could enjoy the stunning view of the surrounding valley.  He even had a lookout platform built on the land where visitors can still go to marvel at the view.  After his death he was buried at The Lookout where he's wife is buried alongside him.  The Lookout and the surrounding land was donated as a public space my his daughter and son-in-law in 1953 and the site was declared a National Monument. 

A Tsitsikamma Sho't Left

We really don't need much motivation to pack our bags and head somewhere for a Sho't Left weekend.  Not at all.  Even more so when the invitation for that Sho't Left comes from the Tsitsikamma which is only an hour and a half from our home base in Port Elizabeth.

 

A call from Penny of Tsitsikamma Seaside Accommodation along with an earlier invitation by Anneline of Storms River Adventures had us planning a weekend that included some beach time, nature time, family time and ultimately, adrenalin time.

 

An early departure on Friday afternoon had us driving west on the N2 from PE and taking the Oudebosch turnoff on the eastern side of the Tsitsikamma.  A short time later we reached the seaside town resort village cluster of houses called Eersterivier.  Eersterivier is just that, a collection of holiday homes along the beautiful Tsitsikamma coastline and Penny manages 19 of these which get rented out to the public when the owners aren't using them.  We stayed in Shick Shack which was anything but just a shack.  It sleeps eight in four bedrooms and has a sublime view of the coastline from its deck .  Perfect to sit and relax on after a hard day of Tsitsikamma'ing.

 

Saturday morning we spent a bit of "beach time" exploring the Eersterivier beach with its fascinating fossil dunes and sandstone formations.  The two most notable features for me were the blue hole, perfect for swimming, and the blow hole which gets spectacular at high tide.  We decided to head inland for a little while and went to explore the town of Kareedouw just across the mountain before stopping at Oudebosch Farm Stall for lunch.  Just a few kilometers from Oudebosch is Regyne Protea Farm, the biggest commercial protea farm in the world.  Oudebosch Farm Stall organizes tours of the farm for groups during the week, but we were lucky enough to join a couple of travel bloggers on a private tour that afternoon.

 

Sunday started with a bit of a sleep in before packing up and returning to Oudebosch brunch.  Then it was time to head to Storms River Village for the highlight of our trip, a Tsitsikamma Canopy Tour with Storms River Adventures.  And what an adventure it was.  Being in the business I'm in I've had the opportunity and privilege to go on this a couple of times before, but it was a first for the rest of the Famdamily with Chaos Boy volunteering to take the lead just behind the guide.  Drama Princess was slightly nervous but the second guide was on top of things and she got to do a couple of tandem slides with him until she was comfortable enough to go on her own.  Sliding along the 10 slides through the canopy of the indigenous Tsitsikamma forest 30 meters up is always a highlight and something we will remember for a long time.

 

I will do separate posts with some more information about all the activities

we participated in in the coming weeks.

 

  Disclosure: We enjoyed this visit as guests of Tsitsikamma Seaside Accommodation, Oudebosch Farm Stall, Storms River Adventures, Tsitsikamma Tourism and the team at ECTOUR.  I received no further remuneration, wasn't asked to write a positive post and keep full editorial control.

Odd one out

I recently spent a night at the highly recommended Ganora Guest Farm near Nieu-Bethesda.  Early morning before breakfast I went for a walk around the farm and down to the river.  On my way back I found this interesting scene of a calf having breakfast with the sheep.  A case of mistaken identity?

Citrus orchids in the Gamtoos Valley

The Gamtoos Valley in the Eastern Cape is prime citrus growing country and for city folk the rows and rows of citrus trees are always a sight to behold.  This picture was taken outside of Hankey in the valley.

The citrus range from different types of oranges and easy peelers to naartjies and, in this case, lemons

Canola flowers in the Overberg

I've always wanted to take a couple of pictures of the canola fields in the Overberg to post but I always seem to travel through the area in summer or winter and never in spring.  Attending the e-Tourism Africa Summit in Cape Town and having driven up via the Klein Karoo I didn't even think of canola fields until we dropped over into the Overberg at Botrivier and there is was down below.  Patches of canola field flowers in all the green.  Now to find a nice spot with a view and the sun behind us.  The cloudy conditions didn't help either.  Somewhere between Riviersonderend and Swellendam I saw what I was (kinda) looking for.  Pulled over and positioned myself to take a few pictures, one of them being this one showing the canola field next to the N2.

 

Erenei, my travel companion on this trip, snapped this picture of me snapping the above picture. 

See what I mean with "positioned"? 

 

Ever seen a Firefly on a fence?  Luckily the farmer didn't.

Farmland island

I spotted this scene from the Sir Percy Fitzpatrick Lookout near Sunland between Addo and Kirkwood.  While taking in the magnificent view I spotted a green patch in the middle of a couple of ploughed fields.  On closer inspection I noticed that there was a farm worker's house and a couple of trees on it.  Very peculiar to find a green island like this in the middle of a ploughed field.

A dairy farm experience in the Crags

A holiday experience can be made up of anything and for our Easter long weekend Sho't Left to the Crags and Natures Valley we were expecting it to be made up of camping, swimming in the Natures valley lagoon, walks and Geocaching.  Little did we expect a farm experience that got the KidZ a lot more excited than any of the mentioned activities.  The campsite was situated across the road from the Natures Way Farmstall which on its turn is located on a working dairy farm.  The farm milks Jersey cows twice a day and every morning and afternoon the cows are herded past the campsite to the milking shed and then back again to the meadows where they spend the rest of their time.

The Tsitsikamma Sunrise Caravan Park where we stayed had on their website that you can go and see how the cows get milked across the road at the farm stall.  Little did we know that its not just one or two cows but close to 200 of them.  On our first morning there we went to find out what time they milk and were told 4pm to 6pm.  This meant that the KidZ were watch watching all day long and made sure we were back in time from the beach to go and see the cows.  Not just was it the KidZ first time in a commercial dairy but also my own.  I was snapping pictures and asking questions while trying to stay out the workers' way best I could to allow them to continue with their work.  After a while one of the workers called the KidZ over and showed them how the machines worked.  They even got to try their own hands at milking and Drama Princess got to put the milking machine on one of the cows. WOW! And there I thought we may just get to have a peek before being asked to leave.  Kudos to these workers to take time out in between doing their job to show these city folk what they do even if they don't have to.

We were barely out the milking shed and the farm's foreman went past with a buck bucket full of milk for the calves.  Before we could say a word the KidZ were off after him to give a hand and he didn't complain because it meant he could stand back and let the KidZ do their thing.  The feeding process is a bit more "advanced" than standing with bottles but on the other hand its designed for one person to feed a couple of calves at a time.  While the KidZ were busing the foreman explained to us the whole process of rearing calves, when they get weened from milk and where the go when they get a bit older.  In addition to all of this we also got to see a calf being born on our last afternoon there and all in all this accumulates and contributed to a much more memorable holiday than just hikes, Geocaching and swimming.

Natures Way Farm Stall

South Africa has some impressive farm stalls.  Some sell nothing more than fresh produce while others are for all intensive purposes a restaurant or curio shop along a high way or back road somewhere.  Its the ones in between that really interests me.  Those who sell something fresh, some curios and also serve a killer meal, even if its nothing more than roosterkoek with jam and cheese.  And coffee.  Lets not forget coffee.  I discovered a farm stall like this on the road between the Crags and Natures Valley on the Garden Route on a recent Sho't Left to the area.

Natures Way Farm Stall isn't a curio selling shop but rather one that focuses on fresh and home made goods.  We were in the area for four days and every morning they had the freshest home made breads and cakes, fresh milk on tap straight from the dairy on the farm the farm stall is located on, jams, dried fruit and a range of dairy products.  They also serve meals, cakes and... coffee on the stoep.

The farm stall sells a range of cheeses made either on the farm or in the area, most made from their own milk.  The problem with a farm stall like this is that my wallet can't handle everything my eyes want.  I wouldn't mind having access to fresh milk on tap every day.