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. 

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?

Fruit vendor

Beautiful and fresh fruit and vegetables.  Every housewife and mother's dream.

I just wonder if they would be willing to buy it from a makeshift structure in the middle of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth and not from a supermarket?  The housewives and mothers from the township do but I'm very curious how many suburban ladies would.

Citrus farm tour

While browsing around the stalls at the Patensie Citrus Festival on Saturday I heard the announcer say something about tractor trips to one of the citrus farms and I immediately went to enquire. Five minutes later the family was sitting in a trailer behind farmer Danie Malan's tractor in anticipation for the tour to his farm to start.

Along the way Danie stopped to tell us about the young citrus trees that we saw and how the sun can easily burn their trunks hence the trunks getting wrapped.  The second stop was at the lemon orchard where I got to hop off and pick a couple of lemons that went into dessert on Father's Day (the next day), lemon meringue.  After another short ride we got to the naartjie orchard, our main destination.

Everybody on board got a bag and could get off the trailer and pic their own naartjies.  Pipless and guaranteed sweet.  This is the type of thing that city folk love to do as most of them have never had the opportunity to walk between the trees and pick their own fruit.  This has great tourism potential for an area with city slickers going there for a weekend to experience the farm atmosphere.  The Gamtoos Valley has a lot of very good farm based accommodation establishments, so perhaps all they need to do is to offer the farm experience along with it and they would be able to attract even more people to the beautiful part of the province.  But I digress. 

The farm tour was by far the Kidz' favorite part of the day.  Especially Drama Princess loved picking the fruit and I'm sure she will enjoy living on a farm so much more than in the city.  The In-Laws joined us at the festival a little later on and also went on the tour with the Kidz tagging along again.  Like the farmer said, "They're my best customers." 

Montagu Dried Fruit

I love summer fruits (well, any fruit actually) like peaches, plums and apricots.  That was one of the many reasons I looked forward to spending the first part of our summer holiday in the Klein Karoo town of Montagu.  The area has a rich soil and amazing micro climate and along with the fact that there is an abundance of water makes it ideal to farm summer fruits.

On our first day in Montagu I discovered the Montagu Dried Fruit Factory Shop.  Let me not start about my love for dried fruit.  Nom nom nom...  Montagu Dried Fruit and Nuts was established in 1991 and as one of Africa’s largest wholesalers of dried fruit and nuts and currently markets 35% of all dried tree fruit in South Africa.  The shop has an amazing range of dried fruit (and nuts) and we probably returned another three or four times while we were in town. 

Except for the dried fruit, they also sell fresh apricots and peaches.  The apricots sold for... wait for it... you won't believe this... R2 per kilogram.  Drama Princess filled up a couple of bags for us and we had to keep reminding the kidz not to over indulge as we didn't want any tummy problems.

The factory is situated right behind the shop, but visitors aren't allowed inside the factory itself.  We did go on a tractor tour (which I will post about shortly) during which was saw the peaches being dried in the sun.  I posted a picture of peach pips yesterday and a couple of people asked what it's used for.  Somebody in town told me that Montagu Dried Fruit is the only place in South Africa that "produces" the pips like this.  They break them to get the moisture out and then they also get dried in the sun.  Its then sold to people who put them in the gardens, specially in garden paths and drive ways.  All the roads in Montagu Caravan Park where we stayed is covered in peach pips.  I wish I could get my hands on some.

Peach pips

Roadside pineapples

Farm stalls isn't too rare a sight on South African roads and if you want to buy fresh fruit then these farm stalls are the place to get them from.  Locals selling fresh fruit from the side of the road is a lesser common sight, but often seen in areas where fruit are gown.  The Eastern Cape around the town of Bathurst is ideal for Pineapple growing and I found this roadside pineapple stall just outside of Grahamstown.

Shapes of not all round

Today's "Random ... theme" is Random shapes of not all round.

Oranges are round...

Rocks lying on the beach isn't quite round...

Mussel shells in a shell midden isn't round at all

Red Prickly Pears

Prickly Pears are originally found in Central America and first came to South Africa as fodder for cattle. Being a cactus plant, they grow very easily and took root quickly before starting to spread throughout some part of the country at an alarming rate. The spreading of it was brought under control through the introduction of the cochineal beetle.

The fruit of the prickly pear is about as big as a extra large egg and is sweet in taste. It is an acquired taste though as the fruit consist mainly of pips. The leaves of the prickly pear plant have nasty thorns on them while the fruit has hundreds of hairlike thorns which can be very irritating when it gets in your fingers.

There are six different species of prickly pears of which the red prickly pear is one we don't get to see much of. The other day I visited my mother in Despatch and she went to show me a bush of red prickly pears growing about a block away from their house next to the fence. Here are a couple of pics.