Entrepreneurs
I How a rock musician swapped the stage for organic farming
Prieska is not a place many people pay much attention to – if at all. Niekerkshoop, lying north of this Northern Cape town, is only accessible via less-travelled gravel roads. But between these two places, along the meandering Orange River, lies the farm Lowerland.
This is how the farm’s website describes its location: Where the Bo-Karoo crashes into Kalahari dunes / and Bonsmaras wake to the fish eagles’ tunes / the vines are nurtured by hand / on our beloved farm, Lowerland.
This is no ordinary farm. Interesting things happen here, like the entire enterprise moving towards being organic. And the man with the compass in his hand and the plans in his head is a former rocker.
Bertie Coetzee was the lead singer of the Afrikaans rock band Zinkplaat from 2003 to 2013. After their last album, Retrospekulasie, and their final countrywide tour, Bertie came here to farm full time, with his wife Alette by his side.
“We played our final show on 9 May 2013,” says Bertie. “On 10 May we had a last braai together on the farm outside Stellenbosch where Alette and I had been living with a few friends. On 11 May I was back on Lowerland. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I remember saying at one stage I want to farm when I turn 30 and when things are going well for me.”
Although he’d lived in Stellenbosch since his high-school days, Bertie’s heart was always here in the Northern Cape. “This is where I’m from. I was in Niekerkshoop’s primary school, where the rugby pitch was all soil and stone. You were only too happy if you were tackled onto a duwweltjie patch or a moist pat of horse dung.”
His lyrics often referenced his “holy land”. The people here. The landscape. Because Bertie cares deeply for both.
But it was in Stellenbosch where he met his greatest love. Alette, who grew up in Bloemfontein and studied journalism at the University of Pretoria, arrived in the Boland in 2008. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I just had this urge to go to Stellenbosch,” she says.
She ended up working at De Plate Kompanje (DPK), a production company run by Bertie and friends of his. They married in 2014 and their daughter Mira was born on 7 July 2016. IT WAS ALETTE who started rethinking food and farming after she completed a 12-day permaculture course in
Ladismith. “I wanted to know more about where our food came from,” she says, “and after that course I was like a zealot. I returned with loads of information and a new lingo, and I drove Bertie crazy. He didn’t understand everything and wasn’t as excited as
I was at first, but after a while we were both reading up on it and finding out about permaculture, and biological and organic farming methods. We started to cultivate vegetables to test all kinds of methods. That was a really good practice run for us.”
Bertie says he returned to Lowerland with a plan to practise biological farming. “My dad never used large quantities of conventional fertilisers and pesticides, so in a way he’d already started the process. I took it a bit further when we started applying no-till methods, but the plan to farm organically only crystallised later, after Alette and I had done some in-depth research on permaculture. That’s our ultimate aim: an organic farm where everything – livestock, grains, vegetables, pecan trees and vineyards – is integrated.”
It was not all plain sailing. Bertie’s dad Hennie was still in charge. “It’s hard to achieve your own goals when two farmers with slightly different ideas have to farm together,” says Bertie. “My dad and I went through a long, intense process of negotiation and proposals. We enlisted the help of mediators and auditors, and my dad eventually decided to hand over the farming to me.”
Hennie Coetzee is candid about how difficult it was to step back. But he is proud to say their farm has always been known for innovation. “This part of the world has never been considered a good place to farm cattle and wine grapes, yet we’ve been pretty successful with both.”
Hennie’s people came from the Eastern Cape in 1884 and started farming on the farm Koedoeskop, just on the other side of Niekerkshoop. They were sheep farmers until >
Hennie’s dad, Coenie, bought this piece of land by the river in 1965, where Coenie started to use flood irrigation.
After studying at Stellenbosch and working at the then Wheat Board, Hennie moved to the farm with his wife Riza on 3 January 1981.
“Oh, it was hot,” Riza recalls. “And the road between the farm and Prieska was a jeep track with 17 gates. I hailed from Piet Retief, and I missed the soft rain and green mountains.”
Hennie says electricity was laid on to the farms in the district in 1983. “On 23 June 1983 we put our first centrepivot irrigation system into use – it was one of the first in the area. That was a highlight for our business.”
In 2000 Hennie planted the first wine grapes, and in 2004 he established a Bonsmara stud. In 2013 he walked away with Voermol’s National Cattle Farmer of the Year Award and was named the Agricultural Writers’ Association’s Farmer of the Year for the Northern Cape in the same year. And last year the Landzicht Winemaker’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2015, made from grapes from the Koedoe Cabernet block on Lowerland, was named best in its class at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show.
You tend to get flak when you do something out of the norm, says Hennie. “Like Bertie, with his plans for organic farming. You walk that new path on your own. He is fortunate to have Alette. She’s the perfect wife for him and fits in with everything that’s happening now. I have always been in favour of change management, so I’m excited to see to which levels Bertie and Alette will be taking our farming now,” he says while he and Riza take turns to hold Mira. They’re clearly excited about their new role as grandparents. IT WAS A NUMBER OF FACTORS that made him decide to go organic, says Bertie. Alette’s conviction, his love of nature and their pursuit of healthier foods played major roles, but even small things had him thinking.
“I almost don’t want to tell this story, because it sounds very soppy… Friends of ours came to visit, and the husband offered to say grace before the meal. And he said such an honest prayer and asked for blessings for the farmers. Afterwards, he asked whether we ever thought about how the food we produce blesses the people who eat it. It really made me think about the food that comes from our farm.”
Lowerland’s vineyards and pecan orchards were declared organic in 2016. To get the grain on their existing fields to the same level involves a strict process that takes three years, but the first organic wheat crop was harvested at the end of 2017.
Meanwhile, Bertie has found a market in the Netherlands for organic pumpkins. “We initially started with 1,5ha to experiment and got a host of paperwork in order, but it went well and we now have 12,5ha of organic pumpkins. Growing pumpkins isn’t our dream, but they fill a gap >
and bring in money to finance our other plans.”
Well on track is their cultivation of heritage grains, including khorasan, witwol wheat, hard red wheat, rye, barley and tef. All organic, of course, and all ground with a stone mill.
“We get a lot of public interest in these different types of flour and I feel bad that we can’t help out, but at the moment all our flour is reserved for a handful of bakers,” says Alette.
Their wines are as successful. “Since 2006, we’ve used different winemakers and tried different styles, but from now we’ll focus on our Tannat, Viognier and Colombard MCC,” says Bertie.
The wine is sold mainly through their website, but Bertie and Alette also go to various markets to introduce it. “People are sceptical at first when they hear the wine comes from Prieska – they don’t expect good wine from this area. But, man, it’s great to see their surprise as they taste it.” WE WATCH BONSMARA CATTLE grazing in a field with a mix of cover crops, another of Bertie’s experiments. “Here’s where we’re using mob grazing – or high-density grazing – to see how the cattle and the crops respond. What’s more, the cattle are never injected with antibiotics or growth hormones. My long-term goal is that everything on the farm will be organic and work together. Once a field like this has been grazed, we’ll plant wheat, maize or pumpkins in it.”
Bertie turns over a few dry dung pats and excitedly points out the life underneath them. “There’s a whole ecosystem under there. It takes care of the soil, keeping it healthy. And when the soil is healthy, you’ve already come a long way.”
Above a field where Bertie will soon harvest his first organic wheat crop, we watch a flock of swallows swooping and soaring. “It’s the first time we have so many swallows on the farm, and they keep circling over that field. It shows there’s life there.” DESPITE ALL THE SUCCESSES with their farming, it’s clear that Bertie and his dad are most proud of their workforce. Hennie says the fact that their workers are independent is one of their most important achievements.
“For this, I have to credit my dad,” says Bertie. “He started it. It’s not easy being a hands-off farmer. Your people will make mistakes and you’re going to have to pay expensive school fees, but it’s great to see when they take charge of their department and make things work. It gives them self-respect, makes them part of your business and makes your work much easier. I don’t want to drive a tractor and plant all day long. There are guys on the farm who can do a much better job of it than me. I enjoy the planning and finding markets for our products.”
At the age of 32, Christie Maritz is the foreman of the organic department on the farm. He arrived at Lowerland in 1992 when his parents came to work here. After school he studied at Grootfontein Agricultural College.
“While in school I was actually interested in psychology, but I have no regrets at all about studying agriculture instead.” Because, in 2015, thanks to the Future Farmers Foundation, Christie was given the opportunity to work in Australia for a year.
“I ended up working near Victoria on David van Popering and his son Tim’s dairy farm. It was just the three of us and we did everything ourselves. It was very interesting, because they use
machines a lot more over there. They don’t have farmworkers.”
Besides everything he learnt on the dairy farm, his world became so much bigger, says Christie. “I’d never eaten Chinese food before, for example, and now it’s my favourite. I also got to watch a World Cup cricket match between the Proteas and India with three other South Africans.”
After his year on the farm, David and Tim didn’t want to let Christie go. “I have to admit I would have liked to stay. But now I’m glad I’m back on Lowerland. With the organic farming we’re doing now, I learn something new every day. And Bertie and I are both young guys; we understand each other and that makes it really fun.”
Danie Carstens has known the Coetzees and Lowerland for a long time. Hennie’s mother Anna taught Danie at school in Niekerkshoop and he worked on Lowerland during many a school holiday. After travelling widely, including five years on a ranch in the US, “surrounded by rodeo-crazy people”, he came to Lowerland as farm manager. These days he manages the grains that are not farmed organically.
“Things have changed a lot lately. Farming is now much more intensive, and I have to put in more time in front of the computer to do budgets and admin. But there are also new challenges, especially with the organic approach. I think it makes this farm unique, and I look forward to being part of it.”
Weekends don’t bring Danie any rest. That’s when he goes to look after his own farm just past Niekerkshoop where he farms with boerbokke, Bonsmaras and onions. “I enjoy it, because I get to spend time in the veld and with the livestock. Some days I miss that.”
And what about Bertie and Alette – don’t they miss anything?
“I enjoyed living in Stellenbosch and it took me a while to adjust to life here on the farm,” says Alette. “It was a new community and a new family, and I was limited in what I could do. I did some freelance translation and editing, but since Bertie and I have agreed on what we want to achieve on the farm, I’ve been helping with marketing and I handle our website and newsletter. But I do miss talking to people about writing and new books and music.”
“Yes,” says Bertie, “I sometimes miss people too, and live music.”
Mira’s arrival rearranged their priorities completely. “Now, we’re starting to wonder what we’ll do when she starts school,” says Alette.
“A child instantly changes your focus,” says Bertie. Suddenly, she is the most important being in your life. Suddenly, nothing is as good or as beautiful as when she is with you.”
That’s why Mira can be found on the stoep, in the bakkie, under the pecan trees, among the rows of maize, oats and khorasan… and in the evening breeze as the sun sets.