Stay on a farm in the Eastern Cape
Spend time in an Eastern Cape kloof and you’ll come out a different person. But where to find such a life-changing nook? The mountains between the towns of Cradock, Somerset East, Pearston and Graaff-Reinet, that’s where. Venture into these kloofs and you
Dirkie Saad isn’t in his office in Cradock, but I get his personal number from someone working in his shop and call him. No worries, says Dirkie after he hears that I want to come see the new lodge he has built on his farm. I drive the magazine’s trusty Renault Duster over the Fish River, turn left at the Cradock train station and follow the tar road south past irrigation farms. At what’s left of Halesowen’s station buildings, gravel takes over. When I was seven years old and still going to school in Cradock, our class once took the train to Halesowen and from there we visited a nearby dairy farm, owned by the Copemans. Just past this childhood flashback I see the turn-off to Buffelshoek Dirosie Lodge on the right. “Dirosie” is a combo name: Dirkie’s wife’s name is Rosie. Dirkie’s surname is actually Visser, but everyone in Cradock calls him Dirkie Saad – he sells seed and other agricultural products to farmers in the district. Dirkie bought Buffelshoek four years ago. “The first year we just built roads and put up new fences,” he says. Now they have selfcatering units, a big restaurant with Pieter de Kock, one of Cradock’s most loved chefs, in charge, a wedding venue and even a rugby field. Although the grass is still settling and the posts aren’t up yet, Dirkie envisages rugby being played here soon. He’s a big fan of the local agricultural school, Marlow, and plans to host team-building weekends. A group of guests is keen to see the view from the top of Buffelskop and I’m invited along. Buffelskop is quite an attraction: Olive Schreiner, author of The Story of an African Farm (1883), is buried in a stone sarcophagus on top of the mountain. The convoy of bakkies starts climbing the mountain track. Soon we see something unusual: giraffe. These days the Eastern Cape has so much game that you don’t need to visit the Kruger if you want to see something like a giraffe. Never mind that, you don’t even have to visit South America: Dirkie has a few alpacas and llamas, too. The track ends about 500 m from Schreiner’s grave. Dirkie is building a “restaurant” here for special functions – what a view you’ll have! I look out over the landscape. I was born in Cradock and I know the landmarks well. To the east is the Tarka River, a tributary of the Fish River, where my mother’s farm is hidden in the mountains. Closer, just on the other side of the Fish, is the N10 that we used to drive from Cradock to Somerset East when I attended Gill College. But how well do I really know my own backyard? Over the next few days I plan to drive a circular route of 500 km that will lead me through the districts of my youth…
Say “yes” to the Karoo
A kudu sosatie later, I say cheers to Dirkie and follow the R390 gravel road to Mortimer. There’s still a co-op here, but not much more. Just past Mortimer I turn right and head into the mountains, leaving the fertile Fish River Valley behind. I stop to take photos and soon a bakkie pulls up. It’s Lani Lombard, owner of a popular eatery in Cradock called True Living (or Lani’s Farm Kitchen). We have a quick chat before she drives on towards town – the Lombard farm is further along the road I’m on. A small but solid pass – Tarka Pass – rolls under the wheels of the Duster and I gain altitude quickly. At the top I stop and watch a late summer thunderstorm moving across the valley to the north. Dirkie might have got a sprinkling. The storm is moving east to Lake Arthur. Maybe my mom will also get some rain. Once you crest the pass, it feels as if you drive into the belly of the mountain. And that’s where I find Blomfontein. The first thing you notice is the incredible rose garden: There are more than 4 000 rose bushes. The garden was planted under the inspirational leadership of Reneé Schoeman. “I love working with roses,” she says. “It feeds my soul.” I guess it’s only when you add soul to your daily graft that the outcome becomes as special as this. Blomfontein is a popular wedding venue: Guests can stay over, there’s a function venue, a chapel and gardens. “It’s far to drive, but once you get here, the driving is done with. Then you just enjoy the weekend,” Reneé says, summarising the secret to her and her husband Ben’s success. Reneé and Ben took a leap of faith when they started the wedding venue. Who would come all the way here to get married? A lot of people, it turns out: Blomfontein hosts more than 30 weddings annually. There have been radical changes in farming in this district, even during my lifetime. To be a successful modern farmer, you need to diversify: You should have access to irrigation, plant some lucerne and maybe pecan nuts, and you should farm with ostriches or game to supplement your traditional livestock farming like angora goats, sheep and cattle. Or you can start a wedding venue, like Ben and Reneé did. It was a brave move but it goes to show what can happen when you say “yes” to yourself for a change.
(Opposite page, clockwise from top left) BUILT TO LAST. There used to be a police outpost on Jac Jordaan’s farm Klipkraal in the Swaershoek region. The old buildings have withstood the test of time.
The thing about a kloof
The next morning, the veld shimmers green and more rain threatens. After breakfast, Ben and his son Paul take me on a drive up the mountain behind the farm. (Paul Schoeman plays rugby for the Cheetahs – he’s taking some time off on the farm during a break in their Pro14 playing schedule.) We see kudu, mountain reedbuck and warthog. The extra elevation allows us to look down into the next few kloofs. I tell Ben where I’m planning to drive and he points out my route. I can see the Witmoskloof road in the distance, and beyond it I can just make out the tall trees on the back side of Bosberg, at the foot of which lies Somerset East, out of view. The mountains here have many names. Next to Mortimer is the Gannahoekberg. West of where we’re standing, in Swaershoek (see map), there’s the imposing Bankberg. South of that is Bruintjieshoogte, then Coetzeesberg, Bouwershoekberg near Pearston and Tandjiesberg closer to Graaff-Reinet. North of that, the Sneeuberg rises in all seriousness, curving around to the west until it meets the Compassberg, which keeps watch over Nieu-Bethesda. In the folds of these mountains lie the kloofs. A kloof is a unique place. Drive into one and you enter a hidden world. A door closes behind you and nature shuffles closer. In a kloof you can hear your own echo bounce back at you if you shout loudly enough.
From Blomfontein I drive past Lani Lombard’s farm. Next to the road I meet her son Louwrence and his wife Jeanette where they’re busy freeing an angora from a loop of barbed wire. Although this is a public road, it is seldom driven and soon narrows to a farm track. Every now and then I have to open a gate. Lightning cracks nearby and I hurry back to the car. A few big raindrops fall, just enough to loosen the smell of hot dust from the rocky outcrops. I arrive at another farmyard called Witmoskloof, which is neatly laid out on terraces – typical of many of these mountain farms. There are jacarandas and olive trees to one side. The owners of Witmoskloof, Anton and Katrina Nel, are school friends of mine. They started dating back then, in 1991, got married in 2000 and have two young children. It’s been a while since I last saw them and we catch up over lunch, eaten around an old yellowwood table that Anton inherited from his grandmother. The table was delivered to the farm by wagon, many years ago. Things have changed. Farmers don’t have to wait for a smous to deliver a table. Everyone has a bakkie that can take you to Port Elizabeth in a matter of hours. And the Internet has brought everything closer. You can WhatsApp a photo of a pump part to the irrigation shop in town to check if they have stock before you waste your time driving there.
After lunch I aim for the heart of Swaershoek – I’m now in the Somerset East district. Another pass for the Duster – the sign has faded to nothing, but a map tells me later that it’s the Tarka Botha Pass. (Who was Tarka Botha? No one I asked knew.) Any go! reader will love this back road. It gives you the best of the South African countryside: isolated farms, scenery to gawk at and sprinklings of naturally occurring wildlife. I see a duiker, some springbok and even some blue cranes. I head to Grootvlakte, where Jac and Rina Jordaan farm with boer goats. Jac also went to Gill College with me – he was a lively scrumhalf in his day. His arm is in a sling when I see him, the result of an old rugby injury back to bite him at the age of 40. Jac is keen to show me the Jordaan family cemetery where the forefather of all the swaers (brothers-in-law) of Swaershoek lies buried. We get into his bakkie and drive over a mountain to reach another of his farms, Klipkraal. Almost all the remaining buildings in the Klipkraal farmyard are made of stone, including the ancient kraals. It’s a scene that probably hasn’t changed much in a century. This was the original Jordaan farm in the district, settled in the late 1700s. We cross a stream on foot to reach the small cemetery where Paul Abraham Jordaan (1863 – 1913) and his wife Maria Aletta Catherina Jordaan (née van Niekerk; 1866 – 1925) are buried. They had 10 children – six girls and four boys. Once the children started marrying – mostly into other families in the area – people started calling this part of the district Swaershoek because everyone seemed to be a brother-in-law, more or less.
Meeting Stallone’s brother’s daughter
Jac has fixed up a nearby farmhouse, called Schoongesicht, where I’m staying for the night. After breakfast the next morning I drive to the R63 tar road and turn towards Pearston, crossing the Bruintjieshoogte Pass along the way. Jac has driven ahead to another farm he owns called Wilgerfontein. He urgently needs to send 522 boer goats to a client in Kuruman and is selecting animals from different herds.
The demand for boer goats is huge. “Just the other day a Russian e-mailed me and asked if I had 14 000 goats for him,” Jac told me. “Remember, it’s only South Africans, Aussies and Kiwis who prefer mutton – the rest of the world eats goat.” I catch up with Jac in a kraal with farm manager Bennie du Randt and an independent inspector from the SA Boer Goat Breeders’ Society called Johnny Henderson, plus a team of workers, a sheepdog and a cat (quality control). Johnny looks at the goats in small batches, judging them in ways I cannot begin to comprehend. “Those two,” he points, and some workers scramble to grab the chosen ones for the truck to Kuruman. “Ja, that one is Stallone’s brother’s daughter,” says Jac. This time I know what he’s talking about. Stallone was the name of one of his top rams. Jac gives his rams similar pop culture names if they’re related: Facebook and Instagram, for example, or Olof and Klipdrift. “Facebook and Olof are in Dubai these days,” he says. “But Instagram is dead.”
Just north of Graaff-Reinet I take the Erasmuskloof road. It’s interesting to see how the vegetation changes according to which slope faces the sun, and how high I get above sea level. I see swathes of spekboom for a while, and aloes nearly as tall as giraffes. A dassie dashes across the road. I pass a farm called Broederstroom, then Nuweland where a farmer on a motorbike approaches from the front. He’s holding his hat with one hand and steering with the other as the wind flaps his collared shirt and bushy moustache. After Nuweland comes another farm called Opreisfontein. What a wonderful name: loosely translated as “Travelling spring”. The road climbs some more and the trees thin out. The Nardousberg dominates the scenery. When it snows around here, the last snow to melt is on the Nardou’s shaded slopes. Ansie Malherbe welcomes me at Waterval Farmstay, along with her dogs, a cat and a meerkat called Stinkie. “For a reason,” she says. Ansie shows me to my comfy quarters. After I’ve settled in, I stroll a kilometre or so to the waterfall that gives the farm its name. Only a trickle flows over the massive granite slab now, but the spot has a sense of peace. I lie down on the warm rock, close my eyes and listen to the wind rustling through the poplar trees. I open them again and look up at an impossibly white, billowing cloud. These are the things that a kloof offers. Choose a kloof, any kloof, and the peace will find you.
Karoo cowboys
None of the farm setups I’ve visited so far are like the setups of old. At Buffelshoek, Dirkie has built a rugby field. Blomfontein is more about tying the knot than dipping sheep. The Jordaans in Swaershoek sell boer goats to sheikhs in Dubai. At Waterval, Ansie and her husband Johan also do things differently. Johan is not home during my visit – he often travels for his work as a political risk consultant. Ansie herself has a doctorate in history. Not exactly the professions you’d expect on the business cards of Meatmaster farmers deep in the Sneeuberg! My next destination promises to be even more left field: Karoo Ranching. I’ve seen them on Instagram (again, not quite Farmer’s Weekly). I’ve got an appointment with Julie Truter at her farm Elandskloof. To get there I take the adventurous route: from Waterval, under the gaze of Nardousberg, to Letskraal, where I turn left along a lonely, disused railway line. Again, this road is technically a public road, but parts of it are in a state of disrepair after recent heavy rains. (You can easily reach Waterval, Karoo Ranching and Letskraal using other roads; this is just the route I chose – see map.) Along the way, I revel in the joy of small things: a pair of black ducks, a ground squirrel puffing its tail, two furtive blue cranes taking long strides across the veld… The Duster gets me to the top of a nameless pass and we descend into the next kloof. At one point I have to stop and do some roadwork to get the car through without damage.
Julie Truter studied management accounting at Stellenbosch University, spent some time in Canada and returned to South Africa to start her own company. “As the years went by, I started feeling a massive internal conflict,” she tells me on the stoep at Elandskloof. “I’m a country girl and I wanted out of the corporate world that I found myself in. My father Jimmy has been a farmer all his life; my brother Andrew also farms. Elandskloof belongs to my mother, Dickie. In 2014 I started renting the farmyard, I fixed up the buildings and I started Karoo Ranching.” Julie laughs: “I suffer from a case of serious optimism,” she says. “I want to use Karoo Ranching as a platform to change people’s perceptions of farming in South Africa. We’re stuck in a stereotype that isn’t attracting people back to the profession.” Karoo Ranching offers diverse services, from brand building for agricultural companies to a
film festival where attendees can photograph “cowboys” herding sheep or cattle. They also offer corporate team-building getaways. “You’re not allowed to wear branded T-shirts,” she explains. “No big Nike on your chest. No takkies. You must wear the right clothes: a cowboy hat and boots. The first day we show you how not to get killed by your horse; by day three you’re in the kraal, catching sheep.”
One last kloof
From Elandskloof I follow the road back to the N9. In two days I’ve driven 92 km of non-stop gravel. Pure bliss. I head north along the N9, then turn east onto the R61. I know this stretch of road well – it’s on my route between my home in Cape Town and my family in Cradock. Just before the Mountain Zebra National Park, I turn right onto the Samenkomst road. The Duster glides through a landscape of rugged hills. By the time I take the left split at GrootSamenkomst, the mountains loom high again. I’m back in a kloof. There are plenty of Jordaans around here too, but unlike the Swaershoek Jordaans, these ones farm with merinos. I’m staying at Iceberg Lodge tonight, on the farm Grootkom owned by a young couple called Japs and Nicola Jordaan. (Japs is actually Japie, a name he shares with his father, which is why he’s called Jaypes.) We braai together (sheep’s tails for starters) and the next morning Japs takes me for a drive into the mountains. We stop for coffee and vetkoek at a spot he’s earmarked for a future campsite. He’s also part of the new generation of farmers; full of plans.
A century ago, no one had bakkies or tractors. Twenty years ago, no one had Internet or WhatsApp. The people of the platteland adapt – they have to – because the ground is shifting beneath their feet. That’s why farmers are making a plan B, C and D – also for the future of their children, because the next generation is already here: Nicola and Japs have a little boy called Zeiss. Jac and Rina Jordaan had two children when I visited and a third has since been born: a boy called Aldou. What underpins everything is something quite simple: These people love living out here. They love the veld, the animals and the lifestyle that a farm can offer. “I try to see everything from the perspective of the mountains,” Julie Truter told me. “I’m a little ant, and one day, suddenly, I won’t be here any more.”