Weeding by example
Life slows right down and guests do their bit at an eco-escape in misty, mystic Hogsback, writes Janine Stephen
I’VE heard of singing for your supper but this is definitely new. I’m on my hands and knees, scouring the flower beds for tiny black wattle saplings.
Some are no more than 7cm high, such babies that murder feels a little OTT. Nonetheless, I grip their slippery stems and wrench them from the good earth.
I’m 20 minutes into a two-hour session of weeding at Terra-Khaya, an off-the-grid backpackers and eco-lodge carved out of what was once a carpet of alien wattles in Hogsback, Eastern Cape.
Just 100 minutes to go and I reckon I’ll have earned my dinner.
Terra-Khaya is not your average accommodation option. It is the bighearted dream of Shane Eades, who lives here on Chillington Farm with vast numbers of friendly hounds, cats, horses and a hen. Somewhere, there are pigs. The scattered rooms and buildings are almost entirely made from recycled materials, in places artfully arranged, like the green and brown 2l cooldrink-bottle fence on a balcony.
It’s rustic, yes (no one who cannot tolerate compost loos or talk of the properties of cactuses should tread here), but it’s a gentle, kindly place, somewhat out-of-time. If it wasn’t for the solar tech and cellphones plugged in at reception, it could be the 1960s.
The sustainable ethos attracts a mellow type. During my visit, there was an older Belgian traveller with a love for deserts, some young Capetonians seeking far-away times in the forest, a curious European academic who came to dinner and a gaggle of deeply tanned young volunteers, including a French lad who loved horses. All seemed to get on splendidly. The creatures helped: draped all over couches, stools and laps, they set the tone. Horses woke me at dawn, munching outside my cabin.
Besides acting as lawnmowers, the horses at Terra-Khaya allow one to ride them. Eades organises overnight and longer rides through the Amathole Mountains, but I thought a short sunset trip would be enough of a challenge. As can be expected from an establishment that recycles every scrap of packaging and saves every leftover crumb for pig swill, TerraKhaya practises natural horsemanship — based more on trust than domination and notable for the lack of a bit. Eades himself turns into something of a centaur when riding; he knows his horses so well and he foregoes a saddle.
I clamber atop a wiry steed called Baron, who decides I am a softie and won’t object to his stopping for mouthfuls of grass. I try, but he’s right, my heart’s not in it. There is too much sensory beauty for a battle of wills: the smell of hot horse and pine trees and water in earth, the rocking mode of transport, and — when we reach a wide firebreak at the top of the rise — views of the Katberg and Gaika’s Kop in the purple distance. Later that eve, after a quart whipped from the honesty bar, we eat a creamy risotto, redolent with wild mushrooms the volunteers picked earlier. And talk recycling.
But yes, those wattles. All this lovely area was once mist belt forest, high-altitude grasslands scattered between. Plantations have since chewed up a lot of forest, and alien trees like the Australian black wattle abound. Terra-Khaya is tackling the invaders, but with a slightly different approach. Thing is, black wattle go crazy when land is clear felled. It’s a pioneer species and, as the TerraKhaya ethos goes, Earth needs a cover for “her gentle skin/soil”.
The trick is not to go to war with the trees and nuke everything in sight but to “work with them”. Thin them out; plant indigenous goodies in between: wattles don’t sprout up much in shady spots, you see. Treat them with the respect such “a powerful force” deserves.
Hmm. When I signed up for the lodge’s “pick wattles for two hours and get a free dinner”, I’d imagined myself with a sharp instrument, intrepidly hacking at a tide of wattle forest. And winning — you know, carving out territory for a mighty yellowwood-to-be. Being tasked with weeding the flower beds and lawns wasn’t exactly terminator-like. But it needed doing: with wattle clearing, follow-up is everything. I got into a rhythm, eventually. Scour the ground, find a victim, apply gentle pressure rather than tug and break the tap root.
The plants gave way with little shrugs and sighs and the sun sank and I paused to admire a bush blackcap near the hot water shower, which of course is heated by burning wattle. Don’t laugh, but the whole thing got a little zen and meditative, even humbling. Which was nice. As for the dinner, well, I had seconds. —© Janine Stephen