HANG OUT WITH

Ever been to The Old Mill Coffee Shop in Britstown? Pull over next time and say hello to Talita Pringle!

Britstown is far from everywhere. Even De Aar, famous for being in the middle of nowhere, is 54 km distant – east, on the N10. Vosburg, which you’d be excused for never having been to, is 65 km west along the R384. Victoria West, a Karoo capital of sorts, is 107 km south-east along the N12, and Strydenburg is 78 km in the opposite direction. Prieska? It’s 133 km to the north.

All this means that you’ll probably be hungry when you arrive in Britstown, and keen for a good cup of coffee, especially if you’re from a city where a cappuccino has become part of what you need to make it through a day.

Enter Talita Pringle (pictured above), and The Old Mill Coffee Shop. Talita and her husband John-Paul did a four-day barista course in Jeffreys Bay, and they have the paperwork to prove their worth. Between them, their Wega coffee machine and their team of helpers – Betsy Rooi, Joané Kolesky and Fiona Francis – they make sure you get a solid cup of coffee.

Talita grew up in and around Britstown. Her mother, Aletta Human, still lives on the farm Brosdoring, a few kilometres down the Vosburg road, near the (dry) Smartt Syndicate Dam. Talita’s father, Jan, whom everyone knew as Jan Brosdoring to avoid confusion with other farmers called Jan, passed away in 2015. “Everybody knew him,” she tells me. “He could fix anything, windmills too. There were always scraps of metal lying around our yard – he could weld anything together. He also built trailers.” After living and working in Botswana for 22 years, Talita and John-Paul decided to return home when her father passed away. John-Paul is from neighbouring De Aar and he can trace his ancestry to the famous 19th-century writer, Thomas Pringle.

“We wanted to give our own children a taste of what we experienced growing up in the Karoo,” Talita says. They have two boys, John-Lucas (7) and John-Thomas (14). “But you know how it is – it’s not quite the same as when we were young. There were more kids around in our time, more friends to play with, and nobody cared if we were outside in the heat of the day, or whether or not there were snakes around. We had such a carefree childhood – we had freedom and peace of mind. But it’s still better to raise your kids in the platteland than to raise them in a city, even today.”

“We stumbled upon this building,” Talita says when I ask her about the origins of her coffee shop. “We were driving through town looking for a house to buy and this one caught our eye. We walked through to the back of the property and I said, ‘Oh, there’s an old mill!’ John-Paul immediately replied: ‘And this is where we’ll open a coffee shop!’”

As far as she knows, the mill dates from around 1898 and was in use until the 1950s. Back then, most farmers planted a patch of wheat and brought their few bags to be ground into flour so that they could bake bread.

The Old Mill Coffee Shop opened for business in late 2015. Since then, the Pringles have given another old building – the jail, which dates from the Anglo-Boer War – a new lease of life. Indeed, at Vyfster The Old Jail, there are three comfortable rooms (with extra thick walls, and tiny windows) that open onto a roomy courtyard. It’s a perfect sleepover on your way to the coast (R690 per double room).

How are things going in Britstown? When you ask a question like this in a farming town, you must know that the answer will mostly relate to rain, or the lack thereof. Mostly the latter. At the

time of my visit, summer is halfway through and still the rain seems to skirt the district.

“It’s not going well, but also – it is going well,” she says. “The first part, because it’s dry. But our people look after one another, and we get help from elsewhere in the country. This Friday, for example, we’re expecting the arrival of a five-tonne truck filled with potatoes to use for emergency livestock fodder.

“We also just held a Boks vir Boervrou event at the coffee shop. This project is amazing – people make up gift boxes and send them to farmers’ wives in areas where the effects of the drought are most harshly felt. You know, when a farmer struggles to feed his animals, it means the usual little luxuries are absent from the home. We received 300 boxes for Britstown – they came from Welkom and someone drove them here in his Land Cruiser. It was incredible. In the boxes were things like tinned food, but also toiletries, or something that’s just nice, like a magazine.” By hosting events like these, The Old Mill has become a community space.

“There was nothing here four years ago,” Talita says. “Now we have the coffee shop, and everyone uses it – even the farmer who brings his workers to town for their clinic visit; he sits and waits here with a cup of coffee.”

Where? 21 Boom Street, Britstown

Opening times: Monday to Friday from 8 am to 3 pm; Saturday from 8 am to 1 pm; Sunday from 9 am to noon.

Contact: 062 544 9220 ( Talita); talitapringle@yahoo.com