Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Hopefield Homestead friends start ‘food forest’
FIVE friends have created a community on a smallholding on the West Coast where they grow a sustainable food forest and minimise their environmental impact in a permaculture way of life.
Five years ago, Ester Kruger went on a career development course and was brought up short by the question: what would be your best life?
The answer came to her in an instant – to live sustainably, off the grid, with a community of friends.
She had the friends already – people she had met while studying at Stellenbosch University’s Military Academy in Saldanha – and they were of like mind. Because they were in the Western Cape, she sold her home in Pretoria, and used the money to buy a 3 200m² plot in Hopefield, near Saldanha Bay, land once owned by the town’s founding fathers, a Mr Hope and a Mr Field.
Now Esther shares her home with four friends, a sheep, a handful of rescue dogs and cats and some chickens. And while only the five, ranging in age from 42 to 52, live in the Hopefield Homestead, they are part of a broader group of Hopefield residents who share their vision.
At the centre of the Hopefield Homestead project is a permaculture garden – what they intend to become a food forest – “a multi-layered, purposefully designed forest of food-producing species”.
The friends say: “The idea is the diversity of plants creates a healthy, abundant and harmonious ecosystem in which pollinators, birds, tortoises and other creatures can also thrive.
“Food forests need a clear initial design strategy and work to become established, but as they mature over time, they require less maintenance as they become more self-sustaining.”
But the project has not been without challenges. Hopefield is in an arid part of the West Coast. Their land is short of water, has dry and compacted soil, virtually no topsoil, consists of a hot, sloping, west-facing site, exposed to both summer and winter winds, and has few trees.
But Lizana de Jongh, who is the garden fundi and has worked on a permaculture farm in New Zealand, has the vision and the tools to get the garden growing.
The group are collecting rainwater and using grey water, have laid down sheet mulching, are creating their own compost, cultivating worm farms, erecting windbreaks and contouring the slope.
Their gardening policies include no digging and no weeding; the planting of perennials and waterwise flora; natural pest control and an effort to plant to attract pollinators and other wildlife.
Their plants include soft-fruit trees; nut trees; citrus; aloes and succulents; culinary and medicinal herbs; and berries, veggies and vines.
Apart from supplying their own needs, they will sell their produce to the popular Hopefield Market which is run by De Jongh.
The garden is a huge part of the project, but Kruger, who has a Master’s degree in industrial psychology, is more interested in what she refers to as “the social experiment”.
“The five of us – and our friends beyond in the wider community of Hopefield – all have a similar philosophy. We believe in collaborative consumption, we grow, we share food and skills, we barter. Leon van Rensburg’s the baker and maintenance man; Ron Moller is the nature enthusiast, bird watcher and photographer; and Jazz van Zyl has a magical understanding of our animals and works in the garden with De Jongh.”
Word of their experiment has spread and they frequently have visitors, some local and some from abroad, including Mexico and Israel, who come to watch and learn.
Their shared vision is to embrace a permaculture way of life, to build their sustainable food forest and to minimise their environmental impact by switching to renewable resources.
They have 12 solar panels and four specialised batteries connected to an inverter. They cook on gas and are installing gas geysers too.
Says Kruger: “We are very conscious of our power usage in general. The key for me is we have chosen a different way of living. The world has changed and we need to reset how we live. We need to live collaboratively; create value.
“I’m concerned about the future and climate change and it seems to me that, if you share these concerns, then there are two ways to go: to isolate, stockpile food and withdraw, or you can build communities and resilience.
“And I’d rather build communities than isolate. We hope to grow old together – we’re five years into what is at least a 20-year project.”