Here in the wild lands

Hello all you wild and enthusiast Forward Farmers.

I have been a very bad blogger the last few months, as always time seems to gallop off towards the horizon, a thick dusty trail kicked up by the motion.

But here we are and with a new and exciting project at hand. At the end of March we bought a small piece of land in the mystic fertile village valley of Suurbraak, about twenty km’s from Swellendam along the N2. Suurbraak is not so well known, which is perfect for us mountain dwelling mush roomers, however it is easily accessed from the N2 or from the N1 through Barrydale and the Tradouws pass.

There are some wild ideas up on the drawing board for what we would like to manifest there over the next year. At present we have been staying in Cape Town doing the paper work to bring everything into place. One of the projects will be to restore and manage our plot and a large section of state land next door to us that has been left to be overcrowded with alien species. This obviously is a massive fire hazard, and so with intelligent wood lot management, alien clearing and restoration we hope to one day restore this small piece of earth back to a more natural state for the area. Much of the inspiration for our restoration techniques have come from our completely wild conservationist friend Patrick, who talks with so much experience and understanding for the restoration land process. He avoids using the term clearing as this often denotes how some folks have gone about mass exodus, poisoning and ripping up alien infested areas. Patrick’s stance is much more along the lines of Masanobu Fukuokas natural farming ideas and carefully looks at how natural eco-systems restore themselves.

Along with the restoration process Loki has put in hours of research time finding saplings that we can plant while we gently clear the plots. We have chosen Samgro in Wellington to buy our saplings from, they grow a wide range of indigenous tree species as well as fruit trees at a brilliant price per tree. So this is going to take some time we know, but we know that all those beautiful things we wish to see in the world sometimes take time to grow, and one day our forest will take care of us.

Loki also built for us a super avant-garde organic shack which served us very well in the warm months but will have to be insulated for the winter months, as Suurbraak in known to get very cold. Our plot is just in front of a beautiful waterfall that runs almost all year round and flows into an 18th century canal that borders our plots. Great for summer time swims and baths with the frogs.

Sending love and light to every corner of our beautiful planet, brothers and sisters. Here is the earth pray from the Bio-dynamic calendar for this week, I hope I don’t get into trouble for this but its so beautiful I think everyone should read it.
‘ The spirit-sun from the centre of my being is trying to break through the grey clouds of my dull senses; to free the forces of my soul that want to help to heal the circle of the people’.

Blessings Gervaise, Justin and Balu