The last few weeks on the farm have been idyllic, with gorgeous weather, healthy livestock and the vegetable garden promising many yummy meals

Unfortunately, it is not just us who had been watching the plums become juicy purple orbs, or the sweetcorn swelling into silken green ears. Our resident alpha male baboon who broke away from the main troop with a small following, loves juicy plums, ripening sweetcorn, and carrots that he can pull fresh from the ground, and he will even try a bite of butternut, even though it is still rock hard. And for dessert, he heads for whatever is left in the poultry feeders, picking up the bowls to lick them clean.

We know our vegetables are wonderful, because his coat is all glossy and his eyes shiny bright, giving him away when he tries to hide behind the leaves. He also thinks that if he turns his head away and can’t see you, then how can we possibly see him?

We have also been aided in our harvesting endeavours by our ducks – although they are really only looking for snails you know – and our chickens who love lettuce more than anything else in the world, and our horses who sneak in after the others and finish the rest off. I like to think they are self-medicating on the comfrey and dandelions and other herbs as I watch our crops diminishing in size. We are putting a picket fence around the garden in the next few days.

Besides these ‘vegetable-enemies’ that we fight off, we also have our biggest enemy to deal with at this time of year. Fire! The lands are very dry as we have had very little rain, and the winds are still strong. The slightest spark can become a huge conflagration of destruction as happened in January 2006 when many thousands of hectares were destroyed in a huge fire that swept through the Overberg fynbos, burning half of our farm and going as far as Gansbaai where it destroyed half of the 5-star Grootbos Hotel. Three years on, the fynbos has recovered on most of the land, bar some of the higher areas where the heat of the fire was intense. It is amazing how the bleak and desolate landscape after a fire transforms itself so quickly with new growth.

Many fynbos seeds only germinate after a fire and so species that are seldom seen are suddenly in bloom, along with a myriad of others in a jewel-bright carpet that covers the land for an all too brief time. However fires in close succession are not good for the land as they destroy the newly developed plants before they have a chance to set seed, to say nothing of the crops, livestock and buildings that may have been replaced, and so we watch with eagle eyes for any puff of smoke on the horizon, and develop over-sensitized olfactory nerves to detect the faintest whiff of smoke.

From new growth comes new beginnings and our new year resolution this year is to PRECYCLE. Although we are all (I hope), into the groove of recycling, precycling is a way of making still more of a difference. Before placing that plastic bottle in the recycling bin, consider if it could be refilled – with milk from your local farm shop, or home made soap. Take a walk down your supermarket aisle and consider for a moment the items that you could make yourself, for a fraction of the cost, using wonderful ingredients with not an E-number or a preservative in sight, no extraneous packaging and no food miles to worry about. Think tomato-based pasta sauces, mayonnaise, butter, preserves, washing powder. The list is endless and the savings are huge. Join us in our new year resolution over the course of the next few issues as we look at recipes to use, and different ways to precycle.

For more information contact linda@stanfordvalley.co.za