Sunday 21st April
With all our productions winding down for the Cape Winter, I’ve had more opportunity to get out to Boggy Pond. I left around midday, to avoid the very early Friday traffic congestion, which is well under way by 15h00. After a quick stop at Caledon Spar to pick up some groceries, and popping into the Co-Op for some new working gloves, I trundled along the dirt road to Tesselaarsdal, where I encountered a rural traffic jam. A farm labourer walked in the middle of the road waving a grubby red flag, so I just stopped and waited for a large herd of sheep to flow around the car…
Spending a long-weekend here has become a bitter-sweet experience though, since the future of this place is in the balance. A few weeks ago I sent emails to the two Estate Agents most active in the area to enquire about property market conditions and the possibility of selling. Frankly, I don’t quite know how to deal with the news that we are going to struggle to get what we paid for it. There are a surprising number of properties for sale in the area, almost all well away from the village itself. Stephen feels that it may be a tentative beginning of a “second wave”, after some rather lop-sided publicity on TV (“Passella”) and in some of the Afrikaans Press. Apart from the economic conditions, “Second Wavers” are not likely to be interested in a property cheek-by-jowl with an RDP housing area. This leaves me in Limbo – not enough capital to restore the house, and not able to sell quickly enough for enough money to finance our own studio, which necessitates a re-think of my objectives here.
Perhaps the most important reality is that we won’t be retiring here to do veggie farming – we can’t afford to retire in the conventional sense. Additional labour to run a viable operation would be a problem for several reasons, and mechanisation, even on this small scale, requires capital. My labours over just the past three years have made me realise that a small tractor would be essential. Even the smallest “ordinary” tractor would be overkill and just stupidly expensive. One can now get quad-bikes developed for use on small farms as multi-purpose tractors, but f you think motor-cars are expensive, try walking around a farming equipment exhibition. A quad-tractor alone costs the same as a medium-sized car, then you have to buy the attachments, which cost rather more than the Mag-wheels and sunroof option on a car!
Expecting Christa to fit into this community on a permanent basis is also unfair. No fault on either side – it is just that the cultural and language gap is too great, in spite of her wonderful “just get on with it” attitude.
I am left, therefore, with keeping Boggy Pond as a week-end getaway while I gradually improve it as much as I can until we find out what we can, or want to do with this phase of our lives, which means concentrating on providing an agricultural water supply. Deepening and sealing the existing “folk dams” should provide enough water to extend the growing season from July / August into January, perhaps to February, which might make the property attractive to a younger Eco-nutter.
Erecting a larger wooden cabin would also be very do-able financially, quite suitable for week-ends, and a little less bureaucratically complicated. Technically though, a “wendy-house” intended for habitation requires a concrete plinth, which still requires building plans and permits…. there’s no escape!
I still look forward to tinkering with various ideas for sustainable living in rural areas, such as solar heating of homes and greenhouses, solar composting toilets, and minimal water consumption small-scale vegetable farming. I have no illusions about feeding the world, or even the country. I haven’t had a hobby in decades, and I miss being able to tinker about in a workshop – facing reality allows me to do that without the pressure of having to earn a living from it. I’ve also been sedentary for too long – the physical work necessary to maintain Boggy Pond certainly won’t do me any harm and it is no more daft than pedalling a bicycle nowhere in an expensive Gym!
Just after it enters my land, the water gulley is clogged with driftwood and plastic rubbish
I certainly gave myself a work-out clearing the “throat” of the upper dam this week-end. The “loop” (gulley) that brings run-off water down the mountain has become overgrown and clogged with sand, driftwood and an astonishing amount of discarded plastic – from bottles and buckets to five metre-long sheets of thin black plastic. As a result of the clogging, the water has begun to erode the banks of the gulley. The water also tends to seep uselessly into the ground to be sucked up by the huge Blue Gum trees at the rate of about two hundred litres a day each, leaving very little to trickle into the dam
Just two of the plastic sheets, possibly used to germinate plants on a farm.
On Saturday, the first step was to clear rubbish and soil from a sump that the water has eroded when pouring over the blockage. As soon as I can, I’ll place a layer of rocks in the bottom of the sump to prevent further erosion. Although I’ve repaired the erosion to the East, I’ve left the depression wide and deep at this point, to allow the water to slow down and drop much of the sand eroded from higher up the slope. Eventually, of course, the depression will fill up, perhaps providing a source of sand which would otherwise have silted up the dam itself.
Step two was to remove the leaves, twigs and sand trapped by the growth of saplings in the bed of the channel which was preventing the water reaching the dam, flowing instead onto the neighbouring property and causing more erosion. For now, in anticipation of the impending rainy season, I’ve just cut a channel through the build-up. Now if I had a quad-bike tractor fitted with a scraper blade….
I used my home made water level to check the slope of the cleared channel
I had planned to spend today (Sunday) in the workshop because I thought I’d be fairly sore and creaky. I was, but went out this morning after a breakfast of oats porridge “for a little while” just to lower the lip of the channel leading to the dam. By the time I’d emptied my litre bottle of cold water, it was 14h00 already, and I was pooped! At least I’d sculpted a workable channel and created low walls in the forest of saplings to guide any runaway water toward the dam.
Repairing the eroded Eastern side wall of the dam is a big job, ideally done with the aid of a small digger I’ve seen in the area occasionally. I would also need to make a heavy roller to compact the soil, so that will have to wait for a while. Instead, on Monday I’ll clear as much as I can of the tangled driftwood and rubbish out of the gulley between the throat of the dam and the Southern boundary of my property.
Several hours of work.. just the beginning
Although I would still like to get a crop or two out of Boggy Pond, even if I manage no more than veggies for our weekend visits and perhaps some for the elderly folk of Klub Tessalonika, just being able to walk around in the misty quiet of early morning spotting the glistening spider webs would make the journey out here worthwhile.
Of course, quite often the silence is shattered by the sound of argument… between the Hadedah and the Guineafowl…
(Click on the link below to play the sound, or Right-Click to download. After playing on-line, use the “Back” button on your Browser to return to this page)
{Hadedahs and Guineafowl at Boggy Pond Mp3 format 1 minute 1.36 Mb}