W
e were sitting in his house
in St James, Cape Town,
20 metres from the sea.
The waves crashing on
the rocks threw up a fine mist that
soon covered the house windows.
The whales were close enough for
us to hear their blowing. I looked
across at my younger brother and
tried to imagine him in the dry sun
wearing khaki and veldskoene. Here
was a young city man, having lived
his life in the Mother City and now he
apparently wanted to farm sheep. He
knew nothing about sheep, nothing
about farming, loved being social with
his friends and now wanted to live
two hours from the nearest town, (no
cell phone reception and no electricity
either). This sounded bizarre from my
perspective and very romantic from
his perspective.
Somewhere out of the mists of my
own past I recall my father having
voiced a similar dream. “I have always
wanted to farm” he would often say.
His eyes would also mist over and his
gaze would go off into the horizon, no
doubt enjoying the vision of himself on
the back of a horse or striding across
a green field to a farm house, emitting
smells of apple tart and family
laughter (of course he would have
grown the apples as well!)
I tried to talk some sense into my
brother by telling him the joke of the
farmer who won the R20 million lotto
and when he was asked what he would
do with the money, the farmer replied,
“I will keep on farming until the money
has all run out.”
My talk with him didn’t seem to
change matters much as he bought
a farm in the Baviaanskloof for R1.6
million and moved there with his
wife and daughter. They bought 600
sheep but all his reading of how to
farm sheep didn’t help much when
the drought came and he lost his
30 •
• September/November 2015
whole flock. It didn’t help either when
the Baboons came and raided the
fruit trees and the vegetable garden.
Or perhaps that they were the only
English speaking farmers in the whole
area who viewed life quite differently
from the traditional Church going
Afrikaans mind set.
It seemed as though I was right.
This was a crazy idea and a money
drain as well. Dreams are for those
who are sleeping aren’t they?
But what impressed me most, was
that he never looked back and said,
“I should not have bought the farm.”
He never said, “it was foolish of me”
or “I made a mistake.” Every apparent
set back was counterbalanced by the
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