AREA FOCUS
The Tradevantage / Meadows contract is also serviced in the
area by Senwes Grainlink's Neil Kemp.
The Magistrate's Office is half hidden between the
trees in the city and was restored in 1997.
The Meadows plant is on a hill and
towers over the area. Senwes was award-
ed the Meadows grain contract, which is
serviced by Neil and Jolien.
Standerton has a number of small
churches and buildings to be discov-
ered. If you can believe the locals, there
are as many as 28 small congregations
in a very small area of town. We photo-
graphed a few, which will feature in this
article. Another beautiful building is the
magistrate's office, which was restored
in 1997 - staff often take people on a
tour through the building. The Kliphuis
Guesthouse is one of the oldest structures
and is situated in Caledon Street. It is
wonderful to experience this old building
which, for more than a century, used to be
the maternity home and refuge for young
ladies during the Anglo-Boer War.
Talking about faith - the slogan of
this area is Deo Favente - a Latin slogan
which means The grace of God. Did you
Locals know the famous Kruger Bridge dating back to 1901.
know that these words were initially pro-
posed for the Great American Seal before
it was decided to use “In God We Trust,
Ons vertoue is in God".
The Grootdraai Dam outside the city
was built 37 years ago and completed in
1982. Its dam wall is 2 180 m long and 42
m high and it can hold a massive 364 mil-
lion m3 of water. It covers a total area of
approximately 5 500 ha when it is full.
We move down the Vaal River towards
the city and have to cross the old Kruger
steel bridge, which dates from 1891.
The bridge is half hidden below the new
bridge. In the concentration camp cem-
etery we find graves of 857 people who
died from 1900 to 1903..
MORE ABOUT THE AREA
Neil tells us that a large number of
farmers in the area are around 40 years of
age and that they focus mostly on yellow
maize and soybeans. Some also plant
sugar beans. Strange enough, one does
not find a lot of sunflower in this area - a
mere 1% of producers plant sunflower
due to the problem with pigeons in the
area. The last sunflowers you see are in
the Balfour and Greylingstad area. White
maize is also not popular - a mere 5% of
the producers plant white maize.
Apart from visiting producers and
servicing the Meadows contract for
Tradevantage, Neil visits clients as far as
Volksrust and the surrounding area. For
those who don't know, it is the border
where KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and
the Free State meet. It is interesting that
producers had two crop failures over
the past 13 years due to excessive rain,
which resulted in plants rotting. This is not
something we know in the Northwest, Free
State and Northern Cape.
In addition to agriculture and build-
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