Firstly…..I must apologise to the Mandela family for the premature passing of Nelson in my last blog posting!. For some reason I thought he had died, but I’ve just read an article in Time magazine which is quite recent & apparently my assumption was a little off the mark.

Its early Saturday morning here & I’m sitting up in bed once again writing as I was woken some time ago by a cacophony of noise outside my window due to the array of chickens, geese & turkeys in the near vicinity. We are at the farm of Dick Richardson’s called “Brussels� about twenty kilometers south of Vryberg, a hustling town of maybe Dubbo’s size and surrounded by grazing country as good as any we have seen on our travels in Africa. At least it is for the rainfall average (from 16 inches here to over 20 in some areas) and it has really surprised me as I was under the impression that it would be far more arid in these parts.

My assumptions have often been proved wrong on this trip!!

We got here to ‘Brussels’ mid afternoon yesterday as we had driven straight up to Sandy & Monica Speedy’s from Kimberly the day before & they live about fifty kilometers north west of Vryberg. Dick had suggested we visit them, and as he was off fighting a bushfire (and we had missed a turn to his place & had another bit of a look around the district) then we decided to head out there to Speedy’s & ended up staying the night & half the next day.

I was particularly glad we got the chance for a visit as ‘Sandy’ who is possibly close to 70 years old & despite some health issues, has the passion, optimism & enthusiasm for agriculture of a twenty five year old. Along with their daughter Jennifer they run the 12,000 acre “Roitveld� (Sweet Fields) which has been split up into 240 camps, or paddocks. I kid you not, as this family is ‘having a go’ and the map of the place with its paddock layout looks like an assortment of spider webs. One of the water points has ‘twenty’ separate camps coming off it with the average ‘camp’ size for the whole farm being around 17 hectares. I would not have thought it possible unless I’d seen it myself & although not quite as mountainous & rocky as a lot of farms we have been to, it still has some challenges for fencing such as the Thorn tree & Fynbos shrubs. Actually it has much more Thorn tree now than in recent times after the country was originally almost totally cleared for mining braces & firewood, and once again it is considered a real benefit for grazing diversity & a critical part of the ecosystem.

If I ever left Australia & wanted to farm somewhere else in the world, then I would be hard pressed to find a place more appealing than around there, with its slight undulation, scattered timber & fantastic grass base. I’m not a big mountain or rock fan, and like a lot of the ‘dryer’ country in Australia these grasslands are very good for sheep & cattle to thrive on.

Not that everything is perfect here either….some of the safety requirements, such as locking up and living behind huge electric security fences that surround most homesteads I find quite disturbing. I guess you wouldn’t even think too much about it after a while if living here all the time.

Those 12,000 acres at Roitveld would run (with their management, not the ‘average’) between 1,500 & 2,000 cattle on 17 inches, although Sandy says it has actually had more rain over the last twelve years. They run the cattle in four herds, two breeder herds with separate calving and then a steer herd & a heifer herd. Of course with a whopping 240 paddocks this still gives great flexibility and grazing control, although personally I’d be getting it back to at least two mobs & simplifying things a little.

After leaving there and having a quick stop in town we finally ended up out at Dickson Richardson’s place, and once again there is a great big house and terrific hospitality.

It was an interesting last farm visit as they have a few issues to deal with here regarding labour, phosphorus deficiency & damage to fences from game such as the large & herding Gemsbok, that are capable of destroying a five strand ‘barbwire’ fence easily.

Dick is also a very knowledgeable guy & has been an HM Educator for a number of years & visited several continents teaching. It has been great for me to be able to spend ‘one on one’ time with all of these people & really get an insight into their challenges as well as the successes over a lot of years, & now hopefully I’ll be in a position to go ahead with much more confidence at home.

Now heading off for Jo Burg & will have clicked well over 6,000 klms in South Africa alone with this little ‘hire car’ over the last four weeks, and although we have both enjoyed this experience & learned more than we could have imagined, we both are looking forward to getting on the flight home & implementing some of what we have learned on our own places.

Peca got on a horse this morning to show off his ‘Polo Crosse’ skills with Dick & Adele & I took a few photos hoping to get an action shot of him getting thrown…but it wasn’t to be. The sport is a bit of a passion here & the horse numbers threaten the cow operation in scale….and although I love horses, what a waste of grass!

Will be having quite a few hours to kill in the airport tomorrow after dropping the car off at twelve, so some may get a phone call while I’m hanging around there!