The Story of Provenance Farm

 

Year One

It was snowing slightly when we drove onto the farm with sleet and wind that was harsh and biting. We bumped over the land, then got out of the bakkie at a high place on the north side of the Boerberg Mountain and stood there, gaping at the magnificent sight before us. We looked over the tranquil Koo valley, beyond the mysterious Simonskloof and Keerom hills, then when the clouds lifted, the majestic snowy tops of the Matroosberg were clear and glistening, high above the Hex Mountain range. We were freezing, whipped by the wind, stung by the sleet, but even so, could hardly contain ourselves from signing there and then on the dotted line.

The next day, when the sun came out, we returned and saw that the farm was in fact a piece of scrubby wasteland, regularly used as a rubbish dump and abused by the reckless and destructive driving of quad bikes everywhere. It had very few trees, two leaking dams, a shocker of a road and we noticed that it was oddly devoid of bird life. But even so we were ecstatic. We had found our farm at last and vowed then and there to care for and tend this land, and to the best of our ability, return it to the paradise that God had once created it to be.

We bought Provenance Farm in July 2008. 198 hectare with 40 hectare arable and the rest, wild, high mountain land. The farm is nestled against the Boerberg Mountain in the Koo Valley, 27 km from the picturesque town of Montagu in the Western Cape.
At the time, we were living in Plettenberg Bay and had sold our business and our home and now found ourselves at a crossroads. Peter is a builder by trade and had his own construction business for over 30 years. I am a freelance graphic designer and mural artist and, along with these businesses, we had a Guest House on the banks of the Bitou River. So our lives had been busy, hectic to the point of frenzy, hence we felt that it was time to take on a quiet project, something more leisurely perhaps….

Some say that farming is no place for fools to rush in, so before signing the offer to purchase, we carefully did research, diligently spending long hours on the internet, travelling far and wide to look at various farming operations, speaking to everyone we could find that we thought could help and advise us. In the end we concluded that for us to go farming would be ridiculously risky and very hard work and that we’d be really stupid to go ahead with this idea, so, naturally, we ignored our own advise and dared anyway to go where Angels fear to tread.

Our plan was to farm with something that wouldn’t be too challenging. Fruit, vegetables and animals were out of the question as it just looked too specialised and difficult and we knew that it would be disastrous for ignorant townies such as us. Then one day, we read in the Farmer’s Weekly about a couple in the Eastern Cape who were farming with plants for the extraction of essential oils. We phoned them up and soon were visiting them on their farm. They showed us around, told us all about the oils and the plants and generously gave us tons of information, facts and figures. By the time we drove away from there, we’d decided what it was that we wanted to do. More research on the internet, discussions with buyers of the oils and pages and pages of scribbled notes and sums brought us to the decision to start our farming operation with the planting of Rose Geranium.

The farm when we bought it had little going for it, except an electrified sheep kraal, a strong bore hole and that magical view that every day still takes our breath away. With the help of a local builder we put up the shell of a small wooden house (still unfinished), and moved here one sweltering day in February 2009. It was a year of backbreaking hard work, getting the house liveable with the painting of walls, producing of cupboards and curtains while making it warm for the winter and cool for the scorching summer days. The garden was tackled next and one year on, at last we are beginning to see a small amount of tamed land emerging from the harsh landscape. Now the birdsong is sometimes deafening from flocks of weaverbirds, sparrows and pied starlings as they splash about in the pond and birdbath and squabble over the seed tray that hangs in a small, young tree.

As for the farming…. Well, a year ago, we planted 300 Rose Geranium cuttings and 600 Lavender cuttings on a small patch of land, so that we could monitor them through the winter. They all did very well, in fact the Geraniums actually continued to grow through the colder months and the light frost that we get here seemed not to bother them at all. Encouraged by this outcome and with the help of a neighbouring farmer, we cracked on with planting 30,000 rooted geranium cuttings onto 2 hectare of land which was prepared with tons and tons of manure, lime and gypsum and then fitted with a system of drip irrigation. The Geraniums just grew and grew and within 4 months we were ready to tackle our first harvest.

One evening, while searching the internet, I stumbled across an article that told of how wild Pelagoniums (the correct name for our geraniums) were found here in South Africa in the early 18th century by French and English botanists. They had collected various species in the hills and valleys of the Western Cape, notably Table Mountain, the Hex River Valley, Koo Valley and Meiringspoort. They took them back to Europe where hybrids were propagated, and the descendants of these now grow in gardens and window boxes throughout the world. Our geranium are cuttings from the species of hybrid which is grown mainly in Reunion, an island in the Indian Ocean near Seychelles, where French colonialists have been farming them for many years to supply the oil for their perfume industry. Now that they are growing again in the Koo Valley, we like to think that they have finally come home, back to the soil of their ancestors.

Early in April 2010, we started to harvest our first crop. Ably helped by our two farm workers, Benoni and James, we had two weeks of cutting and carting the plants from the fields, then distilling it all in the wood fired distillation plant which we hired from a manufacturer in Riebeek Casteel. The thrill of seeing oil bubbling up into the glass vial of the separator was as exciting as if we'd struck gold. We spent hours out there, feeding the fire, checking the water levels, filling and emptying the plant chambers and then reverently drawing off the precious oils. Late at night when it was just Pete and me sitting on boxes out there at the still, listening to the roar and hiss of the fire with bubbles of oil bouncing up from within the separator, we would share a bottle of wine and make toasts and gaze up at the millions of stars. It was a magical time. At the end of it we had litres of glistening, olive green liquid and everything within 100 meters of the shed reeked of rose geranium, including the entire house, bakkie, both dogs, and most of my kitchen utensils, the latter having been roped in for various oil related jobs. Ultimately we decided that it had been an excellent exercise to see just how viable the project could be. Another surfing session on the internet resulted in the sale of all of the oil we had produced as well as the hydrosol, which is the water that is separated from the oil during the distillation process. We hadn’t thought of selling the hydrosol until our buyer mentioned it to me in his email. I had to leap up from my computer and rush outside, shouting to Pete to put a bucket under the outlet from the separator, as the distilled hydrosol was all just trickling away down the slope and into the dam.

We celebrated the first sale of our produce with a trip back to Plettenberg Bay, which had been our home for 31 years before moving to Provenance Farm. Packets of dried lavender, small bottles of geranium oil and things made from the above like lavender quince Membrillo (a kind of quince cheese) or rose geranium flavoured caramels were handed out as gifts to our old friends.
Two year ago we knew nothing about essential oils and even less about geraniums, yet now they abundantly surround us, the air thickly fragrant with their perfume. With a further 60,0000 plants that we’ve propagated from cuttings (which are currently being added between the existing plants), another 3 hectare of geranium, 5 hectare of lavender and 5 hectare of camomile still to be added in the near future, Its at least a three year project to get the right amount of plants in the ground and at the right stage of maturity for harvesting, before real profits will be made, with lots and lots of hard work ahead. Pretty scary stuff, we know, but we take it a step at a time and just deal with the task at hand each day and hopefully someday we’ll look up from toiling away, lean on a spade and thankfully consider it all to have been worth the effort.

Year Two

The heat of summer is relentless from early in the day and throughout the nights, wilting our young cuttings in the shade-house and blurring the landscape into a dazzling, dusty, shimmering haze. Work must go on and the plants needs water so our daily round of chores continue, at a slower pace, with much sweat, sunburnt skin and many sighs. The clammy heat of the coast is what we know, but this parched air that drapes around you like a thick, heavy blanket, is new to us and takes some getting used to. One February day, when the temperature was soaring towards 47 degrees C, our daughter Jenna and I could stand it no more, so we leapt into the car and drove for an hour to Worcester and back, solely for the purpose of buying a Porta-Pool. With the midday heat on our shoulders we broke nails, sweated and swore as we wrestled with the wire frame that holds the pool erect but finally and blissfully were able to find respite in it's cool, blue wateriness. That pool has saved our sanity on many occasions and continues to be one of our best buys
so far!

At last the summer months passed and autumn came gently to the farm, inspiring the freshly harvested geranium plants to give their last strength to a flurry of new shoots and leaves. Within weeks they were again bushy and bright green, luring the sheep from the camp next door to squeeze through the fence and investigate this delectable looking shrub. Fortunately for us, it didn't take them long to find out that it wasn't their cup of tea at all.

Winter arrived early in July. It was a cold, rainy morning and I was tapping away at my laptop, engrossed and completely unaware of the quiet changes that were happening outside. At some stage I looked up and out of the window to see a blur of whiteness and the complete and utter silence sent me bolting outside with the dogs excitedly yelping at my heels. There before us was a new, snowy wonderland which stretched as far as we could see. Sophie and Keisie, (our Jack Russell and American Bulldog) were stunned, standing transfixed as they sniffed and pawed at the ground. But very quickly they were delighted to find that the cold, white, fluffy stuff was diggable, eatable and jolly good fun. Snapping at snowflakes and galloping about, they had the best day of their young lives to date. Pete took stock of the geranium and lavender plants which were completely blanketed in snow and we began to fret about what this might do to them. But as the days went by and we saw that no ill effects were in evidence, we stopped worrying. In fact, it because quite clear that these plants loved the cold conditions and continued to grow vigorously through the winter months.

In late September it was time again to harvest. Once again we fetched the wood fired distillation plant and set it up behind the house in a place well sheltered from the wind. Once again Pete and our tireless lads in the fields, toiled, cut and carted loads of geranium leaves and stalks in an endless procession from field to furnace. During this time we had a stream of visitors in the form of family, friends and neighbours, all curious to see what we were up to. The 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' distillation plant is a strange looking object with taps, switches and dials, smoke billowing from it's high chimney and a fierce fire burning in it's belly for days, so it's no wonder that there were many jokes regarding the manufacturing of mampoer and illicit whiskey and the suspicious 'goings on' at our remote mountain-side farm. This time though it was different. The oil just poured forth and at the end of three weeks we had a store room shelf, packed with large, dark brown bottles of superb geranium oil that released to the house a sudden blast of heavily scented air, each time the door was opened. Even now, though the oil is no longer there, the scent in that store-room is as strong as ever and heavenly to breathe.

It became clear, early in our farming endeavours, that to survive financially we were going to have to add value to the oils with the manufacturing of our own body care products. As Pete is wholly occupied with farming, it fell upon me to begin this process. At first, I was completely daunted by the huge task of starting a business of which I knew nothing about. My first tentative research on the matter made me realise that, although intriguing, making cosmetics is a huge and varied subject and is very scientific and scary. None the less it didn't take long to find suppliers of the raw materials, which led to the discovery of a Heaven-sent cosmetic pharmacist in Johannesburg, who was willing to guide me through my first wobbly steps in this fascinating world of formulating lotions and potions. Before long I was whipping up luscious creams, yummy body butters, balms, shampoos and scrubs. My mind was awash with ideas for new products and my husband became the ever patient lab-rat. After a frenzied morning in the kitchen, surrounded by bowls of cream, bottles of oils and various additives and active ingredients, I'd take a jar of my latest experiment to Pete in the fields. He'd push back his hat, then he'd sniff and paste it onto his dry, brown arms then, with much deliberation and more sniffing and pasting, he'd give me his considered opinion. This went on for months until I began to feel confident that what I was producing were acceptable, high quality products and I was ready to reveal what I had made to a small circle of friends and family for judgement. I was surprised and delighted when the feedback was positive and when it was not, I was spurred on with greater determination to get it right. The shampoo and conditioner were my biggest challenges and after a few buckets of failed attempts I finally created a product that pleased everyone.

A phone call to Carma Hair Studios in Montagu resulted in our first real sale. The owners of this business are Michael and Carla Cole, hairdresser and alternative health specialist respectively. We will be eternally grateful to them for their incredible trust and faith in us and for enthusiastically and excitedly stacking their shelves in the studio with our products, which were made with their specific needs and preferences and labelled with their own branding.

It has taken more time to package and label the products than it took to formulate and make them because, as a graphic artist, I was designing a new label every week then sending it out to friends and family for opinions. This resulted in many and varied points of view which confused and discouraged me and so I began to lose my own vision. Finally our son Sam, an Art Director at an advertising company in Cape Town, gave me the best advise I had received so far. He suggested that it would be a good idea to paint a botanical representation of the rose geranium and use it simply and cleanly on a label that would characterise what my products were about. This I did and lo and behold, it worked perfectly.

Christmas in The Koo Valley is a complete contrast to what we'd know back in our Plettenberg Bay days. Coastal towns have long been the destination of choice for South Africans holidaying over the festive season. In their thousands they return each year and the locals wait for them with eager anticipation of the lovely lolly that they part with so willingly. But when they come, a local's life becomes a nightmare round of unaccustomed queues in the supermarkets and banks, zero parking anywhere and sharing the beach and ocean with a mass of humanity who seemingly don't have any idea of the concept of personal space. But in the Koo the rhythms of life are uninterrupted, the pace steady and unhurried as ever. Even in the town of Montagu it's blissfully free of queus and traffic and looks for all the world like a normal day with people going calmly about their business. Where once I dreaded the craziness of the festive season, I now look forward to it each year with great excitement. It's become a very special time, a time to be spent with close family and new friends in the peace and tranquillity of Provenance Farm.

With our products labelled and bottled, we were ready to unveil them to the world; well, to Montagu actually, and the first opportunity arose in the form of the annual Night Christmas Market in the centre of the town. Besides the market, we had been lucky enough to secure orders from our old friends Pippa and John Saunderson Smith for their shop in Plettenberg Bay, as well as for 'Spaces', a wonderful barn of a shop in nearby Robertson. Now that we had something to work towards, production took on frenzied proportions and I was working long hours to ensure that we had enough stock. Jenna, Pete and I set up our stall at the market under the trees that were festively adorned with fairy lights. We had brought along our own yellowwood table on which we placed a green painted display stand and decorated it with pink straw, a milk bucket full of lavender and of course the bottles and jars of products. Soon there were eager customers that were interested and impressed with our wares and by the end of the evening we were happily counting out a respectable sum of earnings. To each of those customers we owe a debt of gratitude because without knowing it, they have buoyed up our confidences and confirmed to us that this growing passion for creating wonderful products is the right direction in which to head. May we never forget that it is for them and for all future customers that we will be creating our products and to their needs that we must always be conscientiously attentive.