Heart & Soil Agroecology Hub: Lochiel Smallholdings and growing this season

Last August, the CoCT released its latest plan to purchase our Lochiel Smallholdings for a Temporary Relocation Area and high-density housing. Thanks in part to some of you, the city received 2980 comments objecting to the plan! But, more recently, the city hired consultants to come up with a “greater level of buy-in” (quoted from the minutes of our meeting with the consultants). The city has not yet responded to those 2980 comments. This process is potentially discouraging.

Part of our struggle is to return quickly to the present and carry on with life. Which is always good anyway.

The second is to share the burden. Improving our community’s prospects is both mysterious and mundane. Mundane: it’s a lot of work to share a message consistently. Mysterious: the miraculous is quick, a call or a sudden awakening that helps usher in new possibilities— the hard-to-identify long lever with outsize power. Who knows, maybe plans shifts around an email or a news article.

So we hope for good things for both Lochiel smallholdings, and for Masiphumelele.

Eugene and I have worked so hard— the community meetings and sharing our collective story, writing, finding advocates. BUT… While focused on the work on behalf of the smallholdings, our harvest and our efforts on the farm have been really constrained.

So this season, as the city’s plan grinds along, it is time to trust again in the power of community, tap into the vast lightness of shared burdens, and to refocus on the work of the farm. (Yes, midwinter is the time where we start to get into spring gear… don’t you love Cape Town?!)

We are not to be saved solely by our own persistence. That would not teach us what we need to learn. We are saved by each other. Probably saved by knowing there is ultimately nothing to be saved from. That in the end, there is just life, and as long as we have community, there’s possibility.

So here is the thing to pray for: for our community not to fear or worry, for us to notice when we are safe, warm, fed, and to appreciate reality for what it is, that all is well. For the city to recognise the value of the smallholdings, to be braver and find ways forward that are innovative and collaborative. For the neighbour who has been saving up, to put in those cupboards, without fear that they will soon be forced to leave. For another neighbour, to keep building up the multigenerational property that they have been working for for so long. For us: to be able to plant and harvest our best season yet, and to teach others.

When I ask for your collective prayers, I don’t mean prayers in a narrowly defined way. I hope to never assume that I know more of God than you do. I mean the hopefulness and collective longing that can bring about much more than the individual hustle. The hope that our farm can keep getting better. When we do use our voice, it is against discriminatory, undemocratic, top-down politicking, and not simply about self-preservation.

To grow food is an expression of hope and optimism: That rain falls, soil provides nutrients, the sun comes up, and we have energy and strength to cultivate, compost, harvest, cook, eat, sell, share. To do that again and again is an expression of irrepressible agency, and that’s what we want keep sharing.

We place ourselves in the hands of community, and we’re back to growing! Thanks so much for your prayers.