Kath and Ross of Numbi Vally Permaculture

Tell us a little about yourself!

I grew up in Johannesburg and Russ grew up in Durban, and we met at university, so we ended up studying BSC agriculture at Maritzberg University, both with the intention to do reclamation work.

We were always interested in a different way of farming, farming with the ecology in mind, producing food, but not harming the environment in which that's done. It's been a long journey for us. We didn't really agree with everything we learned at university or in the degree, but we were fortunate. When we came out of it, we met Ewald Follun, who at that stage was teaching permaculture. It must have been one of the first people that did it in South Africa or offered it. That was about 30 years ago. Then ever since we did that incredible insightful course with him, we were inspired to one day find our own farm. It was a long journey of working and saving enough money to eventually find a piece of land that suited what we wanted to do.

How did you start doing what you are doing now? 

My father was a gardener. Although we grew up in Johannesburg, he had a big yard. Being exposed to that as a child, eating peaches from the garden and blackberries fresh off the vine would have inspired me to want to do the same.

Then eventually, as I grew older, it became more of an ecological motivation in that I no longer wanted to buy food that came with poison and destruction of ecosystems. So there was a yearning within myself to create a space where I could produce food that didn't do that, that could be grown in harmony with the natural environment.

What are you most proud of in this process? 

It's been absolutely beautiful to observe the return of wildlife into the space. When we bought Numbi Valley, it was actually called Mara Vlakte, which means barren valley. And people could never really make a living here.

The soils are not rich, they're high pH and high salinity. It also had a history of overstocking and overgrazing. So the felt was very denuded and there was no open water source apart from the river.

So there was not a lot of life left. To observe the return of wildlife by creating systems where wild creatures can live again. As an example, creating a water feature, a pond with rocks packed around it. So it's a source for pollinators and predatory insects to come into the system, but also dragonflies and frogs and snakes.

Welcoming all of that into the system and not trying to exclude anything. That's been the observation of that and knowing that it works. By working with the soil and the soil microbiome, by bringing life back into system. Life creates life and it’s just such a beautiful journey to bear witness to all of that. To witness the incredible biodiversity that has come with the creation of a food garden.

What advice would you like to give to others who are younger/earlier on their journey? 

I guess the advice would be that sometimes because of the systems that we live in at the moment, it's important to create capital gains so that you can, in fact, find a piece of land that you can work with. And then, not try and impose your ideas on the land, but rather observe and interact with the natural system that is.

Sometimes people have ideas that they've gleaned from somewhere, and when they eventually have a piece of land, it's very much like that is what they want to do on the land instead of coming into the space, looking at the climate, looking at what already exists and try and work with that. Instead of being a destructive force going in and clearing land with machinery and creating flat spaces and turning the soil. Those are all very destructive practices, but rather bring more life and more diversity.

And through that, we get healthy organic food that then feeds us and releases us from the need to visit doctors and get involved in that whole medical system. So my advice would be also slow, steady development in harmony with the systems.

Where do you see growing going in South Africa?

So I would love to see more local. At the moment we're very spoiled. When we walk into a supermarket, there are always green peppers and they're always tomatoes, and yet the season for them locally is not there. And people are eating so much processed food in South Africa that's causing such disease in the physical body and the mental body.

And there's very little connection between the effects that processed food have on our general well-being.

So I would love to see South Africa moving to a more direct farmer to consumer market. And eating seasonally and getting to know the actual producer if they're not producers themselves, then creating a relationship with the farmer and encouraging ecological farming.

Instead of going into supermarkets where they have no connection with how and where the produce was cut from. And it can be that those processes were very negative towards either the animals that they're buying the meat sources or very chemical based vegetable growing or very chemical based process, factory farmed or factory produced foods. So I hope that we can move away from that and really create a healthy system for all.