Lindi and Allan from Wilderness, Western Cape

Hello from our small farm on the forest's edge in Wilderness, Western Cape.

We, Lindi, Allan and our 3 adult daughters have been developing a food forest and small homestead while working on forest restoration and increasing biodiversity using principles of permaculture and regenerative agriculture. We keep Angora goats for their Mohair and run classes and workshops from here.

Allan grew up in Johannesburg and works in the film industry which he has travelled for quite regularly over the years.

I am a writer and grew up in Durbanville when it was transitioning from a small town to a suburb – was lucky enough to live in some old farmhouses with their fruit trees and cement dams and food gardens as the suburbs around us grew devastatingly quickly. We moved a lot. I learned a love for soil and growing things, and the beautiful harmony of old food gardens (even when they are abandoned or in disrepair)

I studied at UCT (where I met Allan), discovered permaculture, grew tomatoes and basil on tiny balconies, planted veggie gardens in small back yards, got married, moved to the under the mountain near Gordon's Bay. Did a Permaculture Design course at KEAG in Kommetjie and set up food gardens and a retail nursery. By now we were four. And then we moved to Wilderness.

How did you start doing what you are doing now? 

Living in one place for a long time, it is difficult to untangle the beginning of things. We bought in 2004 and moved in beginning of 2005, four days before our youngest daughter was born. 

The property is on a steep south slope – the flat area along the road was covered in wattle – almost too dense to push through. The valley had been used for sweet potato fields up until the 70's – it had then returned itself to a fairly young, mostly indigenous forest.  Our first job was to clear the wattle – and as we were in the catchment of the Touw River and Working for Water had a project here cleaning up catchments at the time, we enlisted their help. 

What we learned very quickly, after nurturing every green shoot in Gordon's Bay for 8 years, is that things in Wilderness wanted to grow – paths grew closed, fence poles sprouted – it felt like we ourselves would take root if we stood still too long – and we did. 

The food gardens grew abundantly – we sent gooseberries to the farmers market for a while and Allan perfected his gooseberry jam – there were slugs as long as my hand who could fell a mature sunflower like a tree. The more we planted – the more came to share the bounty. Porcupine, bushpig, bushbuck. We lost chickens to genet and honey badger and caracal. We learned to protect what needed protecting and tried to not infringe on the forest. We are still learning.

We homeschooled for 11 years – definitely not something I would have thought I would do or had any intention of doing – but school options were limited and we ended up loving it. And it is the homecshooling and the practice of being here that truly allowed us to sink into living here. The girls grew and the trees we had planted grew up around us.

In 2010 we got our first Angora goats – two little field orphans that we bottle-reared. We were smitten. Keeping goats changed the shape of the gardens – they had to be close enough to be safe and have space enough to be goats. They helped immensely with wattle regrowth and branch trimmings from paths, increased the fertility of the gardens and they grow the most luscious curls. At 6 months they needed their first haircuts – which we did very slowly with a scissors. 

Clearly I needed to learn how to spin. I have always loved working with my hands and had an interest in old tools and ancient crafts. I bought an old spinning wheel off gumtree and learned to refurbish and service it while learning to spin. There was something in the rhythm of it that felt familiar and comfortable and good. Finding old wheels and getting them back in use gives me great joy.

One goat led to another and soon we had 5 – we were spinning up a storm to meet demand for a stall at our local market – I taught my daughters and friends to spin and my mother was knitting scarves and beanies and shawls. By then our oldest daughter was away at university, I was teaching creative writing to high schoolers and our younger two were going to high school in Knysna. It was a busy time – our property is small, we cannot keep more that 8-10 goats –  and I started to shift from production for market to teaching spinning from goat to fibre. 

What are you most proud of in this process? 

Oddly, I suppose, I am most proud of staying in one place for so long – of learning to just be here. It takes enormous courage to move to a new place, start new projects, take on new challenges – but it also takes courage to stay where you are, hold a vision and stick with it even when you cannot see results, or the way through is difficult or long.

I am also immensely proud of our daughters for the wonderful humans they are and the future they hold.

What is the most helpful piece of advice you received when you were just starting out?

A friend said to me that some decisions cannot be made by lists of pros and cons and practicalities – that some decisions are matters of the heart and we are not going to know why we must do it – but we must.

And then an old farmer told me, when I told him I was getting goats, that the way to check if your fences are goat proof is to take a hosepipe and spray water at the fence, if the water goes through – so will the goat. I learned this was true while trying to keep a Saanen milk goat too close to our vegetable beds. (Angora goats on the other hand are angels – and only eat vegetables when the gates are left open)

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

Let love, not fear, be the reason for doing something or being somewhere. Fall in love with the earth where you are. Build slowly. Create beauty and harmony in your food gardens so that those who eat from it are nourished. 

And grow good soil.

Where do you see growing going in Southern Africa? 

I am encouraged to see words like sustainability and regenerative agriculture slipping into mainstream media and agriculture. I am excited by the enthusiasm around farmers markets and direct deliveries from farmers. I love the renaissance of the backyard garden and the proliferation of community gardens as a lasting response to covid across all age groups. I think perhaps the cracks in big agriculture are starting to show their ugly and I hope to see a shift in focus from yield alone to sustainable nourishment. 

I would love to see small scale fibre production move back in to urban and suburban environments. Clothes made from natural fibre composts, every item produced is an item kept out of landfill, and our hands love the learning. Goats are clean, intelligent, friendly and quiet, build soil and help process garden cuttings into compost.

Angora rabbits are gentle family pets that give a beautiful soft fibre that is lovely to spin – they produce excellent fertilizer and are easy to manage, even in a relatively small garden. 

I think backyard fibre production is so much more accessible than people think it is.