Marlon and Alexia from Simple-Earth in the Karoo

Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, where do you live now?

I (Marlon) grew up in the Eastern Freestate. I moved to Cape Town in 2000, where I studied and worked in electronics and software engineering. Alexia grew up in Nice, France and studied in England. Shortly after that, she moved to Cape Town to work for a technology firm, and it is there that we met. The rest is history.

After almost two decades, the plan of living simple started to take shape and a slow move into the Karoo commenced. Fortunately, we both shared the same passion to get away from the noise, smells and costly chains that urban life and its toys tie us all to. We started the whole journey by renting and staying in many places in the Karoo, reading, learning and collaborating with farmers. We spent a number of years on a farm near Matjiesfontein, where we studied and figured out how climate, fauna and flora ties together, and then started working on energy and income plans (the latter continuing to this day, haha).

How did you start doing what you are doing? 

After spending time, renting Karoo houses and farms, conventional farming was causing conflict within ourselves, and with landlords. For instance, they would not allow us to harvest rain water (as rain tanks were "unsightly in the karoo"). We had the opportunity to nurture relationships, raise young animals, study soil and plant behaviour in arid environments and learn a lot.

We felt ready to move on and started looking for our own land. This led us to a one-acre smallholding near Tulbagh. It had nothing on it other than a wellpoint, so we built it up from scratch with our own four hands (and sometimes with the help of a guy called Marius, who was a reliable, trusty friend). Somehow, we achieved a near 50% self-sufficiency, by growing almost all of our own veggies, raising goats, catching rain left, right and centre, and generating electricity with solar and wind. I also kicked off my soil-building adventure here, and turned crappy, hard clay into great growing soil using plants and goats.

Our final move was to our current farm in the middle of nowhere, where we are to this day. We needed space to work with larger herds of our Nigerian Dwarf Goats, and also to dive deeper into the larger goat scene, with indigenous Cape Lob Ears. Here, we started all over again. The scale of things makes it very hard to move fast. Building our own homes, our own fences, own water systems spanning 4km of pipe and field takes enormous amounts of energy and willpower. We often run out of both, and have to source inspiration from other people to remember why we do this. There are no working hours, animals don't care about 9-5, and wildlife can invade a garden at any hour, too. With this said, we will not trade it for anything. It's as rewarding as it is challenging.

What are you most proud of in your farming life? 

Everyone seems to be pioneering and doing amazing things in their own way, confronting unique environmental challenges. My "crop circles" are something I feel good about. They are high yield, food and feed growing areas that thrive on very little water that were cut from eroded, rocky, dead areas of the veld. Using natural fermented fertilisers (JADAM organic farming), termites, goats and manual work, the soil is turning blacker by the day. Finding the balance between animals, food, feed and the natural ecosystem is a life-long journey, and I am sort of proud of the fact that I am at least a little down this road by now.

I am also trying to assemble the Nigerian Dwarf Goat folks in South Africa - and will be happy about this when I can manage to do so. Alexia is very interested in animal husbandry, and she studied and learns about it almost all the time. She's been asked to assist with births on other farms or asked for advice on many topics. While not a vet, she always finds time to help and usually put people down the right road. She knows what the goats can eat, should eat and what to think about different behaviours. Even with our chickens and rabbits, she is a valuable friend to the animals. She also follows her true passion, which is breeding dogs. She does this for specific needs, socialising and training puppies to be ready for their new families and roles, and she knows how to do it responsibly. This is extremely hard work, if done right, and she just keeps doing it, in spite of many other energy draining tasks we have here. These things make me proud.

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

This is something I cannot stress enough. There is no "end goal", and you should not gun for the finish line, as there is no such thing. Nothing will happen overnight, and that is the good news. Go to bed at night, and instead of counting sheep, let your thoughts wander into the things you did today. You will wake up with new energy in the morning (after coffee, very important) and know what to do. Things will go wrong, but each challenge leads to the hardening of some flaw. Take it slow, easy, and stop spending time and money on toys and junk. Spend your time on your family, land and nurture that into the thing where you need to be. Permaculture's principles applies pretty much 100% to everything here, our thinking, execution and dreams.

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

Cold turkey is ok for some- it pushes you into survival mode. However, I would not advise this, as your priorities will shift into emergency mode; neglecting all the important foundational aspects. Don't let romantic visions of videos and stories shape your needs and wants. Do this yourself. Study your own SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and design your plan from that. Everyone is different. Find the right place, with the right resources, climate, distances to things you need and people around you. The wrong stuff here, will cause you to isolate yourself, and this makes things a lot more difficult. Don't over-invest on things that cost a lot of money, rather find ways of solving it smarter. With that said, work smart not hard. It's a weird balance to find. Even if you have the means financially to just dump it all in, be aware that "pay to play" will not help you form the strength and motivation to keep going, and will cause a reliance on it. Find the equilibrium between investing time, money and natural resources into things, so that they will be sustainable (once you have put a house somewhere, it cannot be moved... usually). Last but not least, is let pride go. We are all guilty here. We don't take advice, and we always know better. Truth is, we don't. Always surround yourself with people that are wiser and smarter than you. This is how we grow.

Is there anything else you'd like to share? Where do you see growing going in South Africa? 

There's a very slow trend towards the right ways of farming, raising animals and crops. I see a lot of negativity about it, and sure, it's easy to identify the "pottery farmers" with the large areas of open soil, baking to death in the sun. But, there is a huge amount of smallholders, farmers, urban gardeners and growers who are constantly learning about the important things (like: you grow soil and soil biology, not plants). Some very large farmers in my area, have started moving towards natural fertilisers, less tilling and leaving crop residues behind. What we really need is to spread the word, and help newcomers to set up with basic advice and a startup mindset. If not for profit, then at least to learn to feed ourselves and our communities with nutrient dense food. The whole country's economy will grow if this system grows, not to mention the effect of healthier, happier people. The last thing that we really need is a better tie between the consumers and the producers, so that good clean food can make it to them, and the economical benefits can make it back to growers. It is, after all, very labour and time intensive to grow good stuff. Consumers know this, but they cannot always reach or find the growers.

If people want to connect with you and follow your journey, what are the best ways for them to do that?

We are not really very social, in spite of having a YouTube channel and a blog. It's one of those reasons that we placed ourselves out of reach of the world here. We only share a small part of what we do publicly. However, we do like when folks reach out - it's actually a lot of fun when it happens :-) I guess, the best way is to hit our website simple-earth.org. From there, they can find links to the video channel, email, and what we do a little bit more.