We started 2020 with a beautiful day, and lots of plans, many of which we were able to bring into action. And many, many actions that were not planned! For our farm, 2020 was a game changer, in a positive way. It gave us a kick (read: catapult) to finally do many of the things we wanted to, and lock down provided the need to do them. The slate was cleared and we could take back the puzzle pieces that we really needed.

We started the year with 139 laying hens, 6 Duroc pigs, 6 Large White X Landrace pigs, 280 broilers and 3 puppies! Andre was full time at Bramleigh and together we ran the farm and guesthouse. I was still teaching twice a week and had just returned from Slow Food Kenya. I had no idea how to make sourdough bread. Andre had no idea how to raise goats.

We ended 2020 with 350 laying hens, 24 pigs plus a breeding male and 2 sows, 600 broilers, 34 goats, and a baby! Instead of the guesthouse, we were renting out our cottages and both involved full time on the farm. I now know how to bake sourdough bread and pizza, and Andre knows more about raising goats! (Our greatest skills developments of the year.)

The year seems to be split into three different worlds - the first 3 months of the year with life continuing as normal, full of plans and hope, then 6 months of a whirlwind of lockdown, staff changes, the Chanthunya family living with us, expecting a baby, and then the last 3 months of the year when the Chanthunya family left, Hedges moved in, Baby arrived, and we adjusted to a totally new normal. This is our story of 2020…

markets

In mid-January, the Earth Route Farmer’s Market started in Nottingham Road. While we have always found models such as REKO and email orders to be more efficient than whole mornings spent at farmers markets, it was an opportunity for marketing and networking within our local community. However, we did find the Saturday morning was fun and rewarding. Unfortunately after only a few weeks, the market had to be put on hold until September because of lock down! We were so grateful for the new connections and customers made at the market who continued to support us during lock down, allowing us to continue farming and earning an income locally.

farm kitchen

Early in the year we began expanding our product offering to include oak smoked chicken and broth, pork lard, and value added products such as peppadew chutney and bacon jam. With our main baking/farm kitchen lady choosing to leave during lock down, we were unable to continue these products but hope to revive them next year.

farm tours

In January and February we hosted a number of farm tours including Jackie Cameron’s School of Food and Wine, showing aspiring young chefs about ethical food production, and Slow Food Midlands Supporters.

slow food farm tour

enaleni farm tour

We were also lucky enough to attend a farm tour at Enaleni by Richard Haig.

goats

In February, we bought 5 maiden goats - Saneen cross Kalahari Red, a milk goat crossed with a hardier, larger South African breed. One each belonged to our staff as a Christmas present, and one each belonged to us. We then bought a Saneen cross Boer male. The plan was to set up a herd share with our staff. By October, all 5 of the maidens had kidded, some even had twins! In the middle of lock down, with no guest trade, we decided to put our savings into livestock in the hope that it would have a faster return than the return of guests! So in August, we bought another 10 goats. By December, they were also kidding! By the end of the year, we had 34 goats - more than double our original investment! And, although a steep learning curve with a new animal, we had some great fun with them!

Every year at Easter we watch the sun rise from the koppie, overlooking the farm. This year it was so special for us to look over and see animals on the land! Every year we’d look to the bottom of the property at the only flat area, and dream about the day we’d put animals on that piece. Little did we know that this year, that dream would become a reality! We cleared a new path and hired a TLB from our neighbour to lay pipes to help the drainage and widen the path into a road. What achievement we felt the day we began to move animals down! This was something we only achieved in September but the next 6 months were spent preparing for this…

Chapter 2 - Lock Down

The announcement of lock down sent us, and the rest of the country, into a flat spin. For us it meant having every booking for the next 18 months cancelled, scrambling to repay deposits and trying to figure out how to continue supporting ourselves and our staff. Schools were closed and I was no longer able to earn an income, until I began teaching online. The week of the lock down announcement came great news for us too - we were expecting our first child! (Also that the smell of the chicken broth constantly made me want to gag - until we discovered that a little bean growing in my belly was the cause! Proof of our pre-lock down baby!)

During lock down, every week we sent out an order form and would meet customers outside a supermarket in Notties, Hilton, or Howick. It took a lot of organising! During this time, many people were seeking out local, wholesome food to avoid going into supermarkets and to boost immunity. This completely changed our business, meaning for the first time, we were reliant fully on the farm for all income. Despite having to refund many bookings in the guesthouse, we were able to keep running! Our farm sales continued to grow which both encouraged, and forced, us into expansion. We made decisions that we probably would only have faced a few years down the line.

REKO was shut down for a few weeks to prevent gatherings but our favourite farmer quickly devised a clever plan to implement a drive-thru REKO collection in April! This enabled producers to keep trading and keep their small businesses afloat, while also providing customers with safe access to nutritious food. This change required a lot of work and resulted in a complete shuffle of the administration team and a move to another venue. Producers would all arrive and park in the middle of an open car park. Customers would approach from one side with their name on the windscreen so that producers could see who was approaching. Producers would have pre-packed orders ready for each customer and either pass through the window or place the order in the boot of the car. Producers had to be super organised and quick to keep the flow of traffic moving otherwise it would back up into the road. This worked really well! Feedback was that there were some producers and customers who did not want to return to the market style collection once it was allowed again! However at the beginning of October, the general consensus was to return to market style, once things had settled again.

After our main baker lady left Bramleigh during lock down, I had to quickly learn how to make our sourdough products. A huge thank you to our customers for their patience with the many, many failed loaves and last minute cancellations after a bake flopped! Sourdough requires daily input, care and feeding, some days it works and some days it just doesn’t!

In the crazy times of COVID, we would often seek refuge in the cool, calmness of the forest. After a day in town, we would sit and soak in the fresh, healing of the beautiful, bountiful resource that we are beyond blessed to have on our doorstep!

The Chanthunya family joined us in May and brought a new energy and flavour to Bramleigh… many flavours, as they ran Greenhouse Hot Chocolate from here, inspired by our little greenhouse and using some plant flavours from Bramleigh. The support, confidence, encouragement and extra hands were invaluable in so many ways, both personally and for farm development. There were many chilly Winter mornings where we’d all meet in beanies, coats and gloves to divide and conquer the farm chores (except the boys still didn’t wear shoes!). As I hauled my pregnant self up and down the hills, Kate would often follow with her baby on her hip warning me not to lift heavy things, or calling for one of the boys to come and be the muscle for us! My favourite memory of this time was the afternoon we decided to show the Chanthunya family the flatlands. On his way home, Andre met us down there. Leading everyone through the marsh, I took the wrong path, managing to get the rest of us bogged down in knee deep mud! Kate with baby on her hip, me with a big belly, and Chikondi trying to keep control of ALL of the dogs while the boys alternated squealing and screaming in delight and disgust at the mud!

Kate, being a kitchen whizz, helped us develop our garden herb infused salt and spent many hours helping in the farm kitchen. After just two months of learning the art and science of sourdough myself, Kate joined to help and became our chief pizza baker while I baked the loaves.

Pasture Raised Chicken

Because the farm was now our sole income, we needed to continue with pasture chickens through winter. Our pens were summer appropriate but not suitable for winter. They were raised off the ground to allow cool airflow, and worked on the slopes. Our brooder was just an open room. (photos below).

A temporary solution for winter was to clean out the tractor shed and lay out all of the wood chips from clearing the food forest. Instead of the chickens going out on pasture in freezing temperatures, they could come back in at night and have heat lamps for warmth, and be outside during the day. While this provided great compost for our veggie garden, it was hard on the grass. It had some pros and many cons but mainly solidified for us why we choose to raise our chickens in a pasture raised regenerative approach. You can read more about it here.

Photos below:

Chipping the wood

Our biggest batch of broilers ever - 450 going into the brooder

Our winter brooder with a ceiling to keep warmth in at night when temperatures plummeted

Broilers in the shed with outdoor day access

The resulting piles of wood chips and manure at the end of winter

Another of the big projects that the Chanthunya fmaily helped us with was building new broiler pens. The above photos show our original hoop style pens because we didn’t have access to flat land to use a Salatin style pen. Because we were simultaneously creating access to our flat land, we could start building these pens to use. These pens provided shelter and security from predators (a problem that was more prevalent in winter than summer). Joel Salatin said in a podcast that we once listened to - always start with a carbon copy of a design that someone else has used, tried, tested, adapted and learnt from. From there you can adapt to your context. We only discovered this gem of advice after doing things the other way round! Using a carbon copy of his pen design has really improved the welfare of the chickens as they are more relaxed and protected, and improved the enterprise for us.

Chikondi’s help on this project was amazing! He and Sandile could continue the project while Andre carried on with the day to day stuff in between. Thulas, the boys and I then varnished the pens at the end as our contribution!

It all sounds like it flowed seamlessly - clearing for veggies, bedding for chickens, compost for veggies, clearing for flatlands, pens for chickens… but in reality it didn’t flow so smoothly and came with plenty of sleepless nights, stress, heartache and fear. But when does development not!

Land

During this time, the Chanthunya boys also set to work doing even more bush whacking to open up the path to the flat lands. Other land activities included seeding cover crops after the pigs had tilled (photo below of the pigs wallowing in the cool of the green) and fire break burning. We managed to create a green firebreak in one area where the pigs had been which is something to hopefully explore in future. Although, the last photo shows massive plumes of smoke from a horrific day in September when there were multiple runaway fires around the Midlands due to hot, dry, windy conditions. Fortunately we had done our burning but it was a good lesson!

Interspersed between all of this activity, was the preparation for the arrival of our baby. A countdown that was ticking faster with each passing day, to have systems in place, and some sense of stability for our business to provide for our growing family, including our staff.

Our two farm guys stayed on throughout lock down with us. They had the option of bringing their family to stay here. In July, we had a new lady join our team heading up our farm kitchen with exceptional dedication and skill. The hardship and loneliness of lock down only proved to strengthen the relationship with our staff and tested our dedication to one another. We came out the other side more united and committed to making this farm succeed as a team.

pasture raised eggs

We started the year with 139 layers. We were always short of eggs and wanted to build another egg mobile so, putting the cart before the horse, ordered 200 new layers, giving ourselves 20 weeks to build the egg mobile before the layers would be ready! Before we got round to it, we heard through a friend of someone giving away a chicken coop big enough for 300 hens. The deal was that the coop was free… provided the new owner could move it. At over 4 metres wide, this was no easy task. Months of planning and homework and we finally found someone to move it for us. While Sandile and Chikondi were out doing deliveries one sunny afternoon, our new layers arrived and Thulas, Andre, and I welcomed them into their new home. They have helped us meet our demand of eggs as well as being able to meet the increased demand during lock down. Despite having lost a few restaurant contracts during lock down, we were able to supply new delis and shops, as well as new customers.

Egg mobile close to the house during winter making for easy farm rounds
The new egg mobile being loaded before starting the long journey to Bramleigh where it blocked roads being 2 lanes wide!
3, 4 & 5 Thulas, Andre and I offloading the new hens
6. Our original egg mobile going cross country and moving to the flat land at the bottom of the farm

Our Adopt a Hen programme continued to run, with a few subscribers choosing to donate their eggs. These were delivered weekly to a local school. During lock down, an NPO called Action in Isolation took up the task of feeding children in the Midlands, many of whom used to get their only meal at school. We began donating eggs there.

Below: Girls at school receiving their eggs, an under-appreciated protein source, especially for growing children

Grond Tot Mond

In September, the magazine Grond Tot Mond contacted us, wanting to write an article about Bramleigh and REKO.

What we didn’t realise at the time was that this was a feature of the magazine and we were on the front cover! Had we known, we may have cleaned up a bit more! Unfortunately the ground was still very dry and brown, with the rains only starting a bit after this. Nevertheless it was an incredible experience! Unfortunately the day they came, our staff were on leave as it was a public holiday (Andre’s birthday!) and so they didn’t get to share in the experience, after all of their exceptional hard work.

Bramleigh Farm Article in Grond Tot Mond

Reko Article

I lost count on the number of punctures we had this year, despite reduced travel!

Pigs

The result of 2 escape artist males was a number of unplanned litters of piglets! There was something in the water this year - piglets, chicks, goat kids, and our own baby!

Photos below: Lady and 6 Duroc X piglets that lived close to the house and helped till up an area for me to plant veggies; male Duroc X that we adopted for breeding; pigs doing their thing in the veld and forest.

The first of the piglets were born on 7 July (7/07). As the weather turned from usual Midlands chilly to super cold and icy, Thulas warned us that pigs farrow when the weather changes. While feeding a very pregnant “Mommy Pig”, we saw her begin to build a nest. That night she gave birth to 11 piglets! It was an adventure for us to have these gorgeous little piglets running around. It was also a lot of learning - keeping tiny piglets contained is not a walk in the park! They could get out anywhere. Mommy Pig had zero respect for electric fences and her piglets learnt this terrible behaviour from her - as well as having the genes of an escape artist father!

Two months later, a small pig named Shrew, gave birth on 9/09 to 7 piglets. And on 21 October, Spotty Pig gave birth. The night before she would not stay in the female pig camp. She found every which way to break out into the forest. Eventually we decided to leave her as it got dark. In the morning, she had built the best nest we had ever seen, and farrowed 7 little piglets! It was a lesson for us in letting go control and letting her instincts take over, knowing very well that nature may well play a part with circling predators or that she could have birth problems and we wouldn’t be able to find her. But all went smoothly.

Once weaned, these piglets were moved down to a lower area on the farm and became very good at putting their noses to use to clear bramble.

As Spotty Pig emerged from her forest nest, I went into labour and our little piglet was on his way!

Winter was bitter this year! One of the coldest we had experienced at Bramleigh with the stream freezing, water pipes freezing and even chicken drinkers freezing before 8pm at night! We were relieved that our chickens could be somewhat sheltered in the shed! Some mornings, the pipes would only thaw around midday! But winter slowly turned into spring and the fruit trees began to bloom again, the garden sprung to life and a new season began for us...

chapter 3 - balance

… At the beginning of spring, our little Thomas arrived, a little earlier than planned! Thus began the last chapter of the year. The Chanthunya family had left to continue their dreams in Malawi once borders opened, and the Hedges moved in just two weeks before Thomas was born! We were extremely fortunate that Timothy was able to jump right into the deep end and help keep everything afloat (including hatching new layer chicks!) while we had to spend a week in hospital due to Thomas’ early arrival. The last three months were a blur of change, adaptation, and the haze of newborn sleeplessness (hence this blog post taking 5 weeks to finish!).

Thomas settling into life on the farm, getting to work right away!

As spring turned to summer, we began to find our feet and our rhythms again only to be faced with the second wave and lock down again in December and again the loss of bookings. We look forward to writing about how the story continues in 2021.

A story of balance…

2020 Review