Winter 2021

Winter has been a series of very, very cold fronts with wind and rain, two snowfalls, and then alternating with milder, almost warm, weeks. As the weather is unpredictable, from the end of June we usually stop our broiler production as it is just too cold for them to be outside and there is little forage which defeats the object of being pasture raised. With limited forage available, we process the biggest of the pigs too so that the freezers are full of both chicken and pork to last through winter, and the feeding load is manageable while grass is dormant.

After a busy season, we wrapped up, downscaled and were ready for some quieter time on the farm to rest, recover and plan. Having missed last year’s winter break, everyone was feeling very much in need of a break. Our days start later and finish earlier, just doing the basic rounds, egg collecting, moving goats and taking it slow. Everyone gets to take annual leave, and by mid-August we are all back on track, refreshed and ready to go. With the freezers full, we headed down to the Cape for 2 weeks with family.

However, this year, plans once again went awry! The day we returned from the Cape, the KZN rioting and looting escalated. Malls were trashed and burnt, supermarkets were looted or forced closed, major road networks were closed for over a week. Fuel shortages meant that there was a real concern of food not being able to be transported around the country. This caused major panic as people began to fear food scarcity in the coming weeks. Communication networks failed. The power grid failed, and technicians could not attend to either for fear of attack. Farmers could not plant or transport food items without fuel. We had no contact with family to check if everyone was ok.

Having just returned from time away, we did not have reserve fuel left on site, and our vehicles were low on fuel. Despite a monumental increase in REKO orders, were not able to deliver because we were not sure when we would be able to get fuel again and so had to conserve what we did have for keeping the farm running, and for emergencies. In the meantime, we had queues of people lining up at our gate from the local area, desperate to stock up on food items! The same thing was happening to many other small producers in the area and from REKO. Locals turned to small scale farmers, with decentralised delivery systems, to fill the gap left by supermarkets. It was a huge moral challenge for us - do we travel to supply our customers who have supported us through the year, while risking using the last of the fuel we have, or do we supply our local community and not travel? Within a week, we had completely sold out of all of our winter stock of chicken and pork! We baked more bread in that week than we do in a month! We made sure to keep some food aside for us and our staff should the shortages continue indefinitely. At the time, no-one had any idea how long the rioting and consequent shortages would go on for. We were concerned as our chicken feed supplies for the layers rapidly dwindled.

Stats from the REKO HIlton Facebook group showing the sudden increase in new members as a result of supermarkets being closed

Fortunately a week later, things began to settle down and massive clean up operations were underway. As quickly as it had started, it all quietened down again. A week that felt like a year’s worth of stress. The community spirit was astounding as everyone pulled together to clean up, fix up, and move forward. In the midst of this chaos, communities pulled together to support one another, sharing whatever provisions they were able to, roadblocks were set up in towns to control entry and exit, supermarkets were barricaded, and locals began patrolling to protect their own towns.

The trauma of this continues to plague many people that we speak to, on top of the last 18 months of pandemic stress, but for now peace and safety has been restored and hopefully the community spirit can be kept alight.

The long lasting consequences are immeasurable as businesses were lost, livelihoods were lost and the impact of just one week disruption on the system.

We escaped relatively unscathed from that point of view but the weeks following this have been challenging, from a business point of view, not to mention the emotional processing of such an upheaval in society.

By selling our stock so quickly, we were able to settle outstanding bills from the previous season but, we were then unable to continue to supply product for our regular customers and retail outlets. As soon as we were able to, we started our next batch of chicks in the brooder, once we had some certainty on access to feed. However, this still meant a two month wait until the chickens are ready for processing. This has had a severe impact on our business as we lost some customers who understandably did not want to wait two months until chicken was back in stock. We lost some retail outlets, and are not sure if others will have waited for us when we have stock again. Our cashflow was severely disrupted as we could not depend on weekly income. It has probably cost us at least a month’s worth of income. For a small farm and business, that is disastrous, especially in winter when we are in limp mode until spring as it is. We have limped along for the last two months on egg and bread sales, probably equating a third of our usual income. However, we have lost some customers who would ordinarily order chicken, pork, eggs and bread. Now it is not worth the order for eggs and bread alone. This has meant a serious drop in sales all round.

We were able to process our spring pigs a bit early which has helped to have pork stock and therefore resume some of our further out deliveries but it continues to be a challenge.

We anticipate once we do have stock of chicken, it will sell out very quickly. We have a second batch of broilers in the brooder now that the first lot are on pasture already to hopefully keep momentum. Only time will tell which customers have remained this disruption.

So far it seems that despite the increase in orders for all producers at REKO and from their farms, many of those new customers have not continued to support the small producers.

And in the meantime - production is back in swing for Spring and everything else continues.

Some Winter snaps - frozen puddles, Thomas driving various farm vehicles, changing landscapes, sunsets and snow capped mountains. What a glorious place to live!

Pasture Raised Chicken

Our last Autumn batch is normally larger to provide stock through the winter months until we can start our first Spring batch in August. The broilers can handle cold or wet, but not both. They moved to a new field that gets sun earlier, and for longer, to help keep them warm. The field where they were during summer will be rested through winter. Using Greenhouse plastic, we enclosed 3 sides of the pens so that they have a sheltered corner, and angled the pens away from the prevailing winter wind. Our warmer days have a pleasant, warm breeze but the cold fronts always come from a different direction so we spend a lot of time turning the pens depending on the weather during the unpredictable fringes of seasons. The sheltered corner and an insulated roof has meant that the broilers are able to stay nice and warm. During these times we can put in extra effort to keep the birds warm but we still have to be super vigilant to watch for early signs of pneumonia as a result of the cold. Fortunately, we did not experience any of that this season! Our first winter using these Salatin Style pens and all we can say is - just do it how the grandfathers teach! Don’t try and reinvent the wheel - we made that mistake starting out and it has had a huge positive change in our business by going back to basics, using a tried and tested model that one can then adapt to one’s context, rather than trying to be clever and start with your own design.

Forest Raised Pigs

Boss and Peppa Pig became empty-nesters as their weaned piglets went off to join the bramble bashing crew at the bottom of the farm. Boss and Peppa moved to a dam-side home, enjoying their new space and views.

Black Betty also joined Boss and Peppa so that we can start a breeding programme between the two sows so that they can each farrow at different times, and have times of rest between raising litters. A third sow will join, most likely in Spring.

The bramble bashing crew have done amazing work through winter to open up the edges of our pastures where we are now seeding grass mixes. This will give us more grazing area but also provide winter fodder for next winter.

Pasture Raised Eggs

At the end of Autumn we welcomed our last 150 new laying hens. They arrived on the eve of a cold front so it was a quite a shock for them coming from a rearing house. We moved all of our layers from Egg Mobile 1 into Egg Mobile 2, newly equipped with additional roosting space, to fill it. The new layers have the whole of Egg Mobile 1 to themselves. The problem with moving chickens is that they take a few days to settle so every night we would have to go and help them get into bed, especially while so cold! Within a week they have the hang of it.

For the new layers, we can lock them inside the egg mobile with food and water for 2 days so that they begin to associate the egg mobile with warmth, shelter, and safety as well as for laying. At least their own body heat kept them warm. There was a lot of pressure on these ladies from the get-go to produce eggs. We just haven’t been able to keep up with the demand and it was a challenge to juggle customers every week to make sure everyone had eggs, without upsetting anyone, or losing customers. However, the layers, once again, became the star of the show when we were forced to rely completely on the egg laying income for nearly 2 months!
We recently started selling our pasture raised eggs at the Earth Route Market community stand too. This is a great way for us to support the market as we can't always be there with so many other things on the go on the farm.

Our greatest excitement, at the beginning of Winter, was the arrival of our side-by-side UTV!  Last year we sold an old (as in older than us!) land cruiser from the farm that cost us more each time the engine started because something would break! We were able to find a UTV for the exact same price! This will make farm rounds much easier as we can have two people travelling together, plus the four wheeler. The loading space is greater for transporting feed and water, and fetching milk from the dairy. Plus it will be able to get up and down the mountain allowing us to consider expanding up there. Buying tools seems like such a luxury but if it enables jobs to more efficient, more can be done in a day. Luckily this guy arrived before all the chaos started otherwise we would have had to continue doing the rounds with one person on the four wheeler, and the others on foot. That gets old very quickly when you’re lugging buckets around 4 times a day!

A few pictures form our last farm tour in June, with egg collection always being a highlight!

With fewer animals on site during Winter, we have more time to spend with each, to observe, and plan. We have thoroughly enjoyed spending sunny afternoons lazing with the goats. They have continued to be a headache with their Houdini Tendancies, especially getting onto our neighbour’s dairy pasture and into the sileage! Not only is this very unfair for our neighbour, but it dangerous for the goats. Coming from rough, dry winter veld to binging on lush dairy pasture or rich sileage causes a storm in the rumen which can lead to bloat and other negative consequences, even death. Sadly, this was another learning experience for us and we have had to keep a close eye on them as well as up our electric fence rotational grazing game as they seem to take too much advantage of their free ranging opportunities! We welcomed Rex, a livestock guardian dog, who will join the goats along with a new herd that we have had the opportunity of taking over. Adapting a new herd to a new environment is incredible difficult, the rumen has to adapt to new grass, different mineral availability, plus the stress of moving. Most of the new goats came with kids. Many were just not strong enough to face the change, especially in winter when forage is in short supply. Change of seasons brings a lot of work with goats as their rumen adjusts to changing grass, parasites wake up and kids are born. The last few weeks have been intense. Unfortunately our plans to milk the goats have been put on hold. Firstly most of our milking goats had twins and are struggling with the feeding load, and secondly we just don’t have enough hands to dedicate to this task right now. I am still hopeful though!

We've been working hard on a massive clean out of the workshop, getting rid of old, broken things, junk and selling what we no longer use. It is a fair amount of work but the reward of space and order will be well worth it!

We enjoyed a busy full weekend with guests for the long weekend in August which was a change for us. Amazing how quickly we become rusty! It has been a great relief to have a few bookings coming through again, especially visitors for the 2 snow falls we had this winter.

This past season has probably been one of the hardest on us in so many ways, since our very first season. We have felt so many days of paralysing overwhelm, uncertainty, gripping fear, and exhaustion. I don’t think we are alone in this, in the current world climate. A massive change in our lives of going from 2 to 3, sleepless nights, and new priorities has impacted on our business significantly - both positively and negatively as we become more efficient with our time, while also having our focus quite divided. When things get tough we keep reminding ourselves that we are trying to run a business and raise a baby in a very uncertain time, as well as being quite isolated as a result. Our sanity is saved by moments spent with animals, and walks in nature. And we are reminded what a privilege this life is.

The first twinkles of Spring are in the air - the buzzing bees, the warmer days, the winds of August blowing away the leaves that have kept he ground covered and warm through winter. Our peach tree is always the first to get excited about spring! Now we start pruning and preparing transplants. Spring always seems to bring new hope. Lets see what the next season holds…