|
Please click on the link below to read about our latest news, pricing info and updates:
http://speekhoutfarm.blogspot.com
A
new calling and purpose has begun since we bought the
farm at the end of
2016
In April 2017 we moved here from Orange Grove, which
is in the middle of the disturbed heartland of the Jhb.
It seem everybody else knew what a hard exchange it
would be, but us! So we landed endeavoring to make this
our home… However, morphing from city life into full
time farming has been a major paradigm shift,
transforming the very people we are as we live day by
day in the most beautiful mountain landscape that is
progressively caught in a severe drought. We are
experiencing the strength of the kloof as well as the
backbreaking hardships people, animals and nature have
to endure to survive here. We are indeed the new brooms,
taking the farm in hand, bringing much needed care,
attention, and thoughtfulness to change the course that
brought it to the backward state and disrepair we found
it in. With vigor and faith, very hard hard work, we are
giving it our all and hoping that the upgrading,
re-purposing, cleaning up and general overhauling of
just about everything, will over time bring a jewel to
life, a place of grace, beauty and Life
Becoming new custodians of Speekhout Farm is way bigger
than just writing about it. We could have never imagined
how a few words like that would have impacted the very
fiber our very lives… Everything works differently here.
As inkomers, we have been trusting God wholeheartedly
for holistic restoration of the farm in its entirety.
This is still called Perdekloof by those who have seen
the seasons come and go, and have had the privilege to
survive life here. As we meet the old hands and hear the
history related to us from different kloofpeople, we
hear of a dramatic, unforgiving and vicious past,
godless and tragic, heart wrenching and bitter, plainly
evident as we encounter the remains day by day ….
But God
This has given us an opportunity as unqualified,
desperate yet eager city-runaways, to put our hands and
hearts at the plough. Since we arrived here on Passover
of April 2017, we have been cleaning up: picked up,
sorted out, broke down, organized, cleaned, raked and
dug out, built up, driven away, moved around, and
repeated it all over again. In the beginning when we
went for our daily walks to explore the land, we took a
large plastic bag with us and filled it as we walked.
Then slowly slowly the bag got smaller until we just
filled our clothes pockets or left heaps next to the
road to pick when we pass by. To establish a sense of
order, logic, safety, human dignity, doing
scientifically the right thing, recalculating kilometers
of wasted black plastic piping crisscrossing the entire
farm (let’s remember that is should we unlawful for 1
person to be allowed to buy so much pipe…) takes time
and time and time. O and money, money and money. Then
comes the fixing, replacing, redesigning, reengineering,
blowing the budget so that we can make it functionally
our own, purposefully establishing a new identity on
old, darkened and broken ruins. Thank God for every new
day and His vision over Speekhout!
Our vision: to find meaning and purpose, and be part of
what God is doing in the earth right now
We are loving every act of reclaiming the indigenous
flora by re-purposing of two dams, replanting of the
once lost cedar trees, and remedying the land by means
of re-introducing valuable indigenous fauna and flora.
However the purpose has looked very different as we are
slowly being introduced to the history and interacting
communities in the kloof. Layers and years of
relationships, pre post and past every political system,
critical chains of events that inevitably leads to
conflict, crises and relational issues, over and over
again. The ancient tension and discrepancies between the
“have and the have-not’s “
We have started to pull the land back by employing local
community kloof-mense, who knew and walked this farm
even in its former glory days until now, and are
steadily working shoulder to shoulder with us to
re-establish fallow pastures, physically reviving lost
harvesting fields, replanting of vegetable and fruit
fiels, all by hand! Then we started acquiring small live
stock (kleinvee)…chickens, 5 ewes that had 8 lambs, 4
pigmy black potbelly piggies…- you should see us city
folkies running after sheep and bouncing lambs when
trying to get them back to their camp at night… And so
the truth is that with partnerships with locals, we
stand a chance to overcome previous dispensational
mindsets and boer vooruit vir ‘n slag!
Being part of a working farm has exposed us to the hard
realities of survival, of human prejudice that runs both
ways, as well as the law of the land that has been
established because of previous wrongs. The law can
never fix bitterness, jealousy and unforgiveness, no
matter from where it goes and where it aims at.
We now belong to the Bavaria Association that was
established between the kloof farmers and Nature
Conservation, with the view to work together to ensure
long term sustainability for fauna and flora in the
kloof that stretches about 65km from the Nuwe Kloof Pass
to the entrance gate of Parks, and all its people – an
interesting history indeed.
We are in a proses of renovating and upgrading all of
Speekhout’s guest accommodation, aiming to create a
quality and comfortable farm-stay for all our guests. We
have especially installed new indoor fireplaces to make
the stunning karoo-winter nights fire-warm and deeply
satisfying, plus given thought to what relaxes and helps
guest unwind, making it easy to just be here, making the
farm and its trail, the real gift. We ask people to
consider before booking, that we like the quietude so
much here, that we want all of our guests to enjoy the
peace and rest, therefore no loud music, partying and
anything that disturbs the tranquilly here in any
manner, are tolerated
And so we welcome you with a warm heart, offering you
the best of our farm and its surrounds. We hope your
stay is restful and deeply satisfying
In Him, Mark & Paulien Enrieu
|
