Before we look at the ingredients and cooking instructions, some basic principles need to be explained.

Types of Compost

Composting is the facilitated decompostition of organic matter for ease of absorption by plant life. In other words, you are supporting the natural process of the decomposition of your garden waste. The end result of this process is that the nutrients stored in the garden waste are broken down by bacteria so that they can be absorbed by new plants.

There are two main types of bacteria and these form the two methods of composting. Aerobic composting depends primarily on the work of aerobic bacteria. Anaerobic composting requires only anaerobic bacteria.

Aerobic simply means that the bacteria depend on oxygen for their survival. These little organisms are rapid breeders and rapid eaters of the organic matter. They break down your garden waste quickly and efficiently.

This is the recommended composting option, however, it is also the more labour-intensive as the compost requires regular turning. This is the method that we will follow in these instructions.

Anaerobic bacteria on the other hand, do not require oxygen. They break down the garden waste very slowly. Anaerobic or ‘cold’ composting takes a much longer time. It is the easier option: involving little work, simply piling the organic waste in a big heap and leaving it for many months.

The Cooking Pot

Composting works best in a loose structure or ‘pot’. For example, an ideal structure is made of four old pallets tied together at the corners. Whatever you build, make sure that there is plenty of room for air to access the compost. A sealed wooden or brick structure will not work well. The cooking pot should be placed on loose ground in a shaded area.

For small gardens, a single ‘pot’ will suffice. When you need to turn the compost, simply remove the walls of your pot, allow the compost to fall out and then rebuild the whole pile in an adjacent space.

For bigger gardens, a permanent system of three ‘pots’ works well. These should be lined up side by side. Pot A can be turned into Pot B, Pot B into C, and so forth in a cyclical pattern.

Ingredients

Sticks and small branches

Wet greens (fresh cuttings/leaves, fruit and veg peels, teabags) Dry browns (dry cuttings/leaves, shredded newspaper and shredded cardboard)

Manure (optional, although critical for rapid composting)

Water

Do not add:  fruit and veg cuttings with seeds, meat scraps, anything rotten or mouldy.

Cooking Instructions

• Within your loose structure (the pot) loosen the ground soil with a garden fork or spade.

• Place the sticks and small branches at the bottom. This allows air pockets to form once you start layering in the other ingredients on top.

• Place a layer of wet greens about 2-3cm thick. If you don’t have enough, ask your neighbours to keep their scraps for you, or approach your local fruit and vegetable shop for their old stock.

• Place a roughly equal layer of dry browns directly on top of the wet greens.

• Place a roughly equal layer of manure directly on top of the dry browns. Manure, or soiled straw, can easily be found at any stable.

• Note – at each stage, add enough water so that each layer appears damp.

• Repeat this process with another series of layers, filling the cooking pot as high as possible, or until all your ingredients are finished.

• Finally, cover the pot with a lid. Another pallet, an old piece of carpet, or some shade cloth are good options. This keeps the compost dark – encouraging the activity of bacteria and animals such as earthworms which are crucial to the composting process. The lid also limits evaporation.

Leave your pot to stand for two weeks. In the meantime, you may want to start a second compost pile, following instructions from the top. After the two week ‘cooking’ period, turn the compost into a new pot. Cover and leave to stand.

Transferring the compost is absolutely critical for the rapid breakdown of the organic matter as it exposes the pile to more oxygen.

After another two weeks (four weeks in total) transfer the compost into a third pot. Cover and leave to stand for another two weeks. After six weeks in total, your compost should be ready for application! This process will take longer than six weeks in winter, without turning, and if there is no manure.

You will know the compost is ready when your kitchen and garden scraps have broken down completely, the layers can no longer be seen and you have cooked a healthy looking, soft-to-the-touch, moist pile of garden goodness! Yum!

Sam Adams runs Living Green, an eco-consultancy. Contact him on 021-7855236 or visit www.startlivinggreen.co.za

That year, long ago, we made an offer on a farm where we hoped we would find the space, freedom and the agrarian lifestyle we longed for. But the deal fell through as there was a problem with the water supplies. We were going to grow grapes and without water…well, that would be hard.

From that time I would look wistfully out my car window every time we were driving through the beautiful farmlands in South Africa…dreaming of “if” and “when” we got all our ducks in a row to purchase our farm.

The following 12 years saw us having sporadic bursts of looking at small holdings and farms. We also changed tack and decided to look into olives and lavender growing and did lots of research into these crops.

We had offers in on two more small holdings, but both of them never came to fruition. Our main issue as that we were also limited in how far from the CBD we could go as my husband would have to continue to work while I farmed, at least until the farm was breaking even.

Fast forward to 2008 – while surfing the net one day I came across the term “Urban Homestead”. A quick Google search and I ended up at www.pathwaytofreedom.com and this little site, and the Dervaes Family testimony has set us on a new course.

For the first time I looked at my 900sq meters of earth with new possibilities. I began to see that I didn’t need flower beds…and even our paved areas could produce food for us in tubs. So began the great conversion of our little erf into a food producing garden.

In a matter of weeks our few rose bushes, a Bay tree and a small patch of lawn were uprooted and replaced with raised beds for veggies.

My back yard received half wine barrels for fruit trees with strawberries in the bases, tyres were collected to grow potatoes and seeds were sown for late winter plantings.

By December we were eating all our salads out of the garden, had dined on fresh broccoli and had some great spuds!

Corn followed in January as well as carrots, tomatoes and globe artichokes. Beans were grown outside on a trellis, chillies wherever we could, melons and squash flowers replaced roses!

It has become a family effort as each Sunday before the sun got too hot we all weed and sow and enjoy our food growing endeavours. Our goal is to be able to eat 50% of all our vegetables from our garden in the second year of growing our own veggies. So with this goal in mind we cleared a second patch of hedges and planted corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes to see us through autumn and early winter. We also planted berries and a grape vine to grow along the fences.

Fences were a necessary evil for us as we have 3 dogs who would trample everything as well as the darlin’ chickens who tend to eat the shoots of anything. The chickens we added to our family in July. The “girls” have kindly been supplying us with 4 eggs a day, which having seen and tasted, we will never buy shop eggs again.

I no longer look wistfully out my car window at farms…I have created a little farm, just for us, right outside my kitchen door.

Subsequently I have adopted a creed of sorts – it goes like this: “To embrace self-sufficiency now instead of waiting another day, week or year.”

So if the only “green people” you have met are really weird and make you feel like you have to opt out of society, live in a commune and become a vegetarian then you may want to follow my journey into a simple green lifestyle as pursuing a self sufficient lifestyle is for everyone – no matter what your age, creed, race or religion is. It’s for you whether you live in an apartment, in a small home, in a rural area or on a farm. Sufficiency says: “What I have right now is good enough!” This therefore became one of my mottos and what we have lived for a year… still in the middle of a city, on the same 900 sq meters, but with a different outlook on life. `

“Living simply is not about giving things up, forsaking them, frugality, denial, stinginess, deprivation or lack. It’s about taking things up: self-determination, freedom, autonomy and abundant living.” Linda Cockburn

I travelled to Cape Town for the course run by Dom Marchand and his wonderful wife, Jenny. The course, held over a few days, covers everything that an aspiring beekeeper needs to know, as well as the history of beekeeping.

By the time we moved to our farm in the Kouga at the beginning of winter last year, which is supposedly not the season to catch migrating swarms, I had already purchased a number of empty hives. A migrating swarm is bee reproduction in action: when an existing swarm becomes too large or there is a shortage of food, part of the colony sets off with a newly-made queen in search of a new home.

The day a migrating swarm makes one of your vacant hives their new home, you just feel so honoured! I now have obtained 11 swarms in this way and I still feel so special and lucky to be landlord to these little busy insects.

When I see the bees pollinating my flowers or collecting nectar from my orchard or veggie patch, I get such a warm feeling from thinking that while I am providing them with pollen and nectar with the plants I grow, they, in return, are ensuring our continued existence by making sure plants produce seed and continue their existence.

Of course, there is also the huge bonus of getting their honey which, along with beeswax, we use in the making of our 100% natural soaps and body bars.

I would like to share with you the events of a week not too long ago which led to me taking a day off.

It all started when I awoke one morning as the sun was rising. I looked out my bedroom window as I always do, to see the colours that the new day has brought., but what do I see lying on the ground below the jacaranda tree? A swarm of bees all huddled into a tight ball around a branch that had fallen out the tree! The swarm had obviously stopped on the branch overnight, but had been too heavy and with a bit of wind in the night, the branch had snapped and fallen to the ground. It was not a big swarm but I was excited!

First, I woke my wife and begged her to roll over and look out the window at our new tenants-to-be. Then I went to fetch my youngest daughter, Rain (who does not get grumpy at being woken up too early) so she could come and share the experience with me.

Out we went, myself still in my long-johns, and she in her pyjamas, to fetch an empty hive. As you may have gathered, we had no protection on. No bee-suits or gloves. You may think this is dangerous, but when bees are swarming they do not readily sting, as long as you are gentle and non-threatening towards them.

To hive them, you put the box in front of them, with a ramp leading up to the entrance, then they all start to move up the ramp into the box. To head in an upward direction is something they just naturally do. I then showed Rain that you can gently stick your hand in the swarm, or let them crawl over your hand as they head up the ramp and you won’t get stung. It is amazing to feel these little buzzy balls of energy, all with the potential to sting you, moving over your hand with the single purpose of getting the queen in safely and then getting busy with setting up house.

This is the morning when all the unfortunate events started happening. Because I never got stung when I first brushed my hand through them , I become more daring and with the carefree attitude of Jamie Oliver, I swooped my hand through the upward migrating swarm and zap, I got stung on the arm! Then and there, I learnt that when dealing with a swarm on the move, there are still boundaries to be kept at all times! Later that day, I went to go and check on my other hives and noticed that some of the bees were behaving rather oddly. In front of a few of the hives, some of the bees were very busy on the ground (my hives are only 30cm off the ground).

Upon closer inspection, I noticed some of the little guys were wrestling with ants and I realised that I needed to help them urgently. Not wanting to use any poison, and knowing that ants are acidic and do not like an alkali environment, I decided to try Bicarbonate of Soda. I cautiously approached the first hive from behind, (wearing no protection again) and sprinkled the powder around the entrance, very carefully, so as not to upset the bees. Later that afternoon, I went to do another check on the hives and although the situation was much better, the ants were still around. So, now highly irritated on my bees behalf, I fetched the bicarb and poured a nice fat stripe across the entrance to the hives, all caution thrown to the wind! This I had to do to four hives and on the fourth one, zap, I got stung on the back of the head.

The above-mentioned exercise got carried out while the bees were flying in and out of the hive, so naturally some of the powder landed on them! I decided then to stay away from the hives for the rest of the day. The next morning, I was out early inspecting the hives and I saw that the bees, obviously not impressed with the powder across their landing strip, had removed it and the ants were still a bit of a problem.

I then came up with the bright idea of dissolving the bicarb into water and wetting the ground in front of the hive with a watering can. This seemed to work very well. About an hour later I ventured out to go and water my vegetables and in a state of utter contentment, focusing on the water droplets leaving the nozzle, travelling thought the air full of love, beauty and life, soaking into the soil, down to the roots of my veggies when the whole blissful moment came to an abrupt halt with a buzz and a zap to the eyelid. Again, I ran for cover, waving my hands around my head. I guess not enough time had passed for them to have forgiven me!

Three stings in three days in a row, I was starting to think that maybe I should stay in bed and take the day off. By now the whole family are standing in the kitchen and laughing at me while Rae, my wife, removes the sting from my eyelid. That night it rained and the next morning was a glorious sunny day.

I went outside and halleluja! the ants were gone and the bees were busy as always. I felt safe again in natures playground. It was with this happy feeling, looking a sight with my swollen head, eyelid and forearm, my daughters and I decided to go and move our horses to new grazing.

We decided to ride 800m down the road, bareback. As I was still pretty new to horse riding and had learned that bareback riding at a trot is not suitable for the male of our species, I was not keen, but my daughter assured me that cantering was the answer, as it was a much smoother pace. So, off we went at a canter and she was right, it was easier but, to cut a long story short, I fell off!

Nothing broken, just scratched and feeling great — and grateful — for not being dead. So, day four and another injury. While my wife tended to my wounds, she suggested that I should just go and lie down for a while. I nearly took her advice, but there were things that needed to be done in town. So, after my wounds had been patched up I made my way to my bakkie when I felt something crawling inside and up the leg of my shorts. I absentmindedly swatted it?… zap!

Yes, it was another bee and I got yet another sting. I turned around right then and there, went inside and removed the sting, took one look at my wife’s flabbergasted face and promptly went to bed, where I remained until the next morning.

On a final note, the following day I went to the local co-op to buy some more bicarb (just in case). An old farmer stood next to me at the counter. After a while, feeling his eyes on me, I greeted him and raised my swollen forearm and told him that I’d been stung by a bee.

He then replied (in Afrikaans) that he’d noticed my arm and had thought I had very strong-looking arms, until he noticed that only one of my arms looked like that! With that, everyone in the queue burst out laughing.

Dom Marchand offers beekeeping courses, books, videos and equipment and can be contacted on 021 511 4567 or by email to honeybee@global.co.za

Often we are able to put a meal before our guests that is entirely off our own property. They marvel at the succulent full flavoured meat, the amazing veggies and fruit fresh from the garden. Very often they will assist in picking and preparing the veggies straight out of the garden. They often say that this is the life that they want to have, or dream of having. I can however, honestly say that not one of them has yet made the jump from perceived urban security to a rural, grow-your-own lifestyle.

Why not? I think most of them are just too scared. They see what we are doing, and how we are living, but don’t know how to get there. Also they are often in a rut, too used to life in the city and only dream of what they would like to achieve.

Self- sufficiency is a very broad concept and I don’t think that any one person can have a definitive answer as to what it comprises. Some will see it as being able to grow some or all of what you eat on your own ‘patch of heaven’, others will want to include power and maybe fuel requirements, still others will see it as all of the above plus income generation.

My family’s definition of self sufficiency has changed a number of times over the last few years, due to many internal and external factors, as well as our own personal belief system.

What a lot of people don’t realise is the sheer amount of physical effort and planning that goes into our daily life. Without trying to scare you off, there are a lot of things that need to happen to get to a point of self-sufficiency. Not least is the need to feed self and family. With our government’s stance on land redistribution, which often results in productive commercial farms being destroyed, food is going to become more and more expensive. For many years South Africa was a net exporter of food, but last year saw a dramatic reversal of that situation. What better way to get around the hike in food prices than growing your own? It’s not the State’s responsibility to provide for your family, it’s yours and yours alone.

Working smart

My family’s journey to self-sufficiency has taught me that it is extremely important to work smart if you would like to eat the fruits of your labour. Now, before we undertake any new venture, we first research the pros and cons of each decision and based on our needs make what we hope is the best, most informed decision. Normally our decisions are based on cost and labour versus the return we expect. If a venture has a high cost, requires a lot a labour and will likely have a low return, it gets shelved and something else is done in its place. However, on the flipside, there are instances where low cost, low labour and high returns can also be a problem.

One of our first bad decisions was to plant a massive vegetable garden. Living on a plot and not having a veggie garden is like having a yacht and not sailing, it just goes with the territory. We planted almost every type of vegetable seed that our local hardware stocked, and then some.

Three months later we quickly learnt that we needed to process or give away a lot of vegetables very quickly. That year a lot of it went to waste. To our dismay, after the growing season we didn’t have a lot left over for winter. We literally had a few jars of pickled onions, some beetroot and a few bags of carrots in the freezer. So much for self-sustainability!

We have now learnt to stagger our planting and thereby stagger our harvests. In addition we have learnt many new canning, freezing and drying techniques which allow us to capitalise on the time invested in summer for use in winter when we can’t grow many fruits and veggies. My wife in particular loves the idea of not having to dig vegetables out of the garden and then wash and prepare them for every meal, as they are already in the house waiting for her to pull them out of the freezer or drawer.

Start with a veggie garden

The best place to start your journey to self-sufficiency is with a veggie garden, for which you don’t need a large piece of land. I know of people that have ripped up their entire lawn to produce food for their family. My advice to new veggie gardeners is simple: start small with a few easy-to-grow crops and expand every year. Nobody will be able to become 100% self-sufficient in a year. It takes years of practice and lots of trial and error.

When we planted our first veggie garden (in suburbia), I can remember harvesting a few tomatoes, some carrots and radishes and TONS of cucumber. It was not a well-balanced veggie patch and everyone that came to visit was given a bag of cucumbers. People soon stopped visiting… however the point is this: you need to grow into your vegetable garden, trying to go the whole hog at once will only set you up for disappointment and disillusionment.

Now that we live out on a plot, things have changed slightly. After 6 years of plot life we have slowly increased our level of self-sufficiency every year, to a point where we are now able to go months at a time where a good 90% of our food come from our own property.

Plan first

When looking at starting your veggie garden, plan first. What do you enjoy eating? Are you able to freeze or can/bottle your produce? Do you have suitable storage space for root and pumpkin harvests? It’s of no use growing tons of a particular type of veggie if only one member of the family enjoys eating it. Can a vegetable be incorporated into another ‘product’? Freezing whole tomatoes is possible if you are going to cook with them, but more efficient space utilization is possible if you turn them into a chutney or sauce that can be used in a variety of meals. Rather use the space to grow a crop of storable veggies or one that is loved by all.

Our family eats a lot of pasta and tomato-based meals, so one way that we get around the problem of buying tomatoes in winter is to freeze a lot of basic tomato and onion base in summer. We have actually been doing this for the past few weeks and have amassed enough sauce to keep us going till early December!

In tangible terms, it means that we will not need to buy those insipid, flavourless, washed out pale pink things that are offered in place of tomatoes at ridiculous prices in winter. All my wife needs to do is open the freezer and pull out a bag of our own organic tomato sauce to use as the starter for a hearty stew or pasta dish.

With the exception of brinjals, our entire family eats every vegetable we grow in our gardens, with sweet corn and mielies a firm favourite. This year we have only managed 10kg of loose frozen sweet corn, and are still waiting to harvest a trial of traditional open pollinated Lesotho mielies. This will provide the seed stock for a two-acre planting next summer and a few this year for fresh consumption. The two-acre planting will mainly be used as animal feed as well as providing our family with organically grown mielie pap to go with our tomato sauce. We also grow a lot of pumpkin, six or seven different types, from the little Gems all the way through to Mammoth Golds that top about 30kg each. Some are good for storage and others for processing. Each has its own place in my family’s diet and each is treasured for its different flavour and texture.

One point to remember with growing pumpkins is that they need space. If grown too close to each other they will reduce their fruit set. If you want to keep seed for the following year, learn to hand pollinate pumpkins, and save seed from these hand-pollinated, pure varieties for the following year.

Three vegetable gardens

We have three vegetable gardens as well as permanent plantings of asparagus and berries. Why three gardens you might ask? Mainly it’s for labour reasons, as well as being able to ‘fine-tune’ the different gardens with manure and compost. We have one specifically for pumpkins and sweet corn, a second close to the house for common items like tomatoes, lettuce, salad greens and green beans, with a few herb plants in between and then we have a large garden further away that produces the larger harvests like dry beans, beans for freezing, processing tomatoes, corn, potatoes, millet, beetroot, carrots, peanuts, bambarra nuts, onions, peas, peppers, melons etc.

There is a fast-growing interest in heirloom and open pollinated vegetable varieties which taste great and have the unique characteristic of allowing the grower to save seed from year to year. The problem that we have in South Africa, is that we cannot easily and legally import heirloom vegetable seed into our country. (Unless you are prepared to jump through some regulatory hoops). It has taken me about five years to build up a modest collection of heirloom and open-pollinated vegetables, most of them from trading with older, more knowledgeable gardeners who have been saving their own seed from year to year.

We plant heirloom and open-pollinated varieties wherever possible, mainly because we enjoy the romance behind growing and eating a variety that has been lost to most of the world, as well as the ability to save our own seed for the following year. However, where we need fast and large production we will consider certain hybrid varieties to fill this need.

Typically, I used to spend hundreds of rands every year on seed, and very often I had to buy more than one packet of some seed just to satisfy our families requirements. Now we have learned to save seed, we eat what we sow and sow what we eat.

Self-sufficiency is an individual ideal, the worst thing that can happen is someone becoming prescriptive and telling you how you need to do it. Start small and if you enjoy the fruits of your labour then by all means expand, who knows where you will go and what you will do on your journey. Life is for living and living is for the love of it, so do it with all your heart.

We all know about the financial impact of having kids. In fact, many parent-to-be wait until they feel financially ready before embarking on the parenting journey. For others it happens a little more by chance and the financial worries are very real. With growing environmental awareness, we also have to look at the impact of our parenting decisions on the planet as well as our pocket.

Babies come with a full list of requirements; nappies, bottles, prams, clothes, furniture and more the lists are endless. But is this huge financial out lay necessary and are there ways to save both money and lessen the impact on the environment?

Here are a few ideas that I hope will help with both:

Use cloth nappies

We live in a throw-away society but we need to be reminded there is no such place as ‘away’. Stuff does not magically disappear and our enormous ever-growing landfills are testament to this. It is estimated that each child using disposable nappies will contribute two tons of non-biodegradable waste to the land fill in the two-and-a-half years they are in nappies.

I think that this figure is very conservative, as of the 70 women from across South Africa that we asked in an online poll 75% said that their children were not potty trained at this age.

Fortunately, the alternatives are easier than the terry toweling squares that our mothers had to use for most of us. Modern cloth nappies are shaped like a disposable nappy with no folding needed at all.

Washing machines also mean that a lot of the hard work in washing them is no longer an issue. Cloth nappies can save you as much as R9000 per child, including all the washing costs. If kept and re-used for subsequent children, the savings are even greater.

There are some wonderful South African brands of cloth nappies available now including Mother Nature, Bio-Baba, Earth Babies and Stegi.

Breastfeed where possible

Breastfeeding might be natural, but it does not always come naturally. So few of us have actually seen a mother breastfeeding before we have to feed our own babies that we have no example to follow. Many mothers experience problems and a quick solution is to use babyformula. The resources required to produce formula and the disposal of the cans and containers in which it is packaged need to be borne in mind.

Breastfeeding saves a lot of money and it is worth investing in a good lactation consultant. The money spent is well getting it right. Nurses in the hospital often give differing advice, so have the number of a lactation consultant on hand and phone before the birth so they know about you and if you have problems they can come as soon as possible after birth to help. Joining a La Leche League group can also provide enormous support as it is a group for mother to mother advice.

Find your local La Leche League group at www.llli.org

Use natural laundry products

Normal laundry detergent is very harsh on the environment, rivers and wild life. Consider a natural/eco-friendly alternative of which there are quite a few brands available in South Africa such as the local and bio-degradable Triple Orange (see www.tripleorange.co.za).

As an added bonus all of these are a lot kinder to babies’ and small children’s skin, which is very sensitive to the chemicals used in most detergents.

Use secondhand where possible

Baby furniture, clothes and toys are very expensive and have a short life, so much of them land on the rubbish dump relatively soon after being purchased. Look at using pre-loved or buying secondhand.

Restoring old furniture and using good quality secondhand clothing and toys make sense both financially and from an environmental point of view. We also need to re-think what we need, as any piece of furniture sold for babies is only useful for a short time. For example, rather buy a chest of drawers which can be used all through the child’s life and using the its top to change baby on, rather than buying a compactum.

Fewer, good quality toys are ideal: kids need a lot less than we give them. It is often hard to avoid being given a lot of un-wanted plastic toys. It is worth it, even at the risk of appearing rude, to ask for specific items or to ask family and friends to buy natural toys, which can be more expensive but are made from better quality, non-toxic natural materials. Nature also provides the greatest toys and learning for free! Mud can amuse kids of all ages for hours.

Many people are a bit snobbish about secondhand items and they can also be hard to find but try setting up a swop or second hand sale with friends or through a parenting group or nursery school. There are some South African auction-type site, and even though they aren’t as large as overseas sites, they are still worth trying. Some websites such as earthbabies.co.za offer places to advertise secondhand products.

Consider a sling

A huge expense and a lot of deliberation for most families goes into which pram, chair, swing etc to buy. There are so many options, styles and gimmicks available, and which we are led to believe one “has to have” for baby to be happy, yet what all babies want most is to be held — babies are born pre-programmed to want to be in the safest place, their mother’s arms.

Research shows that with all our modern devices such as car chairs, swing chairs, bouncy seats, prams, cots and so on, a baby today may be held as little as 20% of the day.

The problem is that no parent, no matter how dedicated, can hold a baby for 24 hours a day and so all these convenience devices have been created. Many of these devices have fancy features like automatic rocking or music, all designed to mimic the movement or company a baby would get when close to mother. But no device can replace or provide the close contact, love and feeling of security mom gives and they cannot teach the baby about the world.

Looking at non-western cultures around the world, we find that babies are carried against the mother’s body in various soft cloth carriers. Mother has her hands free and baby is where it wants to be, close to mother.

Choose a sling or baby carrier that can be used from birth to toddlerhood. It can be used for more than one child and when its life is over the cloth is biodegradable. Depending on the style of sling/carrier there many be small plastic or metal rings or clips left, but this is much less than all the other non-biodegradable and unnecessary devices.

If you do feel the need for some of the commercial devices why not consider buying secondhand? Though they do have a limited life span, they can be used for two or more children before they eventually end up on the rubbish dump. They are mostly made up of synthetic materials, metal and plastic so have no chance of biodegrading.

Make your own baby food

The money you save on expensive glass jar food can be used to get the best quality fresh or organic products that you can afford. If you do use the occasional jar, please recycle the glass!

When researching weaning for my second child, I came across baby-lead solids which is about letting children feed themselves finger food and exploring what they do and don’t want to eat. It involves minimal spoon feeding, besides what the child eventually does for itself.

The fact that they just choose what they want from a variety of what the family is eating anyway also makes one ensure meal times are more healthy and no fuss with extra baby food or puree. `

Sally Zurich runs Earth Babies, an online emporium with information, products and support for naturally-nurtured babies.
www earthbabies.co.za

Being dependent on rainwater has meant that our awareness and appreciation for water has deepened on a daily basis, magnified by the fact that we are in a deep water crisis. So we decided to first excavate a dam and erect a carport with a large roof catchment area and some water tanks.

Next came the power issue. In order to get Eskom electricity to the farm, we would have to pay for a transformer and all the pipes and earth moving to bring it from a distant neighbour (not to mention the monthly bills and reliability of supply). So we decided to opt for solar power – at about 40% more than the Eskom outlay. Since we had experience of living in a solar-powered home for the last 18 months, we’ve already scaled our power consumption down to a bare minimum. (Although I did once miss my tumble drier so much that I almost cried, I can honestly say that ironing is the biggest waste of time and energy ever invented!)

Our recently installed solar system comprises 8 solar panels and 12 deep cycle batteries with an inverter & regulator and this will power our home, photographic studio and office (we’ll have to see what happens on consecutive rainy days!)

We had initially planned on building our little “eco”-house from hemp after learning about the incredible properties (strong, light, insect resistant, good insulator and quick to grow). Obtaining seed proved fruitless at the time due to legal and political issues, and so we started looking into cob, straw bale, sandbags and finally settled on rammed earth (we could use clay from our dam excavation and had an architect who had built this way before).

Rammed earth walls involve pounding thin layers of clay (to which a small amount of cement has been added) into a form work. Walls are very strong, have excellent thermal mass qualities (which help to keep temperatures comfortable), harden almost immediately and have a beautiful smooth finish which requires no painting or maintenance. This we would combine with timber frame construction using local, sustainable timber. Just when our plans were ready to be submitted to council, the credit crunch hit and the bank revoked our finance!

With no financial source to build with, I started contemplating building with tyres (rammed with soil), discarded shipping containers and recycled materials. We managed to regain our flexi-bond, but the container idea has stuck, and so we started our “eco”-house with a single container: internally clad with 3 layers of insulation and dry walling and with a magnificent roof deck ideal for star-gazing. The doors and windows are all reclaimed or recycled and hunting them down has been a real adventure!

The septic tank at our rented house “exploded” once again – leaving us with no toilet over the Christmas season. This has made me seriously reconsider building anything resembling a septic tank. Flushing precious water down the toilet at a time of severe drought also seems like a terrible waste and the commercial dry toilets looked pretty grim at first glance (though many of my views are changing rapidly!).

A biogas digester seems like such an elegant solution – using black water from the toilet, composting materials and cow dung to generate gas for cooking and refrigeration. My investigations have led me to discover many riddles in the biogas digester mystery, however.

Though many companies advertise the availability of biogas digesters, my enquiries have been unsuccessful. The units imported from India seem to cause problems with cracking (!) and the local ones will only be available in a few months.

Whether we will be able to generate enough waste to actually generate a useful amount of gas is also open for debate and then there is the issue of appliances having to be fitted with special methane nozzles which makes it impractical to switch to LP gas when our supply runs low or is unpredictable. The investigation continues…

After months of bureaucratic dealings to get our house plans approved, we got news that our office rental contract would not be renewed and so our plans changed yet again. Rather than a house, we now had to erect an office within 2 months over the December holidays!

With no time for ramming walls, we quickly bought another container and started a small timber structure with a one-man-show builder. When he needed some extra hands to help him lift the wall panels, we decided to have a “wall-raising” party and invited some friends to an Amish-type gathering of neighbourly love.

What a privilege to have our walls imbued with good intentions! We should be moving into the office in a few weeks and then we will finally be on the land.

Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed living off the grid. I had to stop to think about that for a while. I can now answer that it’s hard and relentless at times, but very rewarding at the end of the day. Could the same not be said about life? I do miss my hot baths sometimes, though!

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The word adobe can be traced from the Middle Egyptian (c. 2000 BC) word dj-b-t (sun dried) “mud brick”. This evolved over the following 1400 years to become the Coptic word tobe (mud) “brick”, and subsequently into the Arabic at-tub “the tub”; “Tub” meaning (mud) brick. At-tub was in turn assimilated into Old Spanish as adobe (a-dobe), still literally meaning “mud brick”.

Buildings made of sun-dried earth are the single most common form of building type in the world and can be found throughout Africa, the Middle East, South America, Central America, Southwestern North America, China, India, and in Spain. Adobe had been in use by indigenous peoples throughout the world for several thousand years.

Its popularity and wide use can be attributed to the ready availability of the raw material, the simplicity of design, manufacture, and construction, making it easy and therefore cheap to build with.

In hot climates, compared to wooden, fired brick, cement and concrete buildings, adobe buildings offer significant advantages due to their greater thermal mass in keeping and maintaining the interior of a building cool. In cool climates, the thermal mass of adobe is ideal for use as a means of collecting passive solar energy and thereby warming the interior of the building.

An adobe brick is a composite material made from soil mixed with water and sometimes an organic material such as straw or dung. The soil composition typically contains clay, silt, fine sand, and course (sharp) sand. The ideal mixture is roughly 20% coarse sand, 40% fine sand, 20% silt, and 20% clay.

This formula however will vary depending on the type of clay and sand available, and test samples must be made to determine the most suitable percentages for the mix, and what materials, if any, need to be added.

A simple and effective way to test the composition of the available soil is to take a handful of the soil, place it into a clear container (jam jar or similar), and add water, creating an almost completely saturated liquid. After the jar is sealed, the container is shaken vigorously for at least one minute. It is then allowed to sit on a flat surface for at least 12 hours to allow the various types of soil to stratify in the jar.

The sediment that collects on the bottom of the jay will be the coarser sand, followed by finer sand, then silt, and lastly the clay on top. The strata should be quite clear and the approximate percentage of each in the jar obvious. If there is a shortage or excess of any of the composites when making the adobe mix, then an adjustment needs to be made by adding necessary material to approximate the above percentages.

The addition of straw can be useful in binding the brick together if there is low clay content in the soil, and it can also help in allowing the brick to dry evenly. Dung can also be added, and it offers the same advantages as straw but with the added benefit of its ability to repel insects.

Adobe bricks are made in an open frame known as a form. A commonly used size form creates bricks 250 mm wide x 360 mm long x 100 mm high as used in Central America, Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, as it gives good thermal properties for the building, and is considered a convenient and efficient sized brick for workers to lay.

The clay, sand, water mixture is made in a mixing pond, making sure that all parts are thoroughly mixed together, and any clay lumps are broken down. Once the mix is about the consistency of porridge, it is taken from the pond and pushed firmly into the form, filling it completely, and levelled to the top of the form; the form is then removed quickly revealing the formed brick.

After drying for several hours or days depending on available sun and temperature, the bricks are then turned on edge to finish drying. In very hot climates, drying the bricks in a shady area is advisable, as it slows down the curing process, and therefore reduces the potential for cracking.

The brick’s thickness is determined partially due to its thermal ability, and also the structural stability of a thicker brick over the standard brick dimension. An adobe brick can be made in nearly any shape or size, depending on the form that the mixture is pressed into, and provided that the drying time is even.

Larger bricks or bricks that will be exposed to weather can be ‘stabilised’ to increase their strength and durability. The adobes are stabilised naturally by adding 5%-7% of lime, dung, or straw or artificially by adding 5%-7% cement or bitumen into the mixing process.

When laying adobes, the mortar used between the bricks is the same mixture and consistency as used to make the bricks (without straw, if straw was used in the bricks). The same mix can also be used for mud plastering both interior and exterior walls, whether it is a 2-coat or 3-coat finish. For added rain protection and resilience to the exterior, dung or lime can be added when mixed.

Adobe has a relatively dense thermal mass. In cool climates, an adobe wall can serve as a significant heat sink. A north-facing adobe wall (south facing in the northern hemisphere) can moderate heating and cooling providing that the wall is thick enough to remain cool on the inside during the heat of the day, but not too thick to prevent heat transferring through the wall during the evening.

In warm or tropical climates, shading the adobe wall from the sun on the north side of the building by using roof overhangs, pergolas, etc, will cause the reverse of the cool climate to occur, thus allowing the interior rooms to remain relatively cool throughout both the day and night.

In either warm or cool climates, if designed correctly, the interior of an adobe walled building will only vary in temperature by about 4-5 degrees Centigrade (approx 17C – 22C) between summer and winter thereby making it either relatively warm or relatively cool depending on the outside temperature.

An adobe wall will need a solid foundation below it, as the adobe bricks in an unstabilised form are not suitable for laying below or on the ground. Ideally the foundations and foundation walls are built out of stone if locally available; if stone is not available, then stabilised adobe bricks, standard size fired clay bricks or as a last resort, cement blocks can be used.

The width of the foundation walls are about 1-1/2 times the width of the adobe brick and should be brought up to about 200mm above ground level. In wet areas a moisture barrier should be provided between the top of the foundation wall and the first course of adobe bricks.

Adobe bricks are laid one course at a time around the perimeter of the building and the adjoining walls. Each course of bricks is laid the whole length of the wall on a layer of adobe mortar approximately 12mm thick. No more than six or seven courses of bricks should be built in a day, as the weight of the bricks may cause the wall to collapse.

For two or more stories, a double thick adobe brick wall must be used from the ground floor to the first floor. At window and door openings, a wooden lintel, slightly narrower than the wall width is placed over of the opening extending 300mm on either side to support the wall above (old railway sleepers are ideal for this!).

At the bearing height of either roof or floor beams, a ‘ring’ or ‘bond’ beam is required above all the walls both external and internal to provide a horizontal structural plate for the roof to ‘tie’ the building together and to distribute the roof or floor load evenly along the wall. The ‘ring’ or bond beam can be of wood or structurally reinforced cement, and should be a minimum of two-thirds of the wall width and approximately 200 mm high.

The wood ring beam is attached to wall by using 750 threaded steel placed approximately 1 metre on centres, and at each corner and held in place with a nut and washer. The reinforced concrete ring ‘beam’ is tied into the adobe wall using reinforced steel bars, also placed approximately 1 metre on centre, and at each corner. In both cases the steel goes down 6 courses into the wall, with the lower end bent at 90 degrees to go under the brick.

Metal tie-straps are set into the concrete ring beam at the location of the roof and/or floor beams in order to fasten them securely.

The finished adobe wall is typically plastered for protection with either two or three coats of lime or mud plaster, as the adobe wall needs to ‘breathe’. The exterior plaster can be protected from rain and other weather conditions with 3 or 4 coats of lime wash, which has the consistency of paint and can be applied with a brush. Natural pigment can be added to the lime wash to give the wall colour if desired. The interior walls can also be plastered with 2 or 3 coats of ‘Cretestone’, which is a gypsum plaster, and my particular favourite, and can be subsequently sealed with a mix of beeswax and mineral oil.

Under no circumstances must any cement products be used for mortar joints or to plaster walls, as cement does not bond well with the adobe, and it absorbs and retains moisture preventing the adobes from drying out.

Adobe is a very forgiving and enjoyable material to build with; it allows for any shape and size of wall or building, up to 3 floors in height. The installation of plumbing and electrical lines is simple, as is designing and building built-in wardrobes, bookshelves, niches, etc.

When completed, the exterior of an adobe house is soft and easy on the eye, and can easily harmonise with its surroundings, while the interiors have a very serene and calming elegance, making an adobe building a very positive, healthy, and enjoyable environment to live or work in.

We feel a sense of comfort in the fact that we are making an effort to become more aware, and to lower our impact on the world around us. We strive to keep informed. We observe with anguish that others are not making the same effort, getting angry that their failure to do so is jeopardizing our and our children’s future on this planet.

But, there is another part of our lives, that our activism and perhaps our piety does not penetrate, and that is what we do with our money.

The very behaviour that makes us worry about the future of the planet, also encourages us to take some of our income and store it away for a time when we are less able to produce it consistently or in sufficient quantities. Many of us have jobs where this is a compulsory element of our pay packages. The tax system encourages us to do this. We also save money in our bank accounts, and save through investing in unit trusts or life products. Few of us invest our savings directly. We usually lodge our money in the financial system, and trust what we are made to believe are “clever”, well paid number crunchers to ensure that it grows at a rate that exceeds inflation.

Products are sold to us on the basis of past performance, and the supposedly inscrutable reputations of the service providers. The fees paid to these service providers are generally worked out as a percentage of the amount of money invested, possibly with a performance fee to ensure that the service provider is incentivised to invest in the best interests of the saver. The massive losses that have occurred over the past months, and the business models of the service providers are significant topics in their own right, which can’t be done justice in this article.

Our savings are either held in cash deposits, bonds, property or in listed or unlisted securities. The mix is determined by risk profile, or by market conditions. A pension fund, or a preservation fund, would be invested across all of these asset classes, with returns being split between income and capital (higher income returns usually have lower capital returns). In most cases the saver is an indirect owner, in that they participate in a fund, or own a life assurance product with an institution which holds these assets directly.

For example, I am member 2159 of a provident fund, the provident fund invests may contributions, and I have a claim against the provident fund when I retire. I do not have a claim to the companies or securites that a provident fund invests my money in.

Big Business

One of the largest of these asset classes is listed securities, or companies that list their shares on the JSE. These companies span the economy, they include all of the mining houses, chemical businesses, banks, food companies, insurance companies, major retailers, construction companies and so on. Not only are these companies large in their own right, but they impact on a wide range of smaller companies and individuals in terms of providing services, employment, products and as main purchasers of both goods and services. They also have a massive environmental and social impact. As investors, we are eager for these companies to perform well, for them to deliver to us both capital and income returns. These returns get fed back to us in numbers, or a single number, which we interpret as either good performance or bad performance.

Environmental and social costs

When we look at this number, do we have any notion of the environmental and social costs that have not been incorporated into its good or bad performance?

Very few of us have our own portfolios, or an individually-managed portfolios. Even if we do, we look at the share price performance, and not the overall performance of the companies that we invest in. We are happy when they grow, and despondent when they decline.

Again, the association is with a company and a share price rather than a company that has a past, a future, a context, a purpose, employees, managers, governance, assets, liabilities, impact and benefits. All these factors contribute to our return now and in the future both near and far.

If we are a members of a pension fund or the owners of a life policies, the chances are very high that we do not even know what is in the portfolio. We could be the beneficiaries of rapid climate change, poisoning of rivers, strip mining, commercialized large scale deforestation, massive human rights abuses, child labour and systematic erosion of worker rights and health.

We are indirectly investing in these companies, and are the beneficiaries of their share price performance and the losers in their decline. Should this performance be related to abuse of the environment or society, we are gaining from this, and it is funding our ability to continue purchasing BSE free cheese.

With this said, many companies have invested in improving their performance and have become a lot more aware. The value that is being built through more sustainable business practices attracts very little attention or reward from the financial sector. While these endeavours will make companies more resilient in the long term, is the financial sector (that is the people investing your money) interested? In most cases no. They watch the daily movements for trading opportunities, they watch accounting metrics such as earnings, profit margins, entity value, return on assets etc.

They watch the economic factors that can impact on these metrics in an attempt to forecast “accurately” what earnings are likely to be in the near future. They assess whether management is able to deliver these returns. They also watch the fees that they will receive from you, realizing how much they can improve these through effective trading and performing against benchmarks. If they perform well, or if the market performs well, they will be amply rewarded.

The most powerful influencers of companies are the owners. They have more power to impact on management decisions than any other stakeholder. We are all directly, or indirectly owners of these companies. We entrust these rights to intermediaries. The fact that they do not use these rights to push for improvements in the way that companies operate with respect to society and the planet is not necessarily their fault. They are doing their jobs. We, the savers, simply have not told them that we want them to use the power that we have given them to improve companies. We have not told them that the long term survival of the planet and the development of a more sustainable society matters more than short term gains in our savings. Our apathy is perpetuating the continuous short term thinking at the expense of the long term.

Short-term thinking

This short-term thinking links directly with management remuneration, and the decisions that management of companies make – such as casualising the workers, not investing in training, or shelving the plan to become more energy efficient. It takes strong management to stand by long term decisions which will make the companies that they work for more resilient to the massive challenges that the future holds.

So, what should we do? If we are members of pension funds, we should find out who the trustees are. We should ask them how environmental, governance and social issues are included in their investment processes, and what methods they have of monitoring how the service providers are doing this. We should be asking them whether they have active policies to encourage companies to perform better in these areas.

If we are buying a life policy or a preservation fund product, we should find out whether the company managing these assets is looking into and being active on these issues.

We should start asking more questions, and we should be demanding better and more substantiated answers. We should be pushing for constant improvement in the understanding of how these issues fit into the long term performance of our savings.

We should be making it clear that as long term savers, we are interested in ensuring that the world that we retire into, and the place that our children inherit, should be a better one than it is today. We have no option, as no matter what our returns over the next couple of years, we will never be able to build walls high enough to protect ourselves from the degradation and privation that will result if we do nothing.

Active ownership, and the use of our savings to support and promote change to more sustainable practices is possibly one of the most powerful interventions that we can make. Let’s start asking the questions, and getting the answers!

In 2006, my wife and I were living in a fourth-floor apartment in Seapoint. There was no garden, not even a shared one. My attempts to grow vegetables on the balcony had met a lot of difficulty from the wind and insufficient sunlight. We were commuting an hour each way and had no friends or family close by. We knew we had to move.

“Where to?”, we asked, aided by the follow-up question “What type of lifestyle do we really want?”. Space was high on the priority: to grow vegetables and herbs, to enjoy nature, and to entertain outdoors.

One day, while we were considering our options, I drove south down the M3, considering each suburb. None fitted our list of desires and needs. Then, at the top of Oukaapseweg, looking over the southern Peninsula, something leapt in my heart. This was right; this was the place for us.

Within 48 hours, we had found a smallholding within walking distance of my wife’s workplace and verbally signed the contract with the landlords.This was a huge step forward in our green journey!

Now, 18 months later, we have a thriving vegetable and herb garden, an efficient compost-management and recycling system, a home-made grey-water system, a simple solar panel experiment, and have just installed three bee hives. Plans are afoot for chickens, pigs, wind power, and rain water harvesting.

In this time of living in the southern Peninsula, I have discovered the area around me to be bursting with like-minded eco-aware people. There are a huge number of eco-friendly people, organisations, and companies. This has been wonderful to network with. It has also led me to ask why this intensity of greenness here in the southern tip of Africa?

Green Environment

The southern Peninsula includes Fish Hoek, Simonstown, Masiphumelele, Noordhoek, Ocean View, Kommetjie, Scarborough, and all the little suburbs in-between.

The Fishhoek-Noordhoek Valley is nestled between two mountain ranges and two coastlines. From our smallholding, travelling in any direction for five minutes, you are either in the sea or on the mountain! This makes for an incredibly natural and beautiful setting. Such a context, I believe, has encouraged those who love nature and the environment to live in the southern Peninsula.

The proximity to nature also creates a great environmental awareness. When the wind blows (and it blows hard!) everyone feels it. When there’s a fire on the mountain, everyone sees it. And rising sea levels will flood most of the fishhook valley. This constant interaction with the elements means that local residents are more naturally inclined to consider the environment.

On top of this, much of the southern Peninsula is blessed by larger-than-average plot sizes. A bigger garden means space for growing food and keeping animals. Those with smaller gardens often have sea views and enjoy a connection to the ocean. These factors encourage residents of the southern Peninsula to be more aware and more protective of the natural resources around them.

Green Action

In the area of conservation, the Peninsula has two very active groups – the Kommetjie Environmental Action Group and the Noordhoek Environmental Action Group (KEAG and NEAG respectively). These two groups are frequently in the press for lobbying council; ensuring the environmental well-being of all new developments in the area.

Both private and government recycling facilities are abundant. There are recycling bins in every suburb at shopping centres, schools, and on municipal land. The closeness to Table Mountain National Park also means a heightened green awareness, for much of the land is protected.

Another example of the southern Peninsula’s ‘greenness’ is the small town of Kommetjie. The town is part of the ‘Transition Town’ movement, a global move towards sustainability that is driven and owned by local communities. The Kommetjie group have been looking at their production and consumption levels and how to maximise sustainability through local resources.

Green Business

18 months of living here and I am still finding out about new green companies. It seems that there is now a snowball effect, with new companies being drawn to the area. Some of the more established green companies include the Enviropaedia, (www.enviropaedia.com) based in Simonstown. Their publication is a comprehensive directory of conservation/green companies in South Africa. Another publication is Biophile, based in Noordhoek. Indeed, Shared Earth itself is based in the southern Peninsula.

Green service-providers based in the area cover everything from worm farms (Full-Cycle), solar water heating, wind power (Wind Watts), and even the Global Warming Store, which sells a full range of sustainable energy solutions.

Many of these companies have their websites hosted by Texo (www.texo.co.za) which brands itself as offering “ethical web-hosting”.

Lastly, the southern Peninsula has become a green hotspot because of its unique location. It is on the outskirts of a wealthy city and at the same time it is surrounded by mountains, national parks and the Atlantic Ocean. It is therefore incredibly well-resourced.

The wealth and technology of urban Cape Town twinned with the environmental richness of mountain and sea, have created a powerful space for the development of eco-friendly principles, people, and systems.

Whatever it is, I am addicted!

I can’t seem to let a weekend go by without grabbing my trusty basket and stopping in at one market or another, picking up something fresh and seasonal, trying something new every time.

Slow food is where it’s at. Food that’s been created with care, using quality ingredients. Food that doesn’t contain unpronounceable additives and preservatives designed to give it a better shelf life. Food that’s healthy and tastes delectable, and makes you feel happy.

Ask where your food comes from, at a supermarket, and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Ask the same question at a farmers’ market, and you’re in for all the fabulous detail. Passion, art, enthusiasm, care – these are the things you’ll find at market, in abundance. So, if you love your food, take a Saturday morning off, and head for your local farmers’ market. It’s an experience you won’t forget, and my guess is you’ll soon be back for more.

Stellenbosch Fresh Goods Market

(Stellenbosch, Western Cape)

This is a market that has it all – live entertainment, tantalising tastings, friendly vendors, the works. There’s all the ‘glam’ of the Neighbour Goods Market (see Issue 1), but without its frenetic pace. Here, you can kick back, relax, and eat until you’re sated… and then still be tempted to take something home with you.

What you’ll find there: All products made and sold at this market must be “grown, raised, caught, preserved or transformed” by the producers themselves. So, this is a space filled with artisans, passionate local and regional farmers and specialty producers, all of whom endeavour to use natural and sustainable materials, methods and principles. And it shows… the quality is outstanding, and the dedication to responsible and sustainable practices unswerving.

You’ll see cool green swathes of perky organic seedlings, gather up gleaming organic vegetables picked only hours before, gawk curiously at heirloom tomatoes of shapes, sizes and colours you wouldn’t have imagined possible.

There’ll be olives, and pestos and pastes and pickles. And crunchy fresh-baked artisan breads of all shapes and sizes. Be tempted by old-fashioned rose-water Turkish Delights, tantalised by tarts (the edible kind) and mesmerised by melt-in-the-mouth chocolate creations.

You’ll want to try: Ellen von Maltitz’s splendiferous chocolate truffles (aptly named ‘Theobroma – food of the gods) in a dazzling array of sometimes unusual flavours. A refreshing and alarmingly healthy organic smoothie from the Ethical Co-op. Samples from Chrisna’s overflowing tubs of olives (particularly the gargantuan green kind). Fabulous snoek pate and smoked angel fish from the family-run Fish Deli.

Look out for the market’s themed events, usually based on seasonal specialties like strawberries, mushrooms, asparagus and so on – they can be especially fun.

Possible downsides: Hard to find any, but one thing you may have difficulty getting is available seating. So, if you go in a group, and are planning to stay for some time, make sure to claim a spot early, and take turns in wandering through the stalls.

Where: Bosman’s Crossing, Stellenbosch.

When: Every Saturday, 9am to 2pm – rain or shine – with the exception of a brief timeout between Christmas and the first week of the new year.

Contact: Paula Kennedy 072 512 5608; email slowfood@slowmarket.co.za

Website: www.slowmarket.co.za

Parking: This is a very popular market. Don’t be surprised to find yourself parking up on grassy embankments and walking the rest of the way.

But, it isn’t too long a walk, and is most definitely worth it.

Porter Estate Produce Market

(Cape Town, Western Cape)

This market is perfect for anyone looking for a kid-friendly laid-back outdoor environment in which to spend a long lazy food-filled Saturday morning.

Set amongst the trees on the fringes of Tokai forest, the market’s rustic setup is perfect for slow browsing, wandering up one pine-needled lane and down the other, then stopping off for some hearty farmstyle breakfast, washed down with a revitalising cup of potent ‘moerkoffie’.

There’s plenty of seating dotted about, and pulling up a tree-trunk stool at a tree-trunk table can be quite a novelty.

What you’ll find there: Fresh organic produce, free range Karoo lamb and organic sprouts of all shapes, flavours and sizes (plus some handy sprouting kits for anyone wanting to grow some at home). Fabulous hand-made cheeses, gourmet pies and beautifully decorated cakes and tarts.

If food’s not all that’s on your mind, there are also colourful bunches of fresh-cut flowers, a variety of indigenous seedlings and potted plants, a selection of hand-woven baskets, beautiful rough-wood picture frames and inexpensive worm farm kits.

You’ll want to try: One of the many hunger-busting varieties of Knead Bakery’s slow-baked loaves. These artisan bread-makers have made this seemingly basic item into a treat to be savoured. Ciabattas, olive and plain, sour-dough ryes… they even have delicious wheat-free varieties like corn rolls and 100% rye.

Sink your teeth into one of Marinella’s delicious home-baked pies, and take home one of her addictive preserves – her eggplant in olive oil is out of this world! (Marinella’s Pies and Preserves)

Possible downsides: Being very much an outdoor venue, this market is at the mercy of the elements – whether manifested in the downpours of winter, or the melting heat of summer. But, on the whole, the market is more often on, than off.

Where: Chrysalis Academy Grounds, Tokai.

When: Saturday mornings 9am-1pm. Weather permitting.

Contact: Email office@pepmarket.co.za or call 082 823 4121

Website: www.pepmarket.co.za

Parking: There’s usually plenty, but it can get very busy, especially in summer, so it’s best to go early if you want a spot near the market. Entrance fee of R5 per car (donated to the students of Chrysalis Academy, who assist with parking).

Karkloof Farmers’ Market

(Midlands, Kwa-Zulu Natal)

This family-orientated farmers’ market lies in the heart of the Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands and is firmly focused around the best, freshest produce the area has to offer.

What you’ll find there: Given its focus, this is the kind of market that’s all about food, with around thirty-five stalls offering a wonderful variety of organic vegetables, artisan breads, Fairtrade and organic coffees and more.

The market’s cosy, friendly atmosphere makes it perfect for families, and there are several ways of keeping the little ’uns entertained. So, whilst the more hyperactive members of your troop hurtle off to the jungle gym or giant sandpit to let off some steam, the rest of you can take a well-earned break and grab a hearty breakfast of fresh bagels and decadent toppings, fortifying yourself for the day ahead.

You’ll want to try: The Old Mill Coffee Shop, a favourite stop of coffee-loving market-goers. Whilst you’re at it, why not buy some organic coffee beans from Bean There. Not only will you be supporting small coffee growers in Africa, but the caffeine boost you’ll get should keep you going all day!

And, be sure to pick up a loaf of fresh-baked Wild Yeast Bread, from the Wild Bread Company… to be devoured with relish when you eventually make your way back home.

Possible downsides: The market ends pretty early, so if you’re someone who likes to sleep in on Saturdays, you might only catch the tail end of it.

Where: Along Karkloof Rd, near Howick. KZN Midlands.

When: Every Saturday, rain or shine, from 7am to 11am.

Contact: Andrea 082 820 8986

Website: karklooffarmersmarket.co.za

Parking: Plenty. The market building is located on the grounds of an old saw mill, so there’s lots of space and parking shouldn’t be an issue.

Greyton Morning Market

(Greyton, Western Cape)

The Greyton Morning Market is an institution in this small, tidy Overberg town. On Saturday mornings, day-trippers, weekenders and residents alike all meander down to the Market Square to see what’s on offer for the week.

The market is well laid out, under a number of shade-providing trees, with permanent thatched wooden stalls that afford traders added protection from the elements.

What you’ll find there: Almost everything that’s for sale will have been made, grown or sourced from the area. A few regular traders come from as far as Napier but, for the most part, it’s likely what you’re buying originated in a garden or kitchen just down the road.

Pick up a few local cheeses and olives and pickles and sauces. Sample some of the town’s famous home made lemon syrups and juices and satisfy hunger pangs with a few hot pancakes, whipped up as you watch and covered with delicious toppings (look out for the lemon curd in winter!).

Scoop up a few organic seedlings and small potted plants for your garden back home. Spoil yourself with some juicy jams and pretty preserves and stock up on fresh free range eggs, laid that very morning, a few hundred metres away.

There’s not always a huge selection of fresh organic vegetables at this market, but you will find a modest assortment of seasonal produce grown at the homes of Greyton residents. Fresh basil, zesty lemons, just-plucked herbs – whatever’s growing that week, is what you’re likely to find.

You’ll want to try: Make straight for the stall piled high with jars of bright white feta, olives, sauerkraut, raw honeys and the best plain yoghurt on the planet. It’s easy to spot, and there’s a reason he sells out so fast.Then, look out for the lady selling rounds of brightly clad cheddars, in a fabulous range of hues and flavours. You can taste before you buy. Try the cumin and stinging nettle varieties, and take some home with you.

Possible downsides: Only that you might miss out on some of the best stuff by not getting there as early as you possibly can! Stocks are limited, so things do sell out quickly. That, and the fact that you probably can’t get there every weekend if you don’t live nearby.

Where: Market Square, Greyton.

When: Every Saturday morning from 10am until midday (or until sold out). Being an outdoor market it is weather-dependent, but there is some shelter, so unless the rain is coming down in buckets, chances are it’ll be on.

Contact: Email: greytoninfo@mweb.co.za

Website: www.greyton.net

Parking: Plenty – you’ve got the whole of the main street to park in. In fact, if you’re in Greyton, you’re probably staying there, which takes care of the parking problem altogether!