About the African Sage

We get a number of urban-based visitors. They invariably comment on our idyllic surroundings and the seeming tranquillity of our lives. And we agree. Few people would not be enchanted with the wild jumble of granite koppies to our north and west, or the grandeur of the Great Dyke at dawn, as the sun creeps over its tawny shoulders and pours golden light down into our valley; the green of our lawns merging with the darker evergreen riverine forest along the bank of our stream; the terraces supporting tropical fruit and vegetables; our little cows grazing in their pastures and the poultry scratching and clucking in the run behind the house all help to create the gentle, rural ambience that we treasure.

We live a simple philosophy: to alter the environment as little as possible and to self provision our needs by growing our own healthy, organically produced food. We seek to create a sustainable eco-system that is also our dwelling and the dwelling place we hope of the generations of our family who will follow us in the future. This is to us the meaning of immortality: our genes and DNA will be forever a part of the environment.

To the casual visitor these seem to be worthy goals if a little eccentric, and not too difficult of attainment. Indeed, there are some who doubtless consider that in some way we have opted for an easy way out. Surely they must think, it is not too difficult to grow your own vegetables, milk your own cow, gather in the eggs in the morning and pick your fruit in season. Is this not perhaps the realisation of the popular 70ies comedy, “The Good Life”? Well, perhaps! But to imply that our choice is a “cop out” would be a superficial observation.

This is not a commercial farm, in the sense that we do not grow large field crops, or run vast herds of cattle for sale on the world’s markets. We grow to feed ourselves, and those who work with us. Surpluses we give to neighbours, sell at the local village informal market, feed to our livestock or return to the soil via the compost heaps. This is for us an attainable arrangement because we depend on other sources for most of our monetary needs. That money buys the fuel for our vehicle, pays the grocery bill for those things we do not grow or prepare ourselves, buys our clothes and pays for our occasional holidays.

But what of the small-scale farmer who lacks this financial assistance and must sell enough from his farm to provide the wear with-all to pay for his children’s education, in addition to all the things I have mentioned already? His is the real test of sustainable resource management. He obviously has to grow enough to sell that which is surplus to his requirements in order to raise the necessary cash to pay his bills and buy in what he cannot produce. And here in lie some difficulties.

The issue of scale in relation to marketing is what bedevils “the good life”. Even we have this problem. As part of our agro-forestry development plan we planted bananas and papaws (papaya) edging our terraces. We always have a bumper crop of papaws. Not even the monkeys have been able to make a dent in them. Every day, in season, we pick and distribute to our little work force, to our neighbours and we keep one or two for ourselves. Yet we still have a surplus. It’s insufficient to cart off to far away Harare where the price is something like US$1 a fruit. We supply an informal musika (market) two kms up the road with about twenty fruit a day at $0.50 each. Any other surplus goes into the compost, or is eaten by the poultry, for papaw is a fruit that over ripens very fast. But here’s the thing!

Our local market actually pays better than making the long trip to town –it pays both the environment and us a better return! We have contributed minimally to the pollution of the atmosphere with exhaust fumes. We have used perhaps half a litre of non-renewable fossil fuel. We have provided some fresh and nutritious food to the vitamin starved locals. And last but not least, we have saved ourselves time and stress. But have we made enough to live on? Of course we haven’t. And have we supplied enough to satisfy our local market? No, we haven’t. And if we supplied enough, and then one bushel more, we would have a glut? Local markets are great, but they don’t have much flexibility or capacity to cope with more than their clients’ daily requirements.

In my research area, a group of women work about two hectares of irrigated gardens. With help from the Canadian embassy we were able to set up a system with a solar powered pump, and to start introducing organic farming methods, in particular composting and mulching. We also introduced them to drip irrigation. The result was an increase in production to the extent that the local market was too small to absorb their surpluses. Because they are so far from bigger markets, and because communications are in any case rudimentary, this surplus is not boosting their incomes – it has become a frustration. What appeared to them and me as a sure way of increasing their incomes has proved to be a surplus they can’t get rid of. They will have to find a high value, low bulk crop to grow instead of simply increasing their vegetable output. We have suggested they look at herb production but it is too early yet to know whether they will do so.

It is a guiding principle of the Soil Association, that food should be grown and eaten in the closest proximity possible. The association, started shortly after the Second World War by Lady Eve Balfour, who was a serious and reputable scientist, is the doyen of the organic movement. It is the Soil Association (in association with HDRA - Henry Doubleday Research Association) that registers and issues certificates of authenticity to organic growers. Yet even this august body makes little differentiation between the small-scale grower and the large. All must pay the same fee for registration!

To reconcile economies of scale and ecologies of scale is an abiding problem.
Sometimes we have a glut of lettuce (why is it one always plants too many?); at other times it’s tomatoes. This week it’s Swiss Chard. No matter how careful we are we always plant too much or too little. Too much is wasteful. Too little means we are deprived of say carrots for a month while a new crop comes on.

And here’s another thing. Try balancing sensible rotation, variety, continuity and available space. In a lifetime of growing my own vegetables I have never got it quite right. I’ve tried elaborate charts and plans. I’ve gone all yuppie and used a spreadsheet. I even devised a databank using Microsoft Works (it didn’t, by the way); and I still end up with either no spuds, too many carrots, no space to plant the next lot of seedlings coming out of the shade house, or vast deserts of prepared beds with nothing to plant. The best system is your regular footprint round the veggie beds, a practised eye and a supple back! And that is far from perfect.

The trouble is there is just so much to do. On our small farm two farm workers and I are not quite able to keep up with the never-ending demands on our time. Apart from the growing of fruit and vegetables there are also the paddocks to be maintained, which involves fence repairs, and mowing. The cow pens must be kept clean and well bedded with litter. The hens must be fed and watered. They too live on deep litter. We have about three acres under cultivation. So while our actual cultivated, and partially cultivated area, (that includes the non productive gardens which constitute about two thirds of the total cultivations) is only a fraction of the total land, we are still hard pressed to cope with all the endless chores We have calculated that we spend more time in maintenance of buildings, fences, firebreaks, boreholes and wells than we do in the endless tasks of weeding, mulching, land preparation, composting, planting and irrigating.

In addition I have my research, consulting, runningworkshops and writing to fit in, without which we would be real subsistence farmers!

And then there are the demands on Jill’s time in the plant nursery - planting seeds, transplanting and potting seedlings, preparing and planting cuttings – seed collecting and the supervision of some of our sometimes feckless antics in the gardens. Indoors she has to supervise the daily work of the house, do all the cooking, preserving and bottling with the help of one semi-skilled helper. As if this were not enough she has her craftwork. This may be a stained glass mosaic, panel or lampshade; a hand painted bedspread, cushion covers or table mats, or an intricate stencil for tracing a design onto the bathroom wall. And she has to keep in touch with Tutani and the other sculptors. And if that were not enough she does the catering and provides hospitality to our not infrequent visitors who stay with us when they visit to examine the sculptures or attend our workshops and seminars.

The point I am making is that while the life we live may seem to be bucolic and gently flowing through endless balmy days, we are in fact incredibly busy from morning to night – often late into the night! But I would be the last one to say that it is not fulfilling, healthy, varied and challenging. I would not change it for the World. In fact, I believe it is living this sort of existence that may just change the World!

The sustainability movement, some might call it the sustainability revolution, is what gives us a fighting chance of saving the World from drowning in the muck being pumped out by the last of Industrial Revolutionaries! We have already over shot the limits of planetary sinks to absorb the pollution being produced. While politicians, world leaders and top bureaucrats argue and posture it is the actions of ordinary people acting to change their own small part of the eco-sphere, that is going to effect real and meaningful change – and I suspect much more quickly than the necessary global efforts being debated even now at Copenhagen. This is a truly democratic engagement by millions of people - and growing – whose gut feelings tell them that our planetary home has got to be cleaned up.
If only half the population now living in the industrialised world and in mega-cities could live their lives in such a way as to have a neutral of even better, a negative carbon footprint, it would have an exponential effect on the current spiral towards disaster. And if they all could make that change I believe the world will be able to survive – and what’s more, people in general will be less stressed, less sickly, and generally much happier and more fulfilled.