Day 80 Elands Bay

Woke to a lovely day, Josie's turn to be the sick dog, she lay on the bed shivering in pain with a recurrence of her neck problem, she dislocated one of her vertebra in Johies and George, my vet in Randburg, said it will never heal, so I wisely brought her anti inflammatory and painkiller tablets with me and gave her one this morning, it did the trick although she is clearly not the happiest of dogs, Pepi on the other hand is like a two year old frolicking on the beach and dashing madly about after phantom balls.

back to Elands Bay with Josie needing a painkiller

start of a great sunset

colours deepening

I paid in the R100 subscription fee at Std Bank for the Wwoofer list and Rowena e-mailed it to me, planned on buying some internet time in Elands Bay to access it and update the blog, answer e-mails, buy some airtime and surf for information on the permaculture farms listed on the Wwoofer list, the list has grown since the last time we bought it, it now has 35 farms listed and Rowena tells me some are actual communities and not just privately owned farms.

We filled up at BP and ran into two locals who gave me an unbelievable amount of info on the area and some really good contact names of possible business partners who may want to invest in my farm, this morning I told Lorraine that my new plan was to use time share or a sponsor to buy the farm in exchange for a secure food source into perpetuity, how is this universe responding to me in every which way it can, here is the very info I was looking for, handed to me on a plate, and maybe even a sponsor to boot, Lachlan is an artist and he picks up dead snakes off the road and recreates the vertebra into a piece of art, he stopped to ask me where I think he should market his work and we got to talking about a whole host of things, standing at the petrol pump, couldn't happen in Johies.

We drove the 50km to Elands bay and rolled right into the campsite and our old spot, the old couple are still here but the guy did tell me that the local mayor has been fired and the new rules now stipulate that there will no longer be permanent campers allowed in any of the municipal parks so he has to go from paying R1300 a month to R105 a day, but he does tell me that he has a son in Joburg where they can go and park their van in the backyard so his very sick, diabetic wife will have access to better healthcare, so maybe not all bad.

One of the campers in a hired campevan that was in Lambert's Bay park also pitched up here after me, a German couple by the sound of them. No-one was in the office so we are all staying free unless the office lady arrives early in the morning, a group of guys stopped to talk about the snakes, surfers fom Cape Town and they also told me about a friend at Driehoek running a permaculture farm and who is always looking for help, wow open up to something new and all the info in the world comes flooding in, they also took some pictures of the van which may find there way onto facebook, yet again.

We had a stunning day walking on this wonderful beach for ages, Peps was up for every walk but Jos was asleep in the camper everytine I looked for her, she has really taken to the camper as being home and I guess her neck is not that comfortable Either.

Went to the hotel for internet time only to discover that the wi-fi tower is out with no gaurantee it will be up and running today or even tomorrow and maybe into Monday, not what I wanted to hear but we are learning to chill and slow down and let life take it's own course so I'll download the Wwoofer list later.

Gloria phoned for an update on where we are in the world, she is keeping tabs on me.

So after nearly 12 weeks on the road it is now a lot easier to look back and reflect on where we are and how things have evolved, certainly my plans are not working out as I thought they would and things change on a daily basis with new info presenting itself from unlikely sources. As I see it I have about 4 different options going forward, my initial plan to find a community of needy people and build a farm they can benefit from is not going to work for lots of reasons, no-one under 50 wants to farm, no-one over 50 is able to farm, (alcohol has taken it's toll) all land allocated to community farming is owned by the municipality and they won't give ownership away, I'm not putting my future blood sweat and tears into building a stunning self reliant lifestyle just to have some rich bugger come along and offer a few millions to tear it down and put up holiday flats.

So my first option is to find a permaculture community to join and maybe farm a little bit of the land on my own along with the collective, or secondly to buy my own plot with help from family and friends and build in my own time, thirdly I could find an investor, someone with money who would sponsor me the land and infrastructure so that he can have food security in the future and fourthly I could sell the idea as a time share and build the farm with investors capital where they could benefit by using it as a holiday destination in a lodge on the property and have the added benefit of food security as a return on their investment.

First I am going to pursue the names I have been given, take a look at Piket-Bo-Berg and follow up on the farms in the Cape that are looking for Wwoofers and if possible stay in a permaculture community for awhile to learn and maybe see if I fit in well enough to stay and add my input and labour into the mix.

This trip has been great on so many levels, I still think like a Joburger but that is changing, especially as I get approached by people all the time as the van attracts a lot of attention, but they are generally all friendly, curious and helpful, in Lambet's Bay this morning two old guys stopped me IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET to talk about the engine and the campers handling, they are apparently building the same 1975 model up from scratch into a camper of their own.

It is also strange coming back to these two little towns, I feel as though I know them both even though we have only stayed a few days in each, this campsite is also gaining new campers by the hour, for the middle of winter it's doing a roaring trade and no-one is here to collect their bucks, just got a group of young and noisy guys in next to me and another guy further down, they seem connected.

Tonight I saw what is possibly the most stunning sunset ever, everyone in Elands Bay stood enthralled as the sky changed hues every minute for more than 40 minutes and behind us a full moon came up to add to the dramatic effect, the sky ended up blood red. Only our creator could possibly provide such an unbelievable palette, it is times like these that I miss not having a great camera, and as much as I would love to say the pictures I took are awesome, I have to admit I had a whole ton load of help from nature on that one, but still could not do justice to the magnificent colours and also could not tear myself away from the sky. So great to be camping right on the beach and not have to miss a minute of it. As to winter, well someone forgot to tell this part of the world about that plan because in my book it is as hot as a Joburg summer day and my shorts and boob tube fit right in, although everyone else is slightly more over dressed and they do look at me funny.

the full moon rising

the moon had a lot to do with the sunset

getting better

Maybe I should apply for the job as the new mayor, I could clean up the beach, use the seaweed as liquid fertiliser, turn the town into a permaculture haven, start a newspaper to keep the holiday home owners updated and get them donating funds to the welfare of their town, I could turn the squatter camp into an eco village, add a wind turbine to lessen the cost of services, put fruit trees along all the roads and paths and on the beach, introduce hiking trails all over the lovely rock abutment, develop birding hides and walks on the lagoon, get some farmers markets supplying fresh foods, no fresh food here to buy at all, no real shops, start an animal shelter for all the strays, ton load of stray cats here that the dogs go crazy over, wow I think I would make a great mayor.

So had a noisy night with lots of neighbours, very friendly though, I wrote and read and watched 'Community', I'm really getting into that show just as I'm coming to the end of the three seasons Kay gave me, I did however just finish my first e-book, Gabi gave me a tonload off her kindle awhile back and told me to download mobipocket to read them. With so many nights in campsites I've had the advantage of an electrical connection so I could plug in the laptop and read for hours as I also have good lights from my 220volt fluorescence lamp that I bought before I left and attached a long cord and plug to. So I am now officially also an e-book reader, but still would prefer to have the actual book, but of course could never have travelled with 300 novels, nowhere to have put them, but they are on my laptop waiting to be read.

So all is well in our world even though it is changing shape on a daily basis, got Lorraine interested in the business angle, I'll see what she comes up with from our initial little discussion on the options available, who knows if we can persuade some rich guys that investing in future food is a good idea.

camera was not good enough to capture the sunset

day two sunset

With the world in a depression, markets fluctuating wildly, house prices staying low, land abandoned everywhere and the need for us to start growing more fresh food locally to make it affordable and available, this is the right time for me and my kind to start spreading our tenticles, and by rights the Government should be looking for more people like me and throwing land at us to encourage the more productive use of fallow land to feed the country. We also need to introduce a farming method that will green up our country in the healthiest way possible, I should not have to stress over building what is essentially the only farming method all of us in this world today should be employing as we are fast running out of land in our attempt to feed 7 billion people. Livestock is destroying nutrients, more land is used to grow food for livestock and less for humans and yet the resuting meat is at a cost 5 times higher than an equivalent vegetarian diet. Of course the most important aspect of being permaculturists is the scarcity of water, our next major challenge in the world, and certainly what wars will be fought over, fresh water and only permaculture can address that issue successfully.

So thats my beef for today, the more I read and understand the more determined I get that what I'm doing is the only right way forward, certainly for me it is, one of the guys I spoke to this morning at the BP had seen Thrive, he did not buy into it, called it too simplistic, I think the whole point is that it is simplistic, small farmers in every community feeding their local communities is the way it used to be before the industrial revolution, what is wrong with going back to that, it takes one person on an acre of land to feed 100, why not 20 local farmers in a community of 3000, working collectivley, to feed them all,and works in lots of places around the world can work here too, KIBBUTZIM and MOSHAV'S in Israel are a case in point.

I'll say night before I get maudlin, happy dreaming.

Lovely day in Elands Bay, had a long walk all the way down to the harbour point, or where the boats are launched, not sure if it can be called a harbour as such, also managed to get some internet time and download the Wwoofer list, lots of options in this part of the world and I will start to explore them once we have seen Piket-Bo-Berg. Walked about 10 times on this lovely beach today, had the 6 young guys next door asking me about permaculture, they are from KZN but now live in Somerset West and came here for 3 days of surfing, got them interested in permaculture and told them to go Wwoofing in their spare time.

Pretty relaxed day with yet another wonderful sunset and peaceful nights sleep albeit without a hot shower, went to shower at 9ish and found some local guy there washing all his clothes, I guess he was homeless, so – no hot water – and as I have been where he is, I couldn't reminstrate, so had a cold partial wash and hit the sack, one gets used to hot showers so it was hard to fall asleep dirty.

Go well.