My first agriculture training was at school. Boys did farming and the girls did cleaning. Our teacher was called Mr Malunga, and he was very strict. He would get angry if a child made a mistake. Especially if one of us forgot to turn off the water. Looking back, I do see that he was trying to teach us to focus. Farming is all about focus. You can never stop concentrating and observing. Plants are living things. If you make mistakes or don’t give them attention they die. You must never take eyes off the plants. I even have my dog Stompie to watch my plants. That means if my back is turned, and I hear her bark, I know that there are birds or rabbits trying to eat my profits!

When I left school, I went and worked in Pretoria. I was a chef there for many years. First at Greentrees on Harmony Street in Sunnyside and later at Prime Grill in Centurion. I started in the scullery washing dishes and gradually moved up through the ranks. You name it, I can cook it. Calamari, salads, burgers. I can even do cocktails and Irish coffees. I came home about five years ago and since then I have been trying ways to make a living.

When I first came back home to Bokenhouthoek, I made a braai stand and I ran a shisa nyama here at the house. I thought I could use those the same skills that I had developed in Pretoria, but people get drunk and behave badly and it is not a nice atmosphere, so I stopped doing that. I decided that growing spinach was a better business. Spinach doesn’t get drunk and fight. Spinach just quietly grows. At the moment, I do spinach in the summer and cabbage in the winter, but I want to expand my product range. I think that I will start with green peppers and see how that goes. I have pigs too. I started with 2 pigs and now I have 10. 

In March of this year, I met Mr Kwena. He just arrived. It was as if he was a gift from God. I think he saw my garden from the road and just decided to come and talk to me. He asked me to help him connect with people interested in farming in this area.

He conducted training and I learnt many things. Farming God’s Way, mulching, soil preparation, deep trenching. After the training I implemented immediately. At first it is a lot of work doing all that digging and collecting of tins and grass and bones. Even though it is hard work, almost everyone who came to the training did the work. I think one of the reasons for the low drop out rate is because Mr Kwena comes back to support us so regularly. If there are any problems, he is only a phone call or WhatsApp message away. There have been other agriculture programmes in this area, but those people just came, trained and left again. With SocioTech the support is ongoing.