Combat notes from the Heartland

I've been asked why I live in Randfontein, a place I've at times described as "the armpit of the world", "God's worst practical joke" and "the pimple on the devil's hairy butt". As Bill Bryson said of Des Moines: somebody had to.

This story explains it. It was published in Living Africa in the early 90s, a couple of years after I moved here.


How to get ahead in the world of Dude-farming.


Ask people what impressed them most about Woodstock and they will tell you it was the sight of Country Joe MacDonald teaching 300 000 wiped-out, rain-sodden, muddied hippies to spell the word "fuck". For me it was different. I already knew the spelling. But I was moved when Max Yaeger brought the hippies to their feet with those immortal words; "I'm a Farmer."
Somehow I always knew I was destined to be a farmer. But the final decision was made after a weekend my wife and I spent with friends who farm in the Dundee district. This was how life should be - earning a living from the earth, space for our kids and clean air to breathe.
In short order we decided to lift anchor from our firmly-embedded suburban life-styles and set sail for greener pastures, so to speak. The fact that my experience of farming was confined to paging through old Farmers' Weeklys in a doctor's waiting room seemed irrelevant.
Our little slice of Agro-Eden turned out to be about eight hectares on the border of Randfontein, a town not known for its tourism potential or liberal ideals, and where the air is fresh - except on days when a nearby factory makes dog food or peanut butter. Then the air either smells like a wet Labrador or a pre-school snack break.

Recruiting staff

First item on the agenda was recruiting staff for the chicken and strawberry farming operation we planned to start. Word that we were hiring soon brought a motley crew of locals, all with an impressive list of credentials. How fortunate it was that all these people were available and ready to start work immediately. I later found that, Mieta a woman employed to work in the house, had spent a few years locked up in Krugersdorp Prison on a murder rap. She cleaned and polished well, perhaps the result of good training by the Department of Corrections.
"It'll never work," said a neighbour, when I told him I intended to set up incentive schemes based on production levels. He is a staunch conservative - he makes Eugene Terreblanche look like Jane Fonda, in political terms of course.
My neighbour's abiding, over-the-fence mantra was: "The only thing they understand is a good thrashing..."
What did he know? I thought, ready to prove him wrong and show Randfontein what progressive farming was all about.
Chicken farming has absolutely nothing to do with the Farmer Brown ads we used to see on TV. That jolly chap in the sterile barn with the happy hens, who ho-ho-hoed about the chickens tasting "so good 'cos they eat so good" is a fraud. Poultry farming is about chicken shit that sticks to your boots like epoxy and about theft and rising feed bills. Whoever coined the phrase, "chicken feed" obviously never had to buy the stuff.
But we persevered, chicken guano and all. The first batch of cockerels we laid in really didn't eat that much. But they took seventeen weeks before they were big enough to slaughter. Then, one mild spring afternoon their intense cannibalistic tendencies were brought to my attention.
I saw a runty looking cockerel wandering around his coop space, mindlessly minding his own business and pecking at the dirt. Meanwhile his fellow fowl had organised a mob hit on him. They attacked in pincer formation, surrounding him until he was carefully edged into a corner. Then they simply pecked him to pieces. They surgically broke him up into a Kentucky Fiver.
"You chose the wrong strain," my father advised. "Get one of the new hybrids that grow much faster."
I did and they do grow faster. In fact in six weeks most were so heavy their legs could not carry them. They would have won medals in the Pig-Out Poultry section of anybody's county fair.
These little beauties ate five times (in six weeks) more than the others had done in seventeen.
In terms of personal gain, my poultry production was nothing to crow about. But my farm labourer was smiling - when I worked out my losses due to theft, he'd made four and a half times as much as me.

Labour relations

It was, however, in the area of rural labour relations that I really shone...
I had this vision of happy little Trojans busily working away like kibbutzniks, with productivity the only thought in their minds.
Instead I ended up living on the set of an Alcoholics Anonymous 'before' advert. Weekends were the worst. I watched in fascination as the kitchen maid murderess - whose job included chopping up vegetables in my kitchen with a large carving knife - went after her brother's wife with an axe. When the dust settled and everyone was disarmed, the dispute turned out to be centered around a single box of Lion matches.
I took a knife off a visitor who had come to the farm to embed it in the chest of my labourer, and I watched some pretty impressive fights.
"Please guys," I begged the labour force, "let's make this thing work so we can all earn some money and live together in peace."
"Yes, Baas," said the Chief Shepherd and belched some beer fumes into my face.
"It'll never work," said my AWB neighbour, shaking his head and chins sadly. "All they understand is the whip..." - the mantra again.
My Damascus Road conversion came one Friday evening when I returned home just before midnight. The locals were in full swing with another party and by the sounds of breaking glass and blood-curdling screams, a gracious good time was being had by all.
"The natives are restless tonight," I said to my wife Joy. I took a less than sanguine approach to the disturbance. One of the main reasons I'd moved out to the country was to get away from the 365-day-a-year bash the next door commune held in my old city neighbourhood. I have a natural intolerance for 'neighbour noise', and this party was the last straw.
"To hell with it," I thought. "This will never work. Perhaps all they do understand is the sjambok."
Now, one thing I pride myself with not being, is stupid. If I went in with only a whip against that bunch, there could be only one result - my delicate, wrinkle-free features would be rearranged. So I did what any self-respecting, white conservative farmer living in the Wilde Weste would do. I pulled on my boots, kissed my wife and armed with righteous thoughts, a biblical passage and a Colt 45 with two spare clips of ammo, I took to the trail.
In the dim light of one of the rooms I could see Mieta - the maid with occasional murder on her mind - playing host to a bunch of guys arguing the merits of her charms. At the sight of my Snake Slayer and furious face, they left the room. At speed. Kind of like a six-pack of rats with a ferret on their tails.
"Shoot him, Baas! He's a rubbish!" screamed Mieta (she is a fine connoisseur of crooks, you understand and knows when to cross the floor) as one of the shebeen patrons flew over the adjoining barbed-wire fence and took off at an easy lope across the eragrostis-sown field, confident that the "mhlunghu" wouldn't catch him.
I banged off three .45 slugs over his head and he flattened out and hit somewhere near 45 km/h at the other end of the field. I had a momentary pang of worry at the prospect of three heavy-calibre bullets ending up in my neighbour's sitting room.
"I'll sort you lot out later," I yelled to Mieta and her party, who at this point had all sobered up. I jumped into my car and sped off down the road, knowing I would catch the fleeing man when he crossed the fence.
I caught him, and limbered up for the reading of Big Hilt's Riot Act Class One, when my car stalled and absolutely refused to start again.
"It's okay Boss, I'll push you back."
Somehow, I find it extremely impolite to chastise a guy who pushes your car a kilometer on a dark farm road after midnight on a Saturday morning...

Sheep farming

When it was becoming clear I was not going to become rich from chicken farming I decided to have a go with sheep and bought a small flock from a breeder who lives nearby. This was where my hard-honed streetwise negotiating skills would come into their own. Maybe I was a bum chicken breeder, but I knew I had championship potential when it came to haggling.
And boy did I teach that country bumpkin a thing or two! He didn't know what hit him. I beat him down to R300 a sheep. I left the site of the transaction satisfied, paying little heed to the faint strains of laughter from the neighbours. It was only later - after my cheque had been cashed that I discovered the going rate for my sheep was R140 a head.
But for a while, things seemed to be going well. The ram appeared to be keeping the ewes happy. We discussed playing soft mood music in the sheep shed at night, but we never moved past the stage of punning about "sheep music" written by "Baach". In fact there's probably more bucks to be had in publishing '1 000 World Famous Sheep Jokes' than in farming the damned things. But, it was nearly Christmas and the arrival of a batch of lambs was imminent - it would be perfect for our Randfontein Nativity Scene down on the farm.
"Come quickly!" yelled Joy, one Saturday afternoon. "I think one of the sheep is giving birth."
I rushed outside to where a ewe was lying on her side, eyes wide and staring. For a while we stood around waiting for the miracle of life to happen.
"I'm not sure this is right," I said. "Do they give birth with all four legs in the air?"
We lost a lot of sheep after that. They would appear fit and healthy, but suddenly keel over and be dead in less than thirty seconds. Plummeting sheep may be great for a Monty Python skit, but it's real farmer-nightmare stuff.
The vets postulated about the cause and asked that we bring in a carcass when the next one died. This happened on a Monday morning just as I was leaving for an appointment in town. I was already dressed in a suit and tie and running late. I was in no mood to carry a snuffed bit of mutton around.
"You'd better take care of it," I said to Joy and left in a hurry.
Randfontein is a small town with a rural atmosphere. It has probably seen some unusual sights before, but I am told that a woman driving a Renault down the main street with a dead sheep hanging out of the boot still turns heads.

Innoculations

The cause of death was eventually diagnosed after a pathological sample was sent to Onderstepoort, the University of Pretoria's Veterinary Faculty, for testing. They prescribed an inoculation programme.
"Inject the sheep with this and your problems will be over," said the vet.
And so, one fine summer's morning, Joy and I set about vaccinating the sheep. The idea was I would catch and hold them and she would inject them in the hip.
Simple. I caught the first ewe and held it firmly while Joy jabbed the needle into its rump and pressed the plunger down, forcing the serum into the animal's body. The sheep looked at me with those big, sheep-like eyes only sheep seem to have, shuddered once and fell over dead at my feet.
Experts figure that one pair of amorous houseflies can produce nearly 400 billion offspring in a single sultry season. I reckon that Randfontein is the Love Boat of the housefly world, and that my farm is where all their children come to live.
Experience has taught us the best method of controlling the insects is with a fly trap that uses a disgustingly obnoxious protein to entice the pesky creatures into a container from which there is no escape. The little bastards, once in the trap do not simply die with a modicum of dignity. No, they take literally the instruction: "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." They see it as an opportunity for further sexual dalliances and soon the container is swarming with maggots that feed on the bodies of their deceased parents.
At first the fly trap hung in a tree some thirty meters from the house. For days my family and our pack of Rhodesian Ridgebacks gave each other those well-known "you've just farted" looks. Then the fly trap was moved to the sheep shed and all was fine for a while.
A few days later in a rush to get to an editorial meeting, I walked into the sheep shed to take a quick peek at the new lambs. As I turned around my head bumped the bottom of the fly trap, spilling its loathsome contents over my hair and down my shoulders. I can vouch for the efficacy of the muti in the trap. In seconds, every fly in the known world was onto me...
Farming is not what I thought it would be. I didn't get rich. Hell, I didn't even qualify for government drought-relief aid and I'm poorer now than ever I was.
But I've got open space, my kids can breathe clean (if a little scented) air, we often have rabbits and owls popping in for visits and there's a pioneering spirit you won't get in a Brixton semi. I've learnt skills that would look good an any CV - I can now castrate a ram and dock a sheep's tail along with the best of them. I've learned how to plough.
Maybe next year I'll figure out what the devil I should plant in those fields I've harrowed...