The valuable addition that makes this farm tick

Owning the value chain provides farmers with far more control over their produce. However, it requires a fine balance between production and ensuring there is a strong and steady market. Lindi Botha visited Rosemary Hill to find out how this essential oil producer leverages hospitality to make the farm viable.

- Lindi Botha

E ntering Rosemary Hill on a Friday morning feels more like arriving at a holiday resort than a farm. Mountain bikers, runners and dog walkers hurry about, and groups of boisterous wedding guests make their way to the coffee shop, which is already teeming with a breakfast crowd.

Just a 30-minute drive from Pretoria, Gauteng, Rosemary Hill is an ideal farmstyle getaway for city dwellers. It's entirely bereft of the city's noise and pollution, and instead, fresh farm air greets the visitor, bringing wafts of rosemary on the breeze.

Following the scent takes one to an essential oil distillation centre, where 1t of oils is produced annually from mostly rosemary, complemented by lavender, khakibos and common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), among other crops.

The essential oil production is but one cog in a big wheel that is Rosemary Hill. Offering an event venue, accommodation, hiking and biking trails, a restaurant, kindergarten and Waldorf school, the Franken family has sought to create a business model where all the elements complement one another, with the overarching focus being the nurturing of land and minds.

Huibert Franken, the farm's founder, always had an affinity for farming. Raised in Springs, Gauteng, he had a vegetable patch in the backyard and a few chickens running around. He recalls always having had a fascination with how different plants had their own unique smell and taste.

Therefore, being lured by fragrant plants like rosemary, and eventually becoming an essential oil producer, could not have come as a complete surprise to Huibert, and yet the business happened almost by chance.

In 1978, a Waldorf school was established on the farm. It being a private inan school that needed its own source of funds, Huibert started farming.