Mother Earth Of The Agter-Pakhuis

The Agter-Pakhuis straddles the Karoo and the Cederberg. It’s a land of extremes – farmers here need to be bold and a little stubborn. The land will work you as hard as you work it, just ask Haffi Strauss.

- Sophia Van Taak

It was autumn in 2018 – at the height of a terrible drought – and Haffie Strauss was eyeballing a sparse rooibos plantation through the windscreen of her Land Cruiser. “In terms of agriculture, this is one of the weakest regions in South Africa,” she said. “Take the Free State – you put a plough down and watch the tractor disappear over the horizon. Here we only have small patches of arable land. Sometimes it’s stone, sometimes it’s clay, and summers are incredibly hot.

“Before the drought, we had about 400 hectares of rooibos, now there’s only about a hundred left. Last year, natural springs farmers had been using their whole lives dried up. The groundwater is depleted.

“Rooibos grows wild in the mountains but nobody farmed with it before the 1930s because they couldn’t get the seeds to germinate. My grandfather, Le Fras Nortier, started to experiment and found a way to shave down the seed pod so it could absorb moisture and germinate.”

She fell quiet. “Oupa Le Fras was a wonderful character. He was a doctor in Clanwilliam. He and his friend Louis Leipoldt shared three passions: medicine, nature and cooking. My poor granny Agatha was always in a state when Leipoldt showed up. When the men started cooking, she didn’t go into the kitchen! She never really adapted to life in Clanwilliam. She wanted to be in the city and sip her tea wearing a fancy hat.”