Salad and trout from the maize triangle

When you arrive on a farm in the heart of the Free State's maize triangle to find all the implements overgrown with boscage, two thoughts will go through your mind: either the farmer has grown tired of ploughing, or he knows something no one else does. And then you discover tunnels filled with vegetables and dams brimming with trout...

- WILLEM VAN DER BERG

In spring, the Western Free State can look very much like a desert. Farmlands, red and bare, stretch towards the horizon, while the last of winter lingers in the twilight and the vleis. Gusts of wind attempt to tug the summer thunderclouds closer, turning the wide, blue sky grey and full of dust. At sunset, the day finally burns itself out in blissful silence, and everything, and everyone, hopes the new season's rainfall is imminent.

This is planting country. Without maize and sunflowers, there would be almost nothing here. That's why a farm with tunnels of vegetables and dams of trout sounds like the biblical Canaan. But this is exactly what you will find at Lagai-Roï Fontein, situated between Hoopstad and Bultfontein. Its name, taken directly from an Old Testament location, appears in Genesis 16:14.

"The name of the farm is actually Wildehondepan," says Pieter Ferreira, who grew up here and began farming with his father after school. "I worked hard for a small salary. A while after Koba and I got married, I told her that I didn't know what my father's plan was, but that we needed to start taking care of ourselves. It wasn't long afterwards that my father said he and my mom were moving to town and I should buy the farm. The bank gave us a 100% loan, and then we had a hard time. But, with a lot of grace, we paid the place off."

During that time, Pieter came across the name Lagai-Roï in his Bible. "It means 'the Living One who sees me'. I thought: Exactly! The farm was given to us by He who lives and sees us. And from then on, that's what we've called the place."

Pieter and Koba make no decisions before they receive confirmation during their "quiet time". Before they got married in 1994, they both each asked the Lord if it was the right thing to do.