Springvale Olive Farm - a great outing

Craig Rippon loves olives. He speaks about them with a passion that lights up his face and inspires visitors to buy armfuls of olive products before they leave his estate near Alicedale. Close to forty people joined the tour of Springvale Olive Estates at precisely 10.30 on Saturday morning at the start of a most enjoyable outing.

Rippon led the walking tour of the estate and did not stop talking about the different types of olives and their relative strengths and weaknesses for two hours.

First we walked across the main road linking the N2 to Alicedale and then huffed and puffed up the hill to see rows and rows of neatly aligned olive trees. Rippon has planted just over 7 000 trees of 12 varieties since he started the project in 2000.

Most of the time he talked about the Mission olives and the Manzanillas that the crafty Western Cape farmer surreptitiously slipped in among the Mission seedlings, but there were also the Kalamatas, the Frantoios and others with exotic sounding names.

One of the visitors asked Rippon what was his favourite type of olive – a question he was not able to answer because he says he loves whatever is being harvested at the moment. Why olives? After all the Eastern Cape is not known as an olive producing region. He explained that his family had bought the farm from the Wilmots in 1915 and ever since then his family raised sheep, cattle and sometimes even Angora goats. He realised however that stock farming was becoming ever more difficult in the area as game farming gained momentum.

The game farms allowed for the proliferation of small predators such as jackals that frequently took his lambs. As the predators lived in a conservation area it became increasingly difficult for him to protect his flocks. He said that his grandfather had at one time planted mielies on the farm but baboons helped themselves to his crops too often. On the other hand, olives that come straight off the trees have an unpalatable bitter taste so they are almost never stolen by people or animals.

Rippon has six permanent staff members and up to 40 seasonal workers who help him manage and harvest the olives. The groves cover roughly 34 hectares and can produce more than 100 tons of olives in a season. His best year was 2007 when he harvested just on 115 tons but the long drought that followed slashed production drastically and he was forced to pump his dams dry just to keep the trees alive. At the end of the tour, visitors were invited to taste the various types of olives produced at the estate, and of course everyone was trying to decide which type to buy and take home. Guests could then have lunch on the patio or a beautiful lawn outside the farmhouse.

Lea Davies from a farm in the Adelaide area and Lisa Mickelwright, a teacher at DSG, prepared the platters artistically made up of various types of olives, smoked ham and salami kebabs, cumin seed cheese, olive tapenade and grapes.

Clean air, a selection of Mediterranean style treats, a glass of wine and good weather made the outing a massive success for all concerned.

How secular are we in South Africa?

In recent weeks we have carried a number of letters and SMSes reacting to a Rhodes student who objected to the insertion of a Christian pamphlet in his student pack. The reactions have been quite varied – from people telling him to simply throw away the pamphlet without causing a fuss, to those who have supported his right not to be given religious material in a secular university, and of course there are those who have lampooned the entire debate with references to the Spaghetti Monsterists.

This newspaper has not formally taken a stand on whether we think it is acceptable to ply new students with religious material or not. Opinions in our newsroom are diverse, and we would probably not come close to consensus if we had an internal debate.

Nevertheless, if we consider the mandate of this newspaper to serve the community of Makana, we have probably done quite a good job on this issue. Grocott’s Mail has provided readers with a forum to exchange ideas on this issue.

The debate raises further questions about just how secular is our secular state after all? Most government schools in our area, and indeed, most schools in our country, base their values on a Christian framework, and at assemblies, songs sung by the whole school or by choirs, invariably have a Christian message.  

Zooming out to national level, whenever there is an important gathering of leaders; meetings invariably begin with a moment of prayer. Sometimes religious leaders of different faiths are also given an opportunity to say a prayer and then everyone stands up to sing our national anthem – God Save Africa.

Our coins do not claim, as US coinage does, that “in God we trust”, but at every turn, South African culture is rooted in Christianity. The two most important public holidays in this country – Easter and Christmas - are about the birth and death of Jesus Christ. Why then do we persist in describing our country as a secular state?

Perhaps we are in this situation because of a pragmatic inertia that discourages radical change, or perhaps our nominally secular state with some light religious trimmings is the model that South Africans prefer. 

Addo Elephant Park 2010 Oct 2

We made a family visit to the Addo Elephant Park on Saturday. It was wonderful and exciting. The last time we visited the park we saw no elephants at all, but this time we had three separate sightings.
At one of the water pans we saw a herd of about twenty elephants come to drink, play in the water, roll in the mud and then walk off.
We also had two sightings of lions - it was good but in both cases they were just lying around not doing much and they were quite far from the road.





It was a great opportunity to test my new lens (75 - 300mm) and we all really enjoyed ourselves.
On our first trip to the park last year we didn't see a single elephant, but as you can see from the photos above, we saw plenty this time.
Here is a short video clip of a lone bull elephant that was drinking at a pan. We watched him for quite a long time.

When we visited the park in April 2009 we we caught in a hailstorm and some flooding. Check the floods here.
Now compare how dry it is in October 2010 - watch this video below and see what bone-dry looks like.

Hope you enjoyed this page about our trip to the Addo Elephant Park.

Makana Amazing Chase

Fifteen teams set off on an Amazing Chase around the streets of Grahamstown this morning. Based on the idea of the TV program, the chase was designed to teach people a little about Grahamstown and at the same time generate some fun in the morning.
It was successful on both counts.
The Langs formed a team called the Colourful Crew based on our colourful tie-dyed T-shirts. As we are all very unfit we struggled to run from one station to the next, but we made it.
I think we are all going to be somewhat sore tomorrow.