The Planting Season

It’s that time of year where we begin a new cycle…

The past couple weeks have been really challenging for us and other farmers in the Free State due to the heavy rains and hail we have experienced. Our rivers heavily flooded and in some areas made crossing bridges literally impossible due to how high the water rose. Mother Nature always reminds us who’s in charge. To the person on the street surely rain is good for farming right? Yes, but up until a certain point. Too much rain and the soil turns to mud and becomes very difficult to move tractors and other heavy vehicles through. You can imagine being so heavy they just sink down into the mud and become stuck. For now the rains have stopped and work can continue. Some areas the soil is still too wet so we wait patiently for it to dry. Its that time of year where we are planting, or many of our crops are in their infancy. Due to the size of the farm we have to stagger the planting of crops because if we cannot harvest them all at one time. So for example on one area of the farm our Potatoes are flowering and the bushes are knee high, while on another area of the farm we are only just planting the seed now. Same with our Maize: some of it has sprouted and are small shoots 10cm high, while in another area we wait for the soil to dry so we can start planting.

Potato seed being planted. Here we have what we call our eight man ‘Taxi’ planter being used. Along with the potato seed (small potatoes) going into the ground we also use three different variants of organic fertiliser to help the seed at this early stage.

We also have potatoes a bit further along their life cycle. Here you can see how each seed has now sprouted and ideally has between 3-4 offshoots. You can picture how the ‘Taxi’ planters wheels make the deep outside tracks, with the two rows of potatoes on the inside that the staff fed into the planter.

Below we have varying stages of Maize across the farm: tractors waiting to plant as the soil has been too wet; planting of the seed; and sprouted crops about 10cm high.

Our Apple orchard is doing well and will be harvested in about January.

Finally we have Potatoes sitting at about knee high that have flowered and are not far from harvesting.