Thorndale Farm, Middleburg Eastern Cape
1. Tell us about yourself. Where do you farm, your family and your interests?
Family : 120 years in the Karoo, Personally : 4 years
2. In once paragraph - what is your farming philosophy?
Reduce bare soil, Slow the water runoff, and store as much water as possible.
3.Tell us about one of your farming challenges and how you solved it.
When low quality baled fodder is available, cover strategic bare ground areas to help slow evaporation and improve soil moisture after rain and increasing organic matter. Catch and store as much water in ground dams thus improving soil moisture and thus increasing veld drought resistance.
4. What is the most important SLM lesson that you have learned?
*All plant matter (weeds, shrubs, trees, grasses) helps promote soil health and improvement
*A little goes a long way in terms of soil erosion work, exponential returns as time goes.
*Nature naturally wants to be healthy and ground wants to be covered, it is the farmers responsibility to just facilitate that, not to fix the soil.
