It was around the middle of October 2007 when the truck pulled up outside my childhood home. We were moving from the house that both my mother and her siblings, and my brother and I, had grown up in and I was upset.
I don’t deal with big change very well, and the thought of leaving behind all I knew, my safe zone, my routine and my creature comforts, was tough.
We moved the day after I wrote my final Matric paper (looking back, I still don’t know how I focused on my exams with such upheaval going on).
We had sold in March that year, but only moved in October, as finances on the buyers end were held up.
The move itself took a whole day and when evening arrived, I distinctly remember my grandmother and I sitting in a cluttered living room filled with boxes and furniture, as a storm raged outside (it knocked out the power and we sat in the dark), both feeling pretty upside down. She had lived in that home for more than 50 years, but she handled the huge change far better than I did.
The Year of Discomfort
17 years later, my grandmother had passed (in our home, with my mother and I caring for her) and, my brother, mother and I sat at our dining room table with a family friend, discussing a move that would change our lives.
In front of us was a Google satellite map of a farm, and we were talking about buying the land from our friend.
As he’d moved to the UK, he no longer had a good enough reason to hold onto the 13 hectares of untouched African Lowveld, and wanting to “keep it in the family”, he offered it to us.
His offer was not one we had looked or asked for, instead, it felt as though it had meant to come to us, and although there would be a lot of work ahead of us, we decided it was time for a clean start and a new adventure.
He told us we could take as much time as we needed to think about the offer and since our own home needed some TLC before it could be put on the market, we weren’t in a rush.
Between my mother and I, we had decided (but without actually saying it out loud) to wait until the new year to start work on the house, and when January 2024 arrived, we both felt the urge to work on the renovations that needed doing.
My mother ripped up tiles in the bathroom and put in new ones, we installed a new shower (and made the gentleman at Bathroom Bizarre in Nelspruit look rather perplexed with the strange questions we asked him about shower seals), we replaced the shelving at our sink, and finally, we painted inside the house and out.
By the end of April, we were ready to put the house up for sale.
We contacted a local estate agent and had meetings with his team. After that, we started the uncomfortable selling process and soon the first open house evening arrived in the second week of May. We loaded our noisy but beloved German Shepard hounds into the back of our Doctor friend’s combi and set off to his Macadamia farm, to wait out the opening.
As it turns out, the first open evening was also the last.
It was around 2 weeks before South Africa’s much-talked-about 2024 election, so much of the property sales market had, according to industry experts, slumped. Basically, houses weren’t really selling and if they did, they sold for a reduced price.
But somehow my mother and I knew that the house would sell quickly.
And we were not wrong.
Our old home had 5 bedrooms, 4 living spaces, 3 bathrooms, a laundry, water tanks, storerooms, backup power and solar lights.
It was a dream space, perfectly comfortable and more than ready for things like power and water outages. The downside, for us at least, is that the house is situated on the R40, which if you are not familiar with Nelspruit, is a 3 up, 3 down highway that never sleeps.
It is always noisy and on weekends, the distant thumps of parties, the revving and racing cars and bikes, and the people walking around, shouting all through the night, had in recent years become unbearable. The location next to the road, and the fact that our neighbour had no fencing, also meant we had multiple break ins (2 in January 2024 alone)
The week following our open house, we had 3 offers to buy, and by the end of the week after that, we had sold our house, for more than we asked for (we didn’t learn until we were moving out, that the lady who bought is turning our former home into student accommodation).
I had told just about no one about our moving plans.
My heart was sore and this new adventure was just so big that I felt unworthy and I was constantly waiting for something to go wrong. But the selling and the buying went seamlessly and now, as I write this, I am sitting in a strange new world.
Abundant New Beginnings
Farm life is not unusual to me, and this particular farm is actually very familiar, what with it being owned by a good friend and it being my brother’s home for the past almost 15 years.
While the property has houses, all are small 1 or 2 bedroom houses, made mostly for older, childless couples in mind.
Our plan out here is to build a home.
The property has one concrete structure on a hill (with the rest of the houses being wooden cabins).
It looks out over a dam (complete with a resident crocodile) on the south, and to the north it has views of Nelspruit, way down in the valley. Towards the east, there are the most beautiful sunrise views over the Barberton mountains, and to the west is a rocky koppie.
Using this original structure as a starting point, our plan is to build and break, to create 4 new bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a large country style kitchen. I don’t feel like it is a too ambitious plan, and I know it will take a lot of work to get done.
Right now, we are staying in two very pokey places, with half of our furniture in storage. I keep saying this is our season of discomfort, I have felt emotional and like a fish out of water since the start of the year.
But all good things take time.
I keep reminding myself that, firstly, where we lived, we could grow no more. I want a big food garden to feed ourselves and to grow enough to feed those in need, and I simply can’t do that in town.
Secondly, it has always been my mother’s dream to have her children near to her and to retire away from the noise of the city. This farm allows for just that.
And thirdly, the farm has one really neglected macadamia orchard. Under the careful eye of my husband, we have plans to turn it into a productive piece of land again, to employ people and to be free from the corporate world.
I feel as though this journey has been led by blind faith and tomato seeds.
I have faith that we are meant to do this and that we are protected, based on nothing more than intuition, a feeling that this is the right thing to do.
And I have been dreaming about a place where I can grow all sorts of unusual and delicious tomatoes to sell, and, with my seeds ordered and summer on the horizon, I can now do just that.
All good wishes for your new adventure , may you all be happy in your new home . Lynn x