VELD

Keeping tabs on what toverview holds of the fascinating Rhodes Beit Bailey (RBB) syndicate in the new hantam area of present day Umsombomvu local government area here is a memoir paragraph, headed VELD, conveying observations of the RBB syndicate farm manager, Morton Barnes Webb. These, in turn,

again record and invite interest and continued stoeptalk.

(This also follows the previously posted Morton Barnes Webb notes from the toverview nuwe hantam archive, eg on Water and on farming For this posting, here is Marie Barnes Webb’s typed record of her father-in-law’s handwritten memoir).

VELD

Being only a “Large Stock” proposition in the days I mention, the veld was in good condition and driving in a cart and horses the “swich” of the grass in the spokes of the wheels made quite a musical sound.

Fencing was unknown and the cultivated lands were always enclosed with stone packed walls, as were some of the farm boundaries too.

Vermin was very prevalent in the shape of baboons, hyena, jackal and leopards too,

and it was the custom to build a stone contrivance and place a lamb or kid inside for a “bait”.

Bailey’s Estate erected some 1000 miles of fencing during my management.

SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM TODAY

Here are a few opening observations, from Maeder Osler at a stoeptalk, which could echo, could challenge, or be expanded, in most parts of rural South Africa (and beyond) today. This is are part of a considerably expanded and ongoing network of research, regulations, applications, and controversies, throughout the world. This is all part of concerns about livestock, environments, resources, land reforms.

Large Stock Units (LSU). For example, today, where the RBB 45 farms were first located in the nuwe hantam, the LSU units could be between 14 to 18 ha per Large Stock Unit (eg hectares per mature cow per year).

‘Swich’ of grass. Today, the present scattered rains in this area looks like becoming, in parts, where again the ‘swich’ of mature grass on farm bakkie wheels and radiators would be ‘audibly visible’.

Stone packed walls, though evident in parts, of the area to this day, and elsewhere in the country, have largely been replaced and supplemented with considerable modern fencing, universally so in the Nuwe Hantam area and most other extensive and intensive farming globally, with the notable exception of large tracts of internally undivided land in areas of wild life, communal, and nature conservation areas. Today too, electrified fencing, sometimes portable, is a feature in many of the world’s farming areas.

Vermin remains a sunject of endless and usually heated discussion, and ranges of reactions. The types and numbers of vermin alter continually. And of course endless discussion about vermin in the form of two-legged varieties of stock thieves, and their updated modern syndicates.

The stone circles to hold bait for vermin are still to be found in the Nuwe Hantam area today, but modern packages of vermin control methods are abundant, and a consistent source of stoeptalk..

The Bailey estate 1000 miles of fencing would entail very many millions of rands in today’s currencies.

We naturally welcome contributions on aspects of such stoeptalks on these and related aspects of the subject of ‘Veld’.