Food and Water Security – Save the PHA

They say that future wars will be fought over water, not oil. Or maybe I’ve been reading too many post-apocalyptic YA fiction? Whether that’s true or not, what is very true is that we need to protect our fresh water supplies, not just for now but for the future. Water is something that we take for granted in the Western world .... until it stops coming out of our taps. Living on a farm we are dependent on the smooth running of our borehole pump. We are dependent on the underground aquifer or stream that our borehole takes water from. If the pump breaks, or nightmare scenario, if the water level falls, our taps don’t flow any more. We have rain water barrels to fall back on, but we get that pump fixed pretty darned quick. Without water from underground we couldn’t live here, unless we got a whole lot better at storing our winter rain for all year use.

So this is a long introduction to explain why I was so dismayed to hear about the recent decision to re-zone a part of the Philippi Horticultural Area for building. The PHA is a large agricultural area within the Cape Town city area. It grows about 50% of the city’s fresh produce. Not just fancy salads for Woolies, but the staples like cabbage, sweet potatoes and carrots. It also acts as a clean water catchment area feeding the winter rains into a major aquifer. This aquifer is vital to provide fresh water to all the surrounding communities.

To get a better feel of the importance of the area watch this video where Rob Small and Nazeer Sonday talk about their campaign to save the PHA, (here's their Avaaz petition to sign) and why it's so important to all of us.



Cape Town is lucky in that is has plenty of good water – that is why it was settled in the first place. But the city is growing so much that existing water supplies are being put under pressure. The last thing the city needs is to compromise a major water collection area like this. Building on the land would divert most of the rainfall to storm water drains, probably resulting in worse flooding elsewhere and wasting all that water. And that heart-string cry of ‘housing for the poor’? Well there is other land available to build on in the area, land that is not such good agricultural land, nor so important for water catchment either. And the houses proposed by the private developers who want to build are unlikely to be aimed at the very poor either.  So let’s concentrate on the main issue here.

Food security is another crucial issue at stake here. With transport costs rising practically every day, it makes economic sense to grow produce as close to local markets as possible. That is what the PHA provides. A place within the city that supplies half of the fresh produce needed to feed its people. It gives the poorer communities in the area access to fresh vegetables at reasonable prices sold directly by street sellers and small local stores, and it supplies the big supermarkets in the city too. Take away this prime agricultural land for building and what do you get? Food must be grown further away, transport costs escalate, food prices go up too and many more people can no longer afford to buy fresh food.

This isn’t just about the very poor no longer affording fresh vegetables, the truth is that many of them already can’t. Beyond that there are plenty of people with steady, reasonably paid jobs who are struggling with grocery bills and finding it difficult to feed their children properly. Since we came to South Africa in 2002 our average weekly shopping bill has not just doubled... it has quadrupled. And that is with me being a canny housewife and cutting down over the years, not going on a foodie spree! Plus we have a veggie garden and fruit trees to supplement our shopping. So I don’t know how those on the minimum wage manage to feed themselves and their children any more. Wages certainly haven’t gone up by even half in that time.

Back to the Philippi Horticultural Area  - the development plans seem to have crept under the radar almost until it was too late. The re-zoning of 300ha has had preliminary approval by the mayor and is due to go to the next level. The Save the PHA campaign is starting to gain traction but it needs the support of everyone to get taken seriously by the people who make the decisions. So please, please sign the Avaaz petition here – let’s reach the initial goal of 10,000 signatures. Sign and share with everyone you know.

It’s not just Capetonians who should be getting worried. It’s everyone world over who cares about our future – who cares that we and our children and our neighbours' children will have fresh water and fresh food to eat in 20 years, in 50 years. Let’s hope that we can do enough now so that we all still have enough water then not to need to fight any wars over it.

Sign the Avaaz petition to save the PHA here. And please share it on with everyone you know!

More facts on the PHA application here.


And read Sarah Duff's piece about the PHA and a second one  asking why Cape Town foodies aren't already out there protesting.

Spring, Veggies and Bunny Bouquets

Spring is fickle. One minute wooing you with bouquets of daisies, the next blowing a gale and laughing manically as it catches you in a shower of rain. Luckily our vegetable garden seems to thrive on this callous treatment.

The cabbages are pictures of bursting health, we have an enviable broccoli crop this year, and while for some bizarre reason our last carrot planting failed, there are new rows beginning to show promising signs.

An evening walk - Youngest still immersed in book

Most mornings we walk around the farm road to try and get at least a bit of exercise before freezing in front of our computer screens for the rest of the day.

We walk purposefully along, stride up the hill until we reach the veggie patch, where I veer off the road and start gathering a bouquet of greens. Bunny bouquets for the two rabbits and two guinea-pigs, who must have the healthiest diet of any caged pets: beet leaves, nasturtium leaves, cabbage leaves, broccoli leaves, rocket gone to flower, spinach, lettuce, radishes.

Picking all this fresh food for them delights my frugal-disguised-as-green-living soul. All they need is the outer cabbage leaves, the lower broccoli leaves, the thinned beets from overcrowded rows, the radishes that have got too huge for us to eat.

It’s free for the gathering, unlike the extortionate bag of designer guinea-pig food sold to my husband in the pet shop, where the girls chose their new guinea-pigs. State of the art flakes of dried fresh food, guaranteed to have a residue of vitamin C and originate from real apples and carrots... like eating your salads in the form of breakfast cereal.

The bouquet looks so pretty that it’s a shame to let it drop to the floor of the cage... the guinea pigs stand up on their back legs and squeak desperately until I hand it over. It’s polished off in twenty minutes flat. Thereafter any time we go past the back door heart-rending squeaks ask for more, more, more.

Inspired by all this free goodness I made a Thai green vegetable curry for supper last night, hoping to convince the kids that this is an edible option. I put in plenty of potatoes as a base (they will all eat potatoes at least!) then added in the just-picked broccoli and spinach. All I can say is that three out of five of us ate it quite happily and at least our son will eat plain rice till the cows come home... what was that vitamin deficiency linked to rice-eating, I wonder?

And spring on our farm continues to look gorgeous, every time the sun shines and brings the daisies out in a blaze of dazzling brightness.

Living in a Plastic Age

Our over-flowing recycling sack

Plastics have been the focus of a lot of my green living reading this week. It started out with discovering My Plastic Free Life – Beth was inspired to see if she could live without buying/consuming any plastics for a year and has been living more or less plastic free ever since.

After reading I was alternately inspired and dismayed all over again at the sheer amounts of plastic in our everyday life. However green we try to be, however much we recycle, there is still  plastic making its way into landfills, or worse into our oceans.

So shopping was accompanied by a guilt trip. Could the fact that we still buy black bin bags, be offset against the choice of bags made of 100% recycled plastic? How to acquire pasta or rice without those non-recyclable crinkly plastic bags? Our local town doesn’t offer the convenient bulk buying stores that seem to be a feature of some Canadian and US cities (going by the blogs I’ve been reading) where you can fill up your own re-used glass containers.  And horrors when the fresh bunches of carrots that used to be just tied up with string have now been promoted to a plastic sleeve... (we're still waiting for several rows of carrots to produce in the veggie garden and some dear, cuddly creature is nibbling the tops).

Fast forward to yesterday, when a lovely prize I’d won in the Tangled Tree Treasures competition finally arrived. They are a new range of wines from the Van Loveren estate near Robertson, promoting green living, bio-diversity and ethical choices. The box contained sample bottles of the five wines in their range, named enticingly and with pretty labels... and bottled in plastic?!

A quick look at their site and at a few other internet forums showed an alternative perspective on green packaging thinking: PET plastic can actually have a much lighter carbon footprint than glass. I found several arguments both for and against this view. The most balanced one was an opinion piece stating both pros and cons and didn’t get all hot under the collar about it - this I think is the one I’ll go with for now.

Basically the view is this:

• PET uses a whole lot less resources and energy to produce than glass.
• PET is much lighter than glass and takes up less space, therefore it uses less fuel to ship.
• PET is much sturdier, therefore less breakage and less wastage.
• PET can now be recycled over and over again without losing its integrity, just as glass can.
• PET doesn’t have several of the ooh nasties such as BPA and phthalates that make a lot of plastics a bad choice for food products.

I resisted this a little to start with. I like glass – it feels better than plastic, worthier, greener, more real. Plastics are the big baddies of the eco-system, cluttering up our oceans and killing our marine life.

Common sense eventually makes me re-consider and admit that there is room for wines bottled in plastic, especially if they are being exported around the world, and as long as the bottles will eventually be recycled.

Glass is still going to be the best option: if it can be re-used multiple times before being recycled; if the product is distributed close to where it originates, so not too much transport is involved. Think jars of yoghurt from your local dairy that can be returned again and again.

I guess the crux of the matter lies in responsible recycling. If we could guarantee that all those plastic bottle would make it into a recycling program and be turned back into bottles again indefinitely, it wouldn’t be so bad. And if glass could be re-used indefinitely that would also be a winning solution. So in the end it comes down to our behaviour... and what a challenge that is.

Please feel free to shout at me politely tell me I’m mistaken in the comments, if you have a better understanding of this complex subject. I’m off to finish that first delicious bottle of Tangled Tree Spicy Shiraz (I’ll write more about the wines themselves once I’ve savoured all five of them), before tossing the plastic bottle in the recycling bin.

I’ll leave you with Beth’s in depth research into Pepsi’s much touted PET drinks bottle, released last year, made from plant based plastic.

Beach and Pony Show -The Girls' Perfect Weekend

They say fresh air is good for a cold, and if so this weekend was perfectly suited – no sitting around on the sofa snuffling into a mound of tissues, if was off to the beach first thing to take part in International Coastal Clean up day. We joined up with friends and went in their combi, the girls in a line on the back bench, happy to be going anywhere with their best friends. The day was gorgeous – light breeze, sunshine, blue sky with picture perfect wisps of cloud.

After lots of milling around and doling out of snacks sponsored by PicknPay, we were issued with bags and set up off the beach. We were  on a beach that is part of Blaauwberg Conservation Area, a long, sandy beach that stretches all the way from Big Bay to Melkbosstrand, views back to Table Mountain all the way.

It looked fairly clean as we started out, strewn with shells and kelp, but it was amazing how much rubbish  was collected. Plastic bottles, bags, food containers, lots of little sweet wrappers, and sugar packets, all sorts of detritus, including bigger things like brushes and plastic crates. The kids hunted for the more satisfying finds like bottles, while I wandered behind them, scanning for the tiny bits of decayed plastic that are just as bad for the environment, as fish can end up eating them and they get into the food chain. Even after everyone else had gone through there was still stuff to find.

At the end we had to go through the bags, filling in a data sheet of what we’d picked up. The weirdest things – a bra and two cotton reels;  most numerous – plastic bottles. Between everybody – about 150 or so volunteers,  a lot of them kids, we had amassed a huge heap of bags in just 1 1/2 hours.

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Yesterday it was up early again and out to the fun pony show at the riding stables. Youngest had entered the Jumpkhana event and both of the girls the team games. These involved relay style races doing everything from balancing a tennis ball on a bat, riding with a sword to pick up a stirrup from a barrel, riding backwards with four marshmallows in their mouths and so on - much hilarity, much swapping of horses, much running and leading and helping of the younger ones by the older girls.

Rain threatened but held off till later except for a light drizzle now and then. Middle Daughter was on the winning team and so at last received the coveted red rosette that she has been wanting for ages.

Then it was back home to collapse in a heap on the sofa at last and see whether the fresh air had helped that cold!

As for our son – he had a busy time with Dad at home, watching several matches of the World Cup and making sure ‘we’ won, then creating spaceships out of toilet roll inners for a school Entrepreneur project... he has to try and sell them to the primary school kids. I’m slightly dubious about the profit margin on these, considering the amount of super glue and paint used in the construction...! Most of the other kids are including sweets in the package of what they are making, so he is going to have a baking day and make crunchies, muffins and cookies (from the girls' market stall heart biscuit recipe) to try and attract sales.

And now it's Monday.. time to take a deep breath, get back to work and gear up for next weekend's Spring Festival, which coincides with National Braai Day... and I still plan on putting together a braai recipe post for Cooksister's Braai the Beloved Country blog event before then... so much to do!

High School, New School and a Laundry Tip

First Day

The switch to a new school seems to be more of a culture shock to his parents than to our son. After four weeks of school, he seems to be taking it all in his stride, despite the change from Waldorf to conventional teaching and the jump from primary to high school.  We’re the ones still reeling at the demands. This stack of text books – does he really have to carry that heavy weight to school and around classes every day? Homework every single afternoon, which combined with the longer journey sometimes means that he’s only done by supper time. A six o’clock get up so that he can be ready to leave with my sister-in-law before seven. And uniform.

Our kids have never had uniform before; at the Waldorf school they wear their own clothes within reasonable bounds. He has no problem wearing the same thing every day, in fact he probably prefers it for making his life simple. I used to have to steal his clothes away from him after a few days of continuous wear as it was. I’m the one struggling with the new problem of white poly-cotton school uniform shirts, whose collars instantly acquire a dirty stained stripe on contact with sun-screen.

My super-woman status definitely does not extend to laundry. I tend to separate it out into whites and darks, chuck it in the machine and consider it clean. But those bright white shirts, with the grimy collars even after washing, threw out a challenge. The stain remover spray didn’t work, nor did the bicarb (baking soda). The final solution after much Googling was dish washing detergent. In the US it’s Dawn, but here in South Africa I tried our emerald green Sunlight. And it worked! For a nasty moment I thought I’d only succeeded in dying the collars green, but luckily the colour washed out, leaving the collars almost looking like new. Phew!

I may be the last mum in the universe to have newly discovered this laundry rescue remedy for removing sunscreen grime, but in case you are struggling with the same problem – here is the recipe.

Recipe for Sparkling White Shirt Collars

Take one white shirt collar, engrained with a tide line of dirt and sunscreen

Soak it with a generous dash of ordinary dish detergent

Scrub it in and leave to marinate for twenty minutes. * see edited note below

Add to the rest of the ingredients in your washing machine and wash as normal.

Hang out to dry and sparkle in the sunshine.

Repeat daily in term time.

As for the homework, I’ve always reckoned that our children were supposed to be doing it by themselves. I’ve helped a bit when necessary but tried not to interfere too much. But how do I resist an appeal to help with a book review, which has to be 150-200 words to include a summary of the plot and an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. He’s never had to do anything like it before.

My professional pride is tickled and I give various insightful and useful tips, restraining myself from jumping in to try my own hand at it. But it still turned out to be a collaborative effort, as our opinion was sought at every stage, especially in the editing it down to within the word count. It then had to be set out as a Word document with a picture and printed off, so I was able to advise on formatting and sub-headings.... but after so much involvement, now I want to know what marks we got... really it’s no fun helping with homework if we don’t at least get a Very good or a gold star or whatever carrots are doled out in high school these days.

Repeat to myself three times daily:  “I must resist becoming a helicopter parent at this late stage in the game.”

Edited to add: This recipe worked well for a while and then on some occasions I found it hadn't worked. I amended it thus and now it works perfectly every time:  
After soaking the collars, scrub them a little under running water before adding to the wash. It doesn't need to be entirely scrubbed out; this just loosens it enough that the wash will do the rest.

A Natural Flea Trap

Living on a farm with dogs, fleas are one of those banes that we are almost never without. Cold weather brings a little respite, but with the first spring warmth the dogs start scratching madly and sharing their fleas with us. With a Jack Russell that thinks she’s a princess and insists on napping on the sofa whenever she can get away with it, that means fleas hopping on us just when we want to relax. I don’t get bitten much, but Youngest seems to be very attractive to fleas and reacts to their bites. It’s an all out war.

The big shot chemical weapons have lost their effectiveness. The toxic pill only works if you can control the environment and how can we control the several acres that our dogs regularly roam?  The collar doesn’t work at all. The spot on treatment hardly. Besides the fact that all these things are toxic and cost a fortune for four dogs. We’ve tried the natural alternative of using diatomaceous earth around the house and on the dogs. It may or may not have some effect, but it wasn’t the instant success I was hoping for. So I’ve fallen back on this.

This high tech and very sophisticated flea trap consists of a white bowl of water, with a drop of soap in it to break the surface tension. The lamp is left on all night shining on the water. Fleas obligingly hop towards the light and drown in the water. Diligently applied night after night in several strategic places, I’m sure it is making a dent in the flea population inside the house at least.

What I like is that it is quantifiable. I can notch up the death count on the door post in the morning and have the satisfaction of knowing that that many fleas won’t be perpetuating their species. And it is totally non-toxic flea control. I don’t expect to stop the dogs scratching altogether, but hopefully I can catch the newly hatched fleas before they feast on us.

Any other tips for natural flea control? I'd love to know anything that works for you.

Shiny, Happy Hair

Heading for the shower on Saturday morning, I armed myself with a box of baking soda/ bicarb and a bottle of apple cider vinegar. Diluting them as per the recommended dose of one tablespoon to a cup of warm water, I shook them up in old shampoo bottles and stepped in to the rush of hot water to try out this crazy idea of replacing shampoo and conditioner altogether with these more mundane ingredients.

After I read about shampoo-free hair care on Simple Mom last week and got all enthusiastic about it, there was a little resistance to the idea from my husband, who can’t stand the smell of vinegar and isn’t over the moon at my brilliant discovery of vinegar as a surface cleaner. He was worried he would no longer be able to hug his wife without feeling nauseous. Middle Daughter was fascinated by the idea and attended the hair-washing experiment in person, a useful audience as I was able to get her to sniff for any vinegar residue after rinsing!

I’m pleased to announce that the experiment was a resounding success! The bicarb felt a bit strange as I massaged it in instead of shampoo, like water in consistency but just slightly squeaky. Then the vinegar rinse went on and I could immediately feel my hair getting smoother and shinier. The best thing was that it rinsed off completely, leaving not a trace of vinegar smell, even while still wet, and my husband’s fear s were groundless. He was able to hug me as much as he wanted!

Overall, once dry, my hair was softer and shinier than after shampooing even with conditioner. My scalp hasn’t had any dry flaky skin at all for the two days since, whereas usually it does immediately after shampooing. My hair is a bit floppier than usual, but that is a good thing, as it tends to bush out rather after shampooing now it’s layered and only gets shiny and smooth after several days, when it is about time to wash again.

The girls were so impressed by the results that all three kids tried it themselves at hairwash time yesterday and they also have nice soft shiny hair today, which is easier to comb.

So apart from the fact that it seems to work better than shampoo and conditioner for us, why give up conventional shampoo in favour of some basic kitchen ingredients?

1. It’s natural. Shampoos are full of goodness knows what chemicals and fragrances, all of which we are rubbing into our scalps and possibly absorbing through our skin. We use shampoo to strip away our natural oils and then conditioner to try and replicate the effect of the oils. Baking soda just cleans without stripping and vinegar balances out the ph of your hair and scalp.

2. It’s very cheap. Shampoo and conditioner for the whole family can get quite expensive, whereas this way we are just using a small amount of cheap ingredients that we already have in the house.

3. Better for the environment and sustainable. The fewer complex chemical products that we need to use in our homes and flush away down the drains, the better for our local environment and for the whole planet.

You can read much more about it here if you want more details of shampoo-free hair-care. As for us, we’ll be carrying on the experiment and I’m going to try out some herb rinses to alternate with the vinegar; rosemary first for me and maybe chamomile for the girls.

Green Muffin Cases

My inner Scrooge really loves the whole green movement – Reduce Reuse Recycle is a great excuse to save the pennies and polish your halo at the same time. No longer are you stigmatized as being stingy when you re-use your shopping bags, you are now a green heroine, nobly saving the planet as you shop.

Paper muffin cases are a case in point. We bake muffins every week, often double batches for school bake sales. I used to use muffin cases all the time. It’s easier and more convenient. But if you think about it, that piece of paper just becomes litter within minutes, if the kids pounce on the muffins straight away, and it’s just one more non-essential to add to the weekly shop. So I stopped using paper muffin cases most of the time for home-baking, and it wasn’t a big deal at all. I just had to soak the tins a bit before washing them.

And yet there are times when a paper case really does make a difference, like when you are trying out a chocolate chip muffin recipe and envisage gooey melted chocolate going to waste all over the tins. Of course I now had no paper muffin cases in the house after my frugal/green spree of conscientiousness. I’d also nearly run out of baking paper for the same reason, just a few odds and ends left over from a series of cakes, which left me with the stash of butter papers in the fridge.

When I was growing up, butter papers were always saved in the fridge. They knew about frugality in those days, having grown up with rationing and wartime shortages and lived through Seventies coal miners' strikes and all. Saving butter papers was a habit that transferred itself to me, despite our generation's prodigality. A fridge full of butter papers generally isn’t all that much use, not very zen either, cluttering up the place. Quite handy for greasing baking trays, but that’s about it. Except when you need muffin cases at the last minute.

I think they worked perfectly – perhaps not very elegant, but they have a certain green chic about them, don’t you think?!

But perhaps the scraps of baking paper made the more elegant version. They make me think of The Sound of Music, a drift of nuns in sparkling white wimples…

And Marisa's chocolate muffin recipe? The kids loved them, in fact Middle Daughter made them all by herself. Me, I'm holding out for dark chocolate chips for the next batch, with the good dark Nomu cocoa, but then that would be my inner chocoholic, who vanquishes the inner Scrooge every time.

Natural Firelighters

If we were truly environmentally friendly, then we probably wouldn’t be lighting fires just to warm ourselves and brighten up cold winter nights. After all wood cooking fires are one of the many contributors to the familiar murky brown line of smog that sits over Cape Town on fine days in winter, snuggling up to the mountain, after a run of fine winter weather, with sunny days and oh so cold nights. A spell of windy, wet weather blows it away and it is gone and forgotten till next time.

Sitting here on the farm the hazy tendrils of smog reach us too and yet we’re not ready to give up the joys of a roaring log fire to toast backs and warm hands before bedtime. Bedtime stories move to the sofa, so we can enjoy the fire a bit longer, before braving the chillier air of bedrooms and tucking up with a hot water bottle, bed-socks and extra blankets.*

All the kids, from an early age, have learned how to build and light a fire safely and take turns in the evenings. Our eco conscience is salved by the thought that we are only burning the wood from trees cleared from our farm as alien invaders. Our logs are Port Jackson, a tree from Australia brought to control the shifting sand dunes of our coast, which is now out of control and taking over fallow farmland at a rapid rate in our area. Our firelighters are also gathered from our property – the best natural firelighters in the world – dry pine cones. They really are the secret of lighting a good fire: two or three open cones nestled in the centre of a nest of newspaper with a tower of logs built around them will coax even the most sluggish of logs into action.

Every so often we lead a mission to the top of the farm, armed with bags. It takes no more than twenty minutes to collect all the cones we can carry and the pine trees are still loaded with more cones that will come down the next time the wind blows. The pine trees too are alien invaders, threatening to take over our top camp, but at least if we collect the cones we are slowing them down. We’re unwilling to clear them completely as they are the only full sized trees we have and they also provide us and our friends with Christmas trees. And where would we be without our incredibly effective natural firelighters?


Today I dragged the two boys unwillingly up the path to collect a sack-full, R. complaining loudly about the girls left ‘relaxing’ back home (Youngest with a sore knee and Middle daughter with a cough). I’d offered the services of our patent firelighters to the school for their St John’s festival bonfire next week, on the last day of term before our extra-long, soccer-world-cup winter holidays. Last year an immense heap of dead wood had been collected for the bonfire, but it wouldn’t burn, as the fire had been heaped higgledy-piggledy rather than built. It only really got going, (with the help of flammable liquid applications) after the kids had finished singing and throwing their wishes on to the sullenly smouldering fire, which was a bit of an anticlimax. So, this year I hope that our pine cone donation will do the trick and send those wishes merrily circling up into the air for the angels to read!


*Note for overseas readers - central heating is a rare luxury in South Africa, where houses are built for hot summers and we tough out the winter months dressed as Michelin men in the mornings and evenings. The kids often emerge from school in T-shirts at midday on sunny days laden to their eyeballs with shed layers of fleeces and jackets. The houses however stay fridge-like from May to September.