Life at a farm in South Africa

Hi all!

After two weeks on the road, I was pretty happy to give the car back and being able to relax a bit. Being every day in a new place is quite exhausting, and I needed a place to settle for a bit!
So I subscribed to this website called Workaway, on which people can post if they need volunteers to work for them in exchange for accomodation and food in general. I found close to Durban (or rather to Pietermaritzburg) an offer of staying in a organic farm, and I decided to go for it!

The farm is ran by a small family, Gerry, his wife and their daughter, all very nice and friendly. There is another volunteer here with me, another french guy!

The deal is that I work about 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, and I get to stay at their farm and get food from the farm every day. 

The farm is located in a valley with a beautiful scenery!

View from the farm

The farm has cows, goats, chickens, some horses and donkeys, cats, and 6 dogs! And of course diverse fruits and vegetables. Most of the food they cook here is grown from the farm, so the quality of the meals is amazing!

One of the vegetable growing gardens

The work at the farm starts at 8 am, usually with milking the goats, and then carries on until around 1:30 pm, with a tea break in the middle. Gerry asks us to help him with various things, from cutting wood to fixing the fences, or digging trenches.

Digging a hole for water evacuation

The work can be quite physical sometimes but Gerry is very chill and super nice, so it's never too hard. After 1 pm, we have lunch and then a free afternoon until around 5:30 pm, when we usually help with dinner preparation.

Volunteers stay in a separate small building. It's quite rustic, the toilet and the shower are outside, and you don't get hot water if you don't make a fire to heat the water first! And no heater in the room of course, winter is coming here and the nights are getting pretty chilly...

The volunteers' building

Having the afternoons free is really nice, it allows me to relax and enjoy the sun a bit (sunset around 5 pm here already! and shortly after 4 the sun disappears behind the mountains...). Temperatures during the day still are around 20 degrees, but once the sun sets they drop very quickly.

It's really nice to have a place to settle a bit! Here I'm feeling a bit at home in my room, Gerry and his family are adorable, and Gerry is such an interesting guy, I'm learning a lot about South Africa thanks to him.

Will try to post a nice video of the farm soon, with some pictures of the animals, stay tuned!