Tripadvisor’s top 10%; Farming in the Elgin Valley; Fynbos Talks and Plant ID; Elgin Open Gardens
PS: Green Mountain Trail have once again been awarded
Tripadvisor’s TRAVELLERS’ CHOICE – top 10% of things to do worldwide 2025.
Good Morning
In the months of September the Elgin Valley has a deceptive quietness about it.
It’s hard to visualise that these Chardonnay vines will be heavy with grapes come February. Andries Burger, winemaker at Paul Clüver Family Wines, reported that their vineyard management is now in the post budding period when they position the shoots, removing unfertile and unnecessary shoots. This is all done by hand and is to ensure that the vine canopy is not too dense, allowing for optimum fruit development conditions.
I asked Dr Clüver about the effect of US tariffs on SA wine exports. It seems that very little, around four percent, of SA wines are exported to the US and those that are, are exported by a handful of wine farms.
I asked Daniel Elkin, veterinary surgeon turned deciduous fruit farmer, and my nephew, about September activity in the orchards. ‘The apple trees are currently in green tip. We are eagerly awaiting the blossoms which will give us an idea of what the crop will look like. Full-bloom is usually mid-October. It’s been a very dry spring thus far so we may have to start irrigation earlier than usual. The trees use very little water now. After full bloom you have around 28 days of cell division in the apples, requiring virtually no water. But from then on, when the quantity of cells in the fruit has been determined, we start irrigating to fill those cells and make sizeable fruit.’
Once again in response to my curiosity about US tariffs, it would seem that no SA apples are exported to the US. In the words of Dr Clüver ‘Americans, like their apples like they love their motorcars, large, red and shiny and waxed.’ SA’s biggest markets being the UK and Europe prefer a more natural apple. The growing African market and the citrus sector are really interesting, I will need to properly research this topic of fruit export markets.
An Awareness of Trees, our biannual art retreat two weeks back, played out exactly as curators Jill Trappler and Andrew Lamprecht intended. In the words of Richard Powers’ THE OVERSTORY ‘People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures-bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful – call the shots, make the air and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.’
On the Sunday afternoon everyone left both inspired and exhausted from the excitement of the weekend. If you would like to be shortlisted for the next weekend art retreat, please send your wish. They are small tutored affairs for both beginning and established artists.
Do you recognize these plants? New this year to our charity garden showing at Elgin Open Gardens, will be a few sessions of “Fynbos Talks and Plant ID”, over a country style tea. Green Mountain Trail guide and environmental educator, Andreas Groenewald, will present a couple of sessions on each of the two weekends, 1 and 2, and 8 and 9 November – around ninety minutes long and R150 per person. Sign up by replying to this email. We will most likely limit each session to around twelve curious souls.
Each week brings new hikers. At this time of year mostly South Africans. This week’s group were treated to a multitude of floral sightings on the Green Mountain Trail. I have chosen to feature two, the Rooistompie and the Tufted Monodisa. Biodiversity expert and trail guide Jeff Groenewald shared the information included in each caption.
We do not often have spaces to fill on our three day Blue MountainTrail. We do now, on November 3 and 17 and December 8. Book HERE.
In these last couple of weeks, I have needed to study for an exam. I switched off my social media to free up some time. Highly recommended, feel so much better, no longer puzzling about events that have nothing at all to do with me. Just Saying.
This excerpt from Bertold Brecht’s The Reader for City Dwellers, is featured in recently published William Kentridge: Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot:
I know what I need.
I just look into the mirror
And see I have to
Sleep more. The man
I am
Isn’t good for me.
With love
