Last month we hosted a weekend event known as the Secret Festival, exploring the latest food and wine trends. Secrets of all kind were revealed, ranging from secret family recipe ingredients to secret gardening and composting methods.
It was during a workshop that our vegetable garden expert, Neil, shared some of his personal biodynamic composting secrets. Spier is currently in the process of converting its vineyards to organic and has a vegetable garden that is run not only according to organic principles and practices, but also according to biodynamic ones.
Those that participated in his workshop were so inspired, we asked him to share his thoughts.
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The Tygerberg Bird Club identified a total of 63 species during their visit to the farm in June. Thank you to Lesley Teare for allowing us to share her post, as it originally appeared in their newsletter.
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April 16th, 2012
— Marina Vermeulen
Frank McKinney Hubbard said “In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it,” and Chef Lolli and Farmer Angus takes this advice to heart.
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January 19th, 2012
— Marina Vermeulen
Viticulturist Johan Smit tracked down a 40 year old chenin blanc bushvine vineyard in Durbanville, from which we will harvest the first time this year.
The 'new' old block has a view of Table Mountain and the Atlantic ocean!
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November 15th, 2011
— Marina Vermeulen
The second group to love the land also worked on the Working for Water project, and assisted in clearing alien plants and planting indigenous trees.
In 2005 the Millenium Eco System Assessment carried out a worldwide evaluation of the state of the natural environment, and a key finding was that 60% of the ecosystem services examined – including fisheries and fresh water – are being degraded or used in ways that cannot be sustained.
In short, we are living beyond our means.
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October 31st, 2011
— Marina Vermeulen
At Spier we have a variety of sustainability initiatives in place, with water conservation and recycling as the key focus. The first team that participated in the Agents of Change project assisted in clearing alien plants that threaten our rich biodiversity use water resources and invade land that could be better used for crops or grazing.
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October 21st, 2011
— Marina Vermeulen
Recently the Spier Living and Learning Programme donated a Spekboom (or Elephants Food plant) to every department within Spier to inform them of Love the Land, the new programmes start. This super plant uses very little water to capture a large amount of carbon form the air, and teams were challenged to collectively decide where to plant this tree.
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