Social media takes farmer from part-time to full-time

While farm life has always been in Hannes Richards’s vision, he never saw himself as a serious producer. But after his daughter won a piglet in a competition, he decided to invest in a small herd. Before long, this grew too large to fit into his part-time schedule, so he had a few animals slaughtered and advertised the meat on Facebook. The avalanche of interest that followed catapulted him into full-time farming.

BACK ON THE LAND

Richards was born on the farm Genoeg Gesukkel in Roossenekal, Limpopo, and spent most of his childhood there. But the drought in the mid-1980s forced his father to sell up, and the family moved to Pretoria, where Richards completed high school. The longing for farm life, however, led the family