The road forks at the foot of a sandstone dome, pocked with hammerhead nests. Left is Elands Bay. My destination lies southeast. Leipoldtville. There’s a metronomic rhythm to the way the road dips and rises through the landscape of fynbos and strips of sand from which the Sandveld gets its name.
Leipoldtville is a perfect speck of village of fewer than 300 inhabitants. A general dealer. A garage. A stack of blue post boxes nestling in a corrugated iron lean-to. A church. A schoolhouse. A dirt road runs through.
FROM FARMER TO FOODIE
The Sandveld is the heart of the Western Cape’s potato country. And Leipoldtville is the heart of the Sandveld. Rina Theron was once the “potato queen” and South Africa’s farmer of the year. Since retiring from commercial farming, she’s immersed herself in her other great passion: the food and indigenous plants of the Sandveld.
After being suddenly widowed in her 40s, Rina had to change gear overnight – from housewife to farmer. “It was often difficult being a woman in that world,” she recalls. “But I also loved it, and I was rather good at
