In 2004, when Kathryn Eybers and Ross Dwyer bought Numbi Valley, near De Rust in the Klein Karoo, the soil was so depleted they were told they would never be able to farm anything there. However, they believed they could transform the land by using permaculture design, and have since turned the farm into a viable operation, working in harmony with nature.
To understand how, we need to understand Eybers and Dwyer’s background. The couple met during a soil science class while studying BSc Agric at Natal University. Neither came from a farming background, but both had a vision for restoration work.
After majoring in grassland science and entomology they were left with more questions than answers. “Our love for nature made us question conventional agricultural systems. Almost everything was focused on production and hardly anything on ecology or the care of the land,” Eybers says. After university, in around 1991, they started a small organic vegetable farm near Nelspruit, Mpumalanga. “Growing organic vegetables was easy thanks to Nelspruit’s fertile soil, but the operation did not work out. I think we were ahead of our time. Consumers did not really know much about organic production back then,” Eybers explains. “We have come so far since then.
