go! Platteland

The slow life is the good life: go! Platteland celebrates the rural lifestyle and the entrepreneurial spirit of people whose hearts are in the platteland – whether they grew up in the countryside or are already based there, are contemplating making the move or simply hankering after the rural life. Platteland offers articles that focus on entrepreneurs, DIY projects, animals, gardening, food, towns and people. It is both practical and inspiring – as much of a visual feast as it is a celebration of great writing.

Getting our hands dirty

go! Platteland

platteland.net Your digital one-stop shop

Chitchat

News&diary • Everyone, and everything, is waking from their winter slumber. Nature is undergoing its metamorphosis and donning its spectacular floral jacket… It’s time to visit the platteland!

Add some flavour to your kitchen

Dates to diarise*

Ballad of the bergamot orange

Springtime outings

Time to read • Update your home-cooking repertoire and boost your health with this fresh harvest of books.

SUBSCRIBE NOW AND ENJOY FOUR SEASONS WITH US!

Let’s go to town • Take advantage of sunny spring days with products for your home and garden from local businesses – original, organic and made by hand.

Trompsburg Serenity central • Like many other towns in South Africa’s platteland, Trompsburg in the Free State suffers serious neglect by its local municipality. But residents here have resolved to roll up their sleeves and get involved. And they need no encouragement to help one another. Add the beauty of the surroundings and you have a winning town.

In a nutshell

Eat, drink, shop and stay over

In a land far, far away • Deep in the Tsitsikamma, safely ensconced in a lush, green, lively forest, wordsmith and visual artist Carina Stander lets her talents shine. Here, between the mountains and the sea, she and her family don’t give a thought to the bustle of the city.

Platteland snapshots in oils • The paintings of Rosendal artist Willem Pretorius capture a small-town reality and atmosphere that immediately seem familiar and leave one with a feeling of déjà vu. We share an extract from Iewers,Êrens, anew Afrikaanslanguage book featuring 50 of his brand-new ‘oil-painting snapshots’, which is due out in October.

Buy the book

ROUXVILLE Landscape of loss and light • A writer returns to the landscape of his youth, the small town of Rouxville in the Free State. Accompanying him is one of his creative writing students, who is always eager to hear stories of a bygone age.

The bee’s knees • In 2020, many businesses struggled to survive, but in the small town of Hopefield in the Swartland, the family enterprise Simply Bee had its best year ever. Helena and Pierre van der Westhuizen’s success story turns 10 this year.

The life of a worker bee • Platteland has featured stories about bees at least once a year, but these insects continue to fascinate us. A worker bee lives, on average, for 40–45 days.

Smart uses for honey

Chickens with pedigree papers • Livingseeds has become a household name in South Africa, and its 6 900 customers know the company for its variety of exceptional heirloom vegetable seeds. Its owners have recently hatched a new idea: a range of rare chicken breeds. Now that will give home gardeners something to crow about!

How hardy are the birds?

Start a spring vegetable garden!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Reaching for the moon • On what was once part of a eucalyptus plantation near Plettenberg Bay, Gaye Boshoff and her husband, Pieter, have created a self-sustaining Eden with rain as their only source of water.

Garden by the moon and reap the benefits

Buy – or win! – a Moonbloom 2022 planting...