The trio of brothers behind Janlouis Boerdery remains dapper despite their recent battering by the weather: intense frost last July wiped out entire fields of vegetables. Then they had their entire annual rainfall, twice over, during January and February. The melon rotted in the fields. Young onion plants never saw sunshine and drowned.
Meanwhile, a December summer storm destroyed the net houses where they grow yellow and red peppers.
Are they, after all this, ever tempted by a sedate office job? "No way," laughs Tinus Venter, who has farmed here with his brothers since 2000. "I don't even own a computer."
Never standing still, they have been installing pivots on a newly-acquired farm, allowing them to plant butternuts and onions and eventually, potatoes. Factory potatoes only, Venter says decidedly.
"If we can expand our pivot systems, we can also start looking at crops like maize and soya beans. We don't want to expand further into melons and peppers," he shares. They send a huge amount of melons to the market for eleven months of the year. "We'd like to focus on crops that you can harvest mechanically."
A permanent staff of 120 people, with more people hired during high season, shows what it takes to be a fresh supplier on their scale. Lying between 22 and 23 degrees South, beside the Mokgalakwena River, very close to Botswana and Zimbabwe, they are a major supplier of winter fruit and vegetables, delivering to Gauteng wholesale markets and an online seller-led marketing platform.
© Janlouis Boerdery
No red & yellow peppers… enter winter watermelons
"We have no red and yellow peppers this year, with the damage to our net houses. We'll be repairing and replanting in January, hopefully. Starting from March, we harvest green peppers every week. Red is looking very good (even though we don't have any this season), it's becoming scarcer and prices are climbing nicely."
To replace the lost red and yellow peppers, they decided on winter watermelons. They plant it only sporadically every few years, depending on the level of cucurbit wilting virus present by February.
They harvested the first of the Boxy cultivar fruit last week (where they can pack six melons into a carton; they fit in four watermelons), and it was a hit on the market, he says, and "fantastic" prices followed.
Watermelon demand is not the same as in summer, but it remains a requirement for the breakfast buffets of many lodges and hotels, including in Zimbabwe and Botswana.
© Janlouis Boerdery
For more information:
Tinus Venter
Janlouis Boerdery
Email: [email protected]
