Twelve Years of Towerwater aan de Breede

It is difficult to believe that twelve years have passed since I wrote the first post about life at Towerwater aan de Breede.

When I look around me now, the place feels much as it did then, and yet every season brings something new. Perhaps that is the secret of an old place. It may seem unchanged at first glance but look a little closer and there is always something different happening.

The fruit trees are in blossom, their branches suddenly covered in delicate flowers, and the gardens have that wonderful feeling of anticipation that comes just before everything bursts into green. The birds seem to know that spring is coming. Everywhere there is activity: birds courting, calling to one another, choosing nesting places and carrying bits of grass and twigs in preparation for the season ahead.

From the vineyards comes the steady rhythm of tractors and farm implements moving up and down the rows as the vines are pruned and sprayed. In the fields, the plough turns the earth, followed by a choreography of white egrets, rising together as their wings flash in the sun before settling again behind the next deep-brown furrow.

Engines start and stop, machinery rattles, and somewhere in the distance a tractor makes its slow journey along the road. It is a soundscape that has become so familiar that I hardly notice it anymore, until I stop and realise that these everyday sounds are such an essential part of what makes Towerwater what it is.

The birdsong is not heard in silence. It is accompanied by the distant drone of a tractor, the rattle of an implement and the sound of machinery working the land. The natural and the agricultural exist side by side, each part of the other. Somehow, that combination has become one of the sounds of home.

Standing among the blossoming fruit trees this year has taken me back to that first post, and I could never have imagined then that I would still be writing about Towerwater all these years later, or that I would still be finding things to say. But that is the wonderful thing about an old place, it is never quite the same.

The seasons return, but they never repeat themselves exactly. A tree flowers a little earlier or later. A particular bird chooses a different place to build its nest. The vineyards change with the seasons. The fields are ploughed, planted, harvested and rested. Old buildings weather, are repaired and cared for.

Something is always happening, and so I am still trying to record it—not necessarily the grand events, but the ordinary things that make up life on a traditional Klein Karoo homestead: the morning light on an old wall, the first blossoms on the fruit trees, a flock of birds suddenly appearing in the garden, the sound of a tractor working in the distance, the smell of freshly turned earth, a vineyard being pruned, a nest being built in a tree, or the new trellises in the herb garden to contain the profusion of salad tomatoes. These are small things, perhaps, but together they create the sense of place.

When I started the blog, I simply wanted to record something of life at Towerwater aan de Breede. I wanted to capture the character of an old Cape homestead and the rhythms of the seasons, partly for myself and partly because I felt that these ordinary details were worth remembering.

What I never expected was that people from all over the world would become interested in these small, everyday glimpses of life at Towerwater. Perhaps that is the most extraordinary part of the story, that a life on a traditional Klein Karoo homestead, which can feel so ordinary when you are living it day after day, has found an audience far beyond the Breede Valley.

People in different countries have taken the time to read about our old buildings, our gardens, our seasons, our birds and the daily life and activities of the homestead.

They have followed along as the years have passed. They have watched spring return, winter arrive, vineyards change colour, fruit trees blossom and the old buildings continue to weather the seasons.

And now the blog has passed 1,150,000 pageviews, a number that is almost impossible for me to comprehend, one million, one hundred and fifty thousand views of stories and photographs about a small corner of the Klein Karoo.

When I think back to that first post, I realise how little I knew about where this journey would lead. What began simply as an attempt to record life here has become a remarkable connection with people far beyond the valley. For that, I am deeply grateful.

To those who have been reading for years, and to those who have only recently discovered Towerwater, your comments, messages, questions and continued interest in this rather old-fashioned way of life mean more than I can say.

It is a strange and wonderful feeling to know that the small, everyday details of life here have travelled so far.

This morning, as I write this, the fruit trees are flowering again. The birds are busy courting and building nests. The vineyards are being worked. There is machinery moving somewhere beyond the garden. In the fields, the plough continues its slow work, with its little procession of white egrets following behind.

The valley is choreographed in its familiar seasonal rhythm as spring approaches, and I am still here with my camera, my memories and my words, trying to capture another small moment in the life of Towerwater aan de Breede.

Perhaps that is the real reason I have kept writing. There is always another season, another story, another small thing worth noticing, and as long as there is, I hope there will be another post. For now, it is enough simply to pause and look around.

The old walls are standing. The fruit trees are flowering. The birds are building their nests. The vineyards are being worked, the fields are turning brown beneath the plough, and the familiar sounds of the farm carry across the valley.

Life continues here, much as it always has, following the familiar rhythm of seasons, work and the changing landscape. And somewhere in the world, someone is taking a moment to read about it, sharing in a small glimpse of life at Towerwater aan de Breede. For that connection, and for everyone who has followed along on this journey, I am truly grateful.

Previous Birthday Blog Posts

What Price Paradise? - 2025
Packing up yesterday - 2024
Days like this - 2023
Our marmalade malady - 2022
Still life with oranges - 2021
Almond trees in August -2020
Of birthdays and blossoms - 2019
A life imagined - 2018
Looking back to the future - 2017
Reflections - 2016
Happy birthday blog - 2015
Heading for spring -2014  

Celebrating Tradition, Limewash and History

There is something about limewashing an old house that makes you feel you are participating in a ritual rather than simply doing maintenance.

As winter begins to loosen its grip and the first promise of spring appears along the Breede River, we find ourselves looking at the old buildings of Towerwater with a slightly different eye. The winter rains have left their marks. The walls have softened in colour, the edges have gathered a little dust and weather, and here and there the old limewash has begun to show the years beneath.

It is time to limewash, and it is not glamorous work. There are buckets, brushes, splashes on the ground and white fingerprints everywhere. There is the particular smell of wet lime, earthy and clean, and the constant business of stirring the mixture because limewash has a mind of its own. It settles, separates and demands to be woken up again.

But once the first brushful goes onto an old wall, something happens. The building begins to come alive.

At Towerwater, this is especially moving because the walls are not merely walls. They carry the marks of the people who built them, repaired them, leaned against them, swept their floors and opened their doors to the seasons. They are made in the old Cape way, of earth, clay, stone, lime and all the imperfect materials that belonged to a time when a building was made from what could be found nearby.

You can feel that history in the surface. A modern wall wants to be smooth and perfect. An old wall has no such ambition. It bows slightly in the afternoon light. It carries a little unevenness beneath the brush. There are places where the plaster is thicker, places where the earth beneath seems almost to breathe through the surface, and small repairs that tell their own quiet story.

Limewash suits such walls. It doesn't try to conceal them. It settles into their imperfections and makes them beautiful.

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about watching a white wall appear beneath a brush. The colour is almost startling when it is wet, grey and cold, but as it dries it becomes softer, chalkier and warmer. The rough places catch the light. The old pebbledash takes on a new life, each little stone showing itself for a moment before becoming part of the whole again.

And then there is the sun. The Cape sun has always had a way of making white buildings glow. On a late winter morning, freshly limewashed walls can seem almost too bright to look at. By afternoon, the light has softened and the buildings settle back into the landscape: white against the green, old walls beneath blue sky, the whole place looking somehow both freshly renewed and exactly as it ought to be.

Perhaps that is what I like most about limewashing. It is renewal without erasure. You don't scrape away every trace of the past. You don't try to make an old building look new. You simply give it another coat, another season of protection, another chance to face the weather.

And underneath the new limewash are all the earlier layers. Somewhere beneath our brush are the coats put on by hands long gone. There may be limewash from decades ago, perhaps repairs made by people whose names we will never know. The wall has been whitened before, and before that, and before that.

We are only adding our own thin layer to the story. There is a rhythm to the work, dip the brush, let the excess run back into the bucket, brush across the wall, step back, look, move the ladder, start again.

After a while, you stop thinking about the work itself. You notice the sounds around you: the birds, the wind moving through the trees, perhaps a tractor somewhere in the distance. You notice how the morning becomes warmer. You notice the smell of the earth after rain.

And occasionally, you stop altogether. Because standing in front of an old Cape building with a brush in your hand is a curious way of understanding time.

The people who built these places knew that buildings needed looking after. They did not expect walls to remain untouched. Limewash was part of the life of the house. It was maintenance, protection and appearance all at once.

The walls are renewed, ready for a new cycle of seasons. In a world increasingly obsessed with making things permanent, limewashing reminds us that some things are meant to be renewed.

The old walls don't resist it. They accept the fresh lime quietly, just as they have accepted the rain, the dust, the heat and the years. By the time we finish, the brushes are tired, our clothes have acquired their own white decorations, and there is lime on places where lime was never intended to be. But the buildings look wonderful. Not new, never new, just cared for.

The late-winter light catches the freshly whitened walls, and for a little while Towerwater looks as though it has stepped out of an old photograph: white gables, rough walls, green trim and that particular Cape brightness that seems to belong to another age.

Then the wind comes up from the river. The trees move. A bird calls from somewhere beyond the buildings, and we put the buckets away until next time. Because that, too, is part of the tradition.

The old buildings endure, not because time has left them untouched, but because generation after generation has taken the trouble to care for them in the traditional way. And there is something rather comforting in knowing that, for one small part of their long history, we have done the same.