Middle Earth explored — what they're getting up to in Hogsback

There was some­thing about Middle Earth being sign pos­ted as an organic nurs­ery that had us driv­ing down a little obscure drive­way whilst in Hogsback recently. Besides, we couldn't let the Tolkienesque name of 'Middle Earth' go unex­plored, and so it was, on a rather hot morn­ing (the warmest we'd exper­i­enced so far) we found ourselves fall­ing out of our car in a rather ram­shackle drive­way to clasp the firm hand­shake of Dennis ...

Dennis is a treas­ure. A slight bearded man with twink­ling blue eyes, he is both unas­sum­ing and quietly spir­ited, with a slightly off-the-wall sense of humour. Whilst the 'organic nurs­ery' itself, set off to the side of the house with a few cut­tings in a pretty veget­able garden, was not much to write home about, the sign for his home remains on the main road for people like us, who make the effort to stumble into his domain unex­pec­tedly. He susses us out quickly by men­tion­ing obscure items like his earth­ship house, which it turns out is only in the ini­tial stages, but we nod eagerly and he quickly gauges that we're interested.

Returning inside past his aged mother on the front stoep, where she sits next to a large solar cooker and a gar­age so full of paraphernalia that it appears to include the kit­chen sink, he comes back within moments his head adorned with a rather charm­ing, old grass hat, unrav­el­ling at the rim, which he wisely uses to keep the sun off his face. We're sim­il­arly garbed and ready to explore his grounds, which we soon learn are laid out accord­ing to the prin­ciples of permaculture.

Dennis ambles off across his land, which is wild and in the state in which Mother Nature, or Gaia as Dennis refers to her, ordained. It's not ideal. There are a lot of invaders of the plant vari­ety on his prop­erty, but he's work­ing with the raspy bracken that appears to have taken over and lov­ingly explains how these are pion­eers and that he's leav­ing them. The land will restore itself to its former glory.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all of this, Dennis has built swales, a pop­u­lar rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing and soil con­ser­va­tion strategy amongst per­ma­cul­tur­ists that are slight depres­sions that run along the con­tour of the land. Within these he's planted things like oats, which the field mice are rather pleased about. It's a novel way of plant­ing in amongst the bracken, and I'm impressed.

He's also designed any num­ber of grey water sys­tems (luck­ily for him his ground runs down­hill away from the house) that involve water from his kit­chen run­ning through a sys­tem of reed beds, sand and pebble beds and finally into a stor­age tank – all home engin­eered and care­fully set up. It's admir­able, and I'm already slightly envi­ous at what he's man­aged to estab­lish for him­self. Dennis will be able to cope with the water short­ages we will exper­i­ence in the very near future.

We slowly des­cend the prop­erty along the con­tour lines and he points out vari­ous indi­gen­ous trees that he's planted, and those that have been on the prop­erty for a while. These will later provide shade. Almost at the bot­tom of the prop­erty is a large series of veget­able garden, under shade cloth and wire frame to keep the birds and baboons out. Harvesting veget­ables here has obvi­ously been a case of first come first served, but it's in full swing, which Dennis attrib­utes to his wife, whose domain this is. There are lettuces, ber­ries, spin­ach, toma­toes, goose­ber­ries, spring onions, mielies and any num­ber of herbs.

Dennis has a little mut­ter about devel­op­ment hav­ing reached Hogsback. I can appre­ci­ate that for the last 20 or so years he has chosen to escape city liv­ing. It's a com­mon theme in Hogsback, this need to escape the demands of con­sumer­ism, and I find it more than a little enti­cing. There is a slow­ness to life here that I could def­in­itely relate to.

As we walk his land he tells us how he's involved in the eco vil­lage at Khula Dharma and we hear how he man­aged to buy a three-legged plough, which he uses to fur­row his swales, but it's at Khula Dharma right now, where he intends head­ing soon to stay in the cara­van he recently acquired for him­self and took there for 'escape' time (does one need to escape Hogsback, I find myself thinking?).

We head off over to his forest of wattle trees, which he uses as fuel for fires dur­ing winter. It's cool within the two or three-deep patch of trees that extends down the para­meter of the prop­erty and we stand awhile. From here it's off to see the 'found­a­tions' for his earth­ship. He's already designed an incred­ible cool­ing and heat­ing sys­tem for the house, which he sketches out for me on one of the wooden beams in his shed — also filled with paraphernalia. There will be a com­post loo and he has the win­dows and doors already stacked in the shed, all of them recycled.

I ask if the earth­ship is to be used as a B&B and he smiles and mur­murs that it is just he who intends liv­ing here. From here we pass to the little out­build­ing out of earth he's recently built with its zink roof that will serve as a dwell­ing for one of his labour­ers. At the gar­age he laughs at his own tend­ency to col­lect junk – it's all highly prac­tical, useable junk for which he might not have a use yet, but will in the future – he calls it a study in 'gar­bology' and I smile too in under­stand­ing, as I'm mar­ried to someone who is a mag­net for 'things'.

We leave Middle Earth oddly sat­is­fied with our encounter. A brief glance through a win­dow into Dennis' life was enchant­ing -  a shared morn­ing of laughs, ideas, meth­ods and minds. What else is life for?

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