Address

1A Ave de Chavonne

We are a 1 hectare organic farm growing speciality vegetables and herbs in the Hout Bay valley. Our practices focus on promoting good soil health which means that we use no pesticides or fertilizers (organic an non- organic), are low-till, cover crop, rotate our crops, and plant hedgerows for beneficial insects. We pick our seeds and varieties for maximum flavour rather than shipping or storing well. We are NOT farm middlemen therefor everything we sell we grow ourselves so that there is full traceability.

I'm Iming owner/farmer/marketer/part time delivery driver/accountant/social media person of Meuse Farm. In my previous working lives I designed and managed infectious diseases health systems projects and worked with various HIV/AIDS NGOs. I'm originally from California but have called Cape Town home for 19 years and far prefer this hemisphere and continent.

At some point, sitting in an office with no windows inside a Manenberg hospital, I realised I'd really prefer to find a way to link human health economics to environmental conservation that involved outdoor work or at least air. Fast forward a few years involving a foray with a local NGO, exploring design thinking and social enterprises, meeting/ignoring/then marrying Jaco, and that journey led me to farming. I had an aha moment realising that good farming is indeed socially and environmentally meaningful, intellectually stimulating, and a fun economic puzzle.

For as long as I can remember, I've loved growing veg. For some reason, my parents entrusted me to operate a rototiller when I was 10yo or so. But, I knew that there is a big jump from gardening to viable market farming and that the best way to learn was practical experience. I lucked out and volunteered @stonebarns, @sistershillfarm and a few others for three months in 2015 and returned to Stone Barns as a Field Apprentice for the 2016 season. Then it was back to Cape Town to setup our farm while pregnant with Willow!

We've built a great team over the years and grown our fields and soil. Four and a half years in and things are starting to feel settled in. I'll introduce the rest of the team over the next few weeks. Thanks for sharing in the fun!