padstal

We drove out of Cape Town as the sun rose and worked our way past already busy early morning traffic.

As we approached Somerset West, the thick early morning mist mixed with the smoke of small fires burning next to the road to keep groups of commuters warm while they waited for their buses or taxis. We also encountered low cloud and very slow traffic up Sir Lowry’s Pass which crosses the Hottentots-Holland mountain range between Somerset West and the Elgin valley.

Much further on, the N2 took us along the well-known Garden Route, where one occasionally drives with tall indigenous forest trees on either side, and on to our home in the Eastern Cape.

Home was two days away and so our first stop was at the popular Houw Hoek Farm Stall for a very welcome cup of coffee.

It was still early in the morning and fellow travellers were wrapped up against the icy wind as they scurried to their vehicles instead of enjoying the tables and chairs dotted about outdoors. Inside, I drooled at the fantastic displays of dried fruit, baked goods and fresh vegetables. Not this time … the coffee proved to be the refreshment I needed to take my turn at the wheel until we stopped at the Ebb and Flow Camp in Wilderness. The Houw Hoek Farm Stall nonetheless has a place in my notebook reminding me to stop there for longer – perhaps even for a meal – the next time we drive down to Cape Town.

What do you do when you need rope, or require a long stock whip and you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town – or there is no town, as was the case for the early settlers in this country. The answer is that you make your own. Pliable strips of rawhide, or thongs, are known as riems in this country. There is even a settlement in the Northern Cape, just north of the Augrabies Falls, known as Riemvasmaak.

It is this relic constructed of old sneeze-wood poles outside the Daggaboer Padstal near Cradock that set me thinking about how farmers managed in the past:

To get back to these riems or thongs: making them requires a long process involving cutting the rawhide into strips, removing the hair and any remaining tissue and fat. The hide then has to be treated to preserve it before it can be made into leather. It has to soak for at least a week – this depends on the weather – and stirred daily until the hair is ready to come off. The hide shrinks up to about a third of its length while it dries; the strips having been cut while it is still damp. The strips (riems) are then placed over a pole or a strong branch of a tree and are attached to a heavy stone – some of which had a hole made in the centre for this purpose – and wound around this until the full length of the riem has been used up. The weight of the stone will stretch the riem so that it dries straight. Sometimes the stone would also be spun around to assist in creating elasticity in the riem.