The entire farming unit consisting of the farms La Rochelle, Driefontein and Stoetvlei.
Situation
The unit is situated 17km from Veterstad and 35km from Bethulie on the South Side of Lake Gariep the largest dam in South Africa.
Security, Land claims and stock theft.
We are extremely fortunate to live in a very safe area with no land claims. On all our farms we have no stock theft. A few farms around town have isolated stock theft of single animals for slaughter. We also have very good neighbours and a good radio communication system for any emergencies like fires but also to communicate with our workers for operationalpurposes.
House
Most buildings are to be found on La Rochelle.
Modern, multi-story farm house with 6 bedrooms, 4 with on suite bath or shower rooms.
1 Bathroom, two separate toilets, one big kitchen and pantry, one living room- dining room-kitchen combination( open plan). One big dining room – living room combination.Big office.Room for safes and gun safe.2 garages.2 big sunrooms.One section of the house is like a separate flat making it ideal for two families to live in privacy. The house also has fast reliable ADSL Internet, MTN booster tower and DSTV satellite dish. There are also 2 water softener and one decalcified.
Worker houses:
5 Worker houses with living room, two bedrooms, Shower and toilet.
2 Worker houses with living room, one bedroom, Shower and toilet.
All houses have hot water from Solar Geysers and Electricity
Outside buildings: La Rochelle
One large shearing shed, Ram stable, horse stables, and sale complex all in one.
One very large closed shed for Lucerne bales
Shed for all the trailers, bailers, rakes, food mixer and other implements.
Smaller building for workshop, fuel and oil room and a parking for a big truck.
Smaller building, one garage, Meat room with Cold storage room and washing room.
Old house used for packing space.
Excellent Sheep and Cattle handling facilities.
A one man Australian designed sheep and cattle crawl capable of handling 300 cattle and 2000 sheep. Excellent loading facilities. And also double race for sheep and single race and crush for cattle. Has got its own building housing all sheep medicines and weighing facilities. One set of sheep crawls in the veld.
Electricity- Available at the house and all out buildings as well as at the river for pumping and pivots.
Out buildings Driefontein.
Old house situated in a very scenic spot with sheep crawls and a cattle handling facility. Horse stables and other old buildings. Quite a bit of yellow wood beams. Very big Shearing shed or goat shed. In the veld two good sheep handling facilities.
Out buildings Stoetvlei.
Good set of Sheep and cattle handling facilities.
One Shed used for Lucern and other storage
Climate and Rainfall
Farming unit has a summer rainfall with an ave. of 425mm (17inch.).and a climate similar to all of central South Africa.
Composition of veld types:
The area is situated in a unique area where the rainfall is high enough to give you good summer grass and Karoo bush veld ensuring a high carrying capacity but with no sour veld that needs licks or other supplements during winter time.
A river flows through the property for +/- 11km with a very high summer carrying capacity because of the two large concrete dams and permanent water. There is an abundance of reeds and grasses allowing grazing for atleast an extra 100 head of cattle. The river also acts as a natural fattening ground for ewes, lambs or oxen.
Size and grazing types
The unit is 5549 ha
Undulating hill camps
+/- 605 ha. Excellent winter grazing because they are warm with a lot of edible trees such as wild olives, white stink wood and also good grass and bush.
River veld.+/-1000 ha. This is excellent high nutrient grazing that is all flat veld lying all along the river.
Lands 15ha all under irrigation. 3x Pivots and some dragline. The lands are well established high yielding lucerne and grass clover pastures. On the farms there is still plenty of water for alot more irrigation if needed.
Prickly pears.+- 60 ha of prickly pears for grazing purpouses in times of drought.
Vlei camps.+/- 474 ha.Very high carrying capacity with a mixture of red grass, finger grass, Sparobis and plenty other perennial species.
Flat veld:(vlakte veld) 3395 ha. This is good flat veld with alot of red grass finger grass, birdseed grass and other perennial grasses. There is also alot of AnkerKaroo, bloublommetjie and wit blommetjie mixed in between the grass to give you all year round grazing both summer and winter.
Number of camps and watering points:
10 Land camps, 2 Lucerne, 7 grass clover, 1 winter and summer feed.
80 Farm camps all with their own clear clean water drinking troughs.
All boreholes are very shallow with more than sufficient water.
Water is obtained from windmills, sun pump and 2x submersible pumps.
Dams and fountains:
There are two very large weirs in the river that create a lot more reeds and grazing. We also use to irrigate from the one.
Apart from the numerousfountains all along the river there is also a very strong fountain at Driefontein that keeps an earth dam full all year round with excellent bass fishing.
There are also numerous other weaker fountains in the hills. There is one very big earth dam and 4 smaller earth dams that were used for irrigation of +- 70 ha but we use them only for storage purposes to increase the height of the water table over the entire property protecting us from severe droughts. There are also numerous earth berms on all the bigger streams running from the hills distributing the water over the veld further greatly increasing carrying capacity.
With all the water conservation having been done and good grazing systems there is very little runoff water from any of the ground.
Roads:
A lot of time and money was spent on all the roads over the entire property thus you can get everywhere even in rainy weather. The roads also all have good humps to prevent any water erosion.
Game:
Because of the flatness of the farm and the beautiful river the farm does lend itself to also be converted into a fantastic game farm.
On the farm there are plenty of Kudu, Reebuck, Springbuck, Duiker, steenbuck and warthog. Baboons remain in the hills and cause no problems. Specially during the winter months we also have Herds of Eland moving in all along the river and the hills. All this gives you extra income.
Fishing – There is excellent bass, yellow fish and carp, fishing all along the river and also in the big concrete weirs and fountain dam. We are also just 7km from the edge of Lake Gariep the biggest in South Africa where there is also excellent fishing and a facility to launch your boat to explore the vast lake.
Achievements 2015
This farming unit this year received the covetedaward for the best small stock herd in South Africa and also a Platinum achievement for the most productive Boran cow in South Africa. Over the years leading South African Stud herds of Mutton Merino’s ,Afrino’s , Dorpers, Damara’s and Meatmasters where run on this farm. South African and even World record prices were paid for our stud animals. Diligent breeding and selection played a big part but the farming unit had a very big influence for this to be achieved farming under totally extensive conditions with no extra feeding of production ewes and only limited feeding for rams being prepared for auction. The farm has also got a very clean health status as we do a lot of exporting from the property to various parts of the world. We will undoubtedly miss this huge advantage greatly in the future. Hope the new owner will continue with this fantastic farming unit’s proud tradition.
Price
Driefontein – 2407 ha at R5,500/ha = R13,238,500 excl.
Stoetvlei– 1169 ha at R6,000/ha = R7,014,000 excl.
La Rochelle-1973ha at R6,000/ha = R11,838,000 excl.
Total size and average price per ha – 5,549 ha @ R5,783.11 per ha = R32,090,500
Total – R32,090,500 excl.