Between the vegetable garden and the livestock pens, a family invests in the prospects of a brighter tomorrow
Hi, my name is Nonkululeko. I’m 36, and I haven’t saved for retirement…yet.
Yes, I did the thing financial experts tell us not to do. I withdrew from the pension fund from my last resignation a couple of years ago.
I have a few pension/preservation funds saved, but it’s not enough. It’s not as reckless as you think. I sat down with a financial advisor, who said my thinking made sense.
The thinking was to get rid of my most significant debt at the time (my car), and invest in my agribusiness, which I run from my parents’ smallholding.
I started the vegetable garden there and learnt farming on the same land. My dad looks after the livestock, which are his passion.
My husband and I are looking for a smallholding of our own, as a base for us and our children.
I went into farming with the aim of 1. Making my family’s smallholding more productive, 2. Becoming more self-sufficient and 3. Leaving behind a legacy for my kids.
I come from a family background of wealth deficit, known as ’black tax’. I remember that TV ad by a financial institution, where a seemingly punitive black father takes a portion of his children’s earnings from the time they are young to adulthood.
When their father dies, they discover that he had kept every cent he took from them and recorded it in a ledger, as an investment for their future.
My parents are the generation that had to look after everyone else as soon as they started working. They didn’t have much money left after looking after their parents, siblings, and their children, as well as their siblings’ children. The cycle continues.
Now, in their retirement, government pension only just gets my parents through the month. That’s where the farming investment comes in. The vegetable garden feeds them and gives them surplus to sell.
They have cattle and sheep that they breed and trade, and chickens that lay eggs for the household and for selling. The chickens get sold for meat at the end of their cycle.
I bought pasture-raised-chicken infrastructure from a fellow farmer who was relocating, and part of my own savings went into drilling a borehole. That groundwater goes a long way to keeping the livestock and the food garden hydrated.
It will take me another few years to break even, and another few years after that to independently run the agribusiness.
Our journey into this lifestyle has given us a lot more than we put in. Health, and exponential growth, has been our wealth.
For decades, I watched my father getting up at 5am daily, and putting on a shirt and tie to report to a desk job.
Now he gets up at 5am, and dons his overalls to tend to his livestock and garden, a pastime he has always enjoyed. He is stronger than ever and looks fulfilled in his retirement.
It’s not quite the coastal home, globe-trotting, or leisurely days one pictures in retirement, but it’s as good as it gets.
I can see myself retiring in the same way, with a bit more intent, and more investment of time, money and effort over a longer period.
I will be waking up most days and putting on my overalls — a more stylish variety — and working the farm, or at least managing production for the day.
When I’m not at the farm, I’ll be consulting at someone’s backyard garden or at a community garden project. I’ll be doing talks about climate-smart agriculture, or writing books about healing through food and medicinal plants.
Even with a late start, I will have money to put away towards that retirement plan. My journey has already started.
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