Sandstone's Wildlife
At this time of the year Sandstone Estates has to take severe fire prevention precautions. However, our wildlife seems to cope very well and are continuing to breed.
There have however been some security incidents recently where packs of up to 20 dogs have been sent in from Lesotho to hunt. We are dealing with this threat.
Sandstone continues to demolish houses on various farms along the border.
A decision had been taken to demolish houses at Vailima, Pandora, and Vredenburg. These houses are subjected to constant vandalism and therefore we have decided to demolish them and recycle the materials.
Stone kraal extended to accommodate larger herd of Afrikaners.
Due to the expansion of Sandstone’s breeding herd of genuine long horned Afrikaner cattle a decision has been taken to extend the stone kraal at Hoekfontein to accommodate the larger herd.
This project has been handled in-house using natural sandstone from the surrounding mountains.
Workshops tackle major repair.
Since new one of our Case 285's has been problematic as far as its gearbox is concerned.
The rains are back!
An update on the total rainfall at Sandstone this year to date is below.
A tracked Claas combine has arrived to see if we can salvage some of the wheat crop.
The lands are still mostly under water.
Harvest Update - 8.02.11
December and January were very tough for the farm. We had almost no rain from the time we planted our wheat in July until mid November. Germination was fair but the plants struggled through the dry winter months of September and October.
Arable land lying fallow
Believe it or not this is an arable land lying fallow. The incredibly wet season has encouraged grasses of every type to co-exist and to proliferate.
Our indigenous wildlife
The constant rain and rich biological environment that Sandstone Estates finds itself in at the present time, while being very detrimental to commercial farming, has a number of spin-offs. One of these is the rapid expansion of our indigenous wildlife.
Here is a picture of Blesbok and Springbok grazing happily on the farm airstrip.
Harvest Update 18.01.2011
It's still raining and no progress is being made.
