The drive west was one filled with cropland, mountains, plains, and small farms with workers busily irrigating and trimming roadsides. We passed Lyndenburg smelter for chrome where 70 percent goes to the United States as an export. This area is a big agriculture district, as well as mining. Lyndenburg is known as the town of suffering because so many people died from malaria in the early days.
The next pass through town was Dullstrom which is the trout capitol of the area. People come from all over to fish!
Our first tour if the day was of a diversified farm. Gerrit Roos joined us talk about his operation. Roos owns 2,750 hectares and they farm corn, soybeans, and oats. They also raise sheep and cattle (1800). They also put up hay for winter months. The sheep have a fine wool and the breed is derived from merino breeds.
The farm does some irrigation on center pivots. They rotate corn and soybeans each year. They average 25 inches of rain per year.
We stopped at one of his corn fields. It was a nice looking dryland plot. The yield potential was about six tons per hectare, which translates to about 180 bushels per acre in the states.
The farm has 30 tractors. 28 of them are the right color (that would be green). It typically takes one to two days to get parts from the local John Deere dealer.
We then visited the farms soybean crushing facility. They make there own soy meal protein to feed to livestock and sell to other small farmers in the area. The facility runs 24/7, except for Sunday. The workers work in eight hour blocks.
We had lunch on the farm and then we wandered around to watch some of the workers do their tasks.
Next up was a long drive toward Pretoria, which has about two million people, two universities, and is a large city. Our first stop there was a large butchery.
The butchery has since turned into a large grocery store. We went down to the smoke room, and the area where they dry biltong using the compressors from the fridge units to dry the meat.
The facility employs 420 people.
Eight of the girls headed out to a nearby pizza place. It was yummy!
Tomorrow we head out early and visit a feedlot and a black community, Soweto.
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