Young farmer of the year shares his tests and triumphs

Forty-year-old Dean Barnard, who farms hops and plums, has had many successes in his life.

He has greatly improved the profitability of the family farm, Oppie Plaas Boerdery near Waboomskraal between Oudtshoorn and George in the Western Cape, won numerous awards with his hops and gin, grew the world’s heaviest plum, and won the Agri Western Cape Santam Young Farmer of the Year award in 2024.

However, behind these achievements lurk deep psychological struggles that almost drove Barnard to take his own life in 2021. At the time, hops prices had fallen by 50%, there was a drought, his plum harvest looked like a failure, COVID-19 negatively affected tourism and spirits sales, and Barnard started having panic attacks after one of his best friends, Attie Rossouw, passed away.

“Things spiralled out of control, until one day I felt like I wanted to put an end to all this suffering,” he says.

He adds that there was no logic or thinking behind this: “Many people are judgemental about suicide, saying things like ‘It is one of the sins that will never be forgiven.’ Now I know from experience that the darkness I felt was not something I could just ‘snap out of’. My anxiety was eating away at me like a cancer and prevented me from seeing another way out.”

However, before he could act on his feelings, Barnard says he felt God was telling him to pray first. So, he opened his Bible, which was lying in his bakkie, and saw the light when reading this verse: “I am the Lord your God and will heal you from all your iniquities.”

Stressors

Barnard took this promise in faith. Nonetheless, he admits that recovery was not instantaneous, but rather an ongoing struggle, and he still occasionally suffers from anxiety attacks.

With the help of a psychologist and the support of his family and friends, he learnt to identify triggers that set his panic attacks off and deal with these and his ‘lows’ in a more constructive way.

He also learnt the importance of getting enough sleep, following a healthy diet, getting enough exercise, and being less critical of himself when things get tough.

He says that he felt terribly ashamed about his first panic attacks: “We rushed to the hospital seven or eight times in something like two weeks, thinking I was having a heart attack, each time to be told it was ‘just’ a panic attack. To me this meant that it was all in my head and I had to pull myself together.

“But I couldn’t, and the false belief that a man has to be strong and not talk about his emotions worsened the situation by isolating me from my loved ones and deepening my shame.”

With therapy, Barnard was able to identify and address false beliefs and irrational thoughts and deal with the trauma he had suppressed over the years.

“I thought that things fell apart because I had lost my friend, but it later emerged that complications during the birth of my daughter, Deanca, contributed to my distress.

“I also went through other traumatic experiences, like when my son, Wean, nearly died at age two because of an allergic reaction; my father, Deon, suffering what seemed like a heart attack, which later also turned out to be an anxiety attack; and my earlier struggles as a student,” says Barnard.

Farming challenges

Barnard also became aware of the immense psychological impact that farming was having on his mental state. His father called him back to the farm after he failed his first year of studies at the George campus of Nelson Mandela University in 2004. Barnard had to start at the bottom as a general worker to learn the ropes and work his way up from there.

“At the time I thought it was unfair that I had to do menial labour, but today I am grateful as it gave me insight into the work and the time it might take to accomplish certain jobs, and I developed great respect for our workers,” he says.

In 2019, Barnard’s father offered him an opportunity to buy into the farm. As a co-owner, Barnard became aware of the huge responsibility that came with the running of a farm, and all the people who were dependent on its success. The farm employs three permanent, 20 semi-permanent, and up to 60 seasonal workers.

“At the time, the question of whether we were going to make it financially was continuously running through my head and giving me sleepless nights. I feel responsible for our employees, even the seasonal workers, as more than 90% of them return to us each year. They have nowhere to go if they cannot work here,” he says.

To put his dilemma into perspective, he says that it costs over R400 000/ha to establish a new plum orchard. The trees only produce commercial yields from the fourth or fifth year of production, but until then a farmer must fork out for labour, fertilisation, and irrigation costs that amount to almost R100 000/ha per year.

“The stakes are high, especially when you have a small farm like ours. There simply is no room for mistakes. On top of this you must deal with market fluctuations, volatile weather, and any other issue thrown at you, like skyrocketing input costs and logistical challenges,” he explains.

Diversifying production

To alleviate his worries over the future of the farm, Barnard realised he had to diversify production and not keep all his eggs in one basket.

Oppie Plaas Boerdery is one of only seven private hop farms in the country, with most of its income, until recently, generated from 32ha.

After Barnard became part of the farm management, production was expanded to include 8ha of plums and a total of 4ha of pecan nuts and almonds.The latest plan is to replace the nut orchards with plums and ultimately increase plum production to 20ha over the medium term.

“The plums show a profit from year six, whereas nuts only pay themselves off by year 12. The nuts also require special equipment, such as blowers and shakers, in which we fortunately have not yet invested, and the pecan nuts seem to require longer daylight hours to perform optimally,” he says.

The plums are packed at packhouses of other farmers in the Langkloof.

“I have managed to buy a second-hand packing and sorting line for a decent price but cannot yet afford to put up a packhouse. I will put it up in phases soon as I have money to do so,” he says.

Along with this, Barnard has built a beautiful venue that caters for weddings, special functions, and even the local church’s bazaar, ventured into catering, and started producing gin under the brand name 10 Oxes.

The name is in reference to the oxen owned by his ancestors, who worked around George around the 1880s to supply government with wood. The oxen went missing, only to be found at Waboomskraal, where the family then decided to settle and later bought their first farm around 1905.

“The gin label has proved to be a great channel to increase revenue from the functions and catering business and serves as a creative outlet for me and my wife, Carla,” he says.

So far, they have released two labels: their chocolate and strawberry gin, named after the ox Dapper, is made from fresh strawberries; and their fig and black pepper gin, named after another ox, Skulder, which is made from fresh figs. The gin does not contain any artificial flavourings or colourants.

Barnard points out that he developed the recipe for the brands in a small distiller on the farm, and has the gin mass-produced by a commercial distiller. “I did the sums, and it would not have made economic sense to buy the size of distiller I would have needed,” he says.

He also makes use of advisers to help him make informed production and financial decisions.

He harvested 79t/ha of Autumn Treat plums, his main variety along with Fall Fiesta, two years ago, and 104t/ha last year, but he has now learnt that production should be closer to 76t/ha to get a good balance between the size and the quality of fruit produced.

“The trees should be managed carefully, as the fruit will get too big if you thin the trees too much. One of our plums was registered at the Guinness World Records this year. It weighed 484g when it was picked but had lost 20g by the time it was verified, so it was recorded as weighing 464g.”

Sustainability

Barnard says that, just like his father and grandfather before him, he has been doing everything he can to enhance the sustainability and resilience of the farm, and to try and leave the farm in a better condition than he found it for the benefit of future generations.

To address a declining trend in hop yields, he started planting 8 000 instead of the traditional 13 000 plants per hectare, the latter being replaced after 15 to 18 years depending on production volumes. The change is aimed at reducing competition and increasing the productive life of the plants.

The switch has resulted in lower yields in the first year, but higher yields from the third and fourth year.

Mixed cover crops are planted where nut trees have been removed and before new plum orchards are established, while single cover crops are planted between plum and hop rows.

Clover is planted in the plum orchards for its ability to fix nitrogen and attract bees for pollination. “We put down 20 to 25 beehives per hectare, with the hives placed at the cultivars used as cross pollinators to improve pollination.

“This year, we ‘harvested’ pollen from cross pollinators as an experiment, with the idea of cold-storing the pollen and then blowing it on the trees in years when pollination is poor,” says Barnard.

Oats are planted between the hop rows, primarily to suppress nematode species that might be harmful to the plants.

“We used to spray the hops when we removed a plantation, but I suspect this led the nematodes to move deeper into the soil. About 10 years ago, we started removing the plants’ roots and then leaving this plant material out in the sun to destroy soil pathogens.”

In the past, the bottoms of the hop plants, which form bushes, were sprayed to reduce the number of leaves at the bottom of the plant and prevent these from clogging up the harvesting machine.

These days, Barnard uses his neighbour’s sheep to graze the lands for about a month up to two to three weeks before picking the hops from mid-January to February.

“It is a more environmentally friendly way to reduce foliage, and the sheep’s movement and excrement help to enrich the soil. My neighbour benefits because hops are a highly nutritious animal food,” he says.

The bines (climbing stems of the hop plants) are thrown on his neighbour’s land, where the sheep eat as much as they can for about two months before the remainder is moved back to Barnard’s land. There, it is laid open, after which it is crushed, which helps to separate the dry matter and the strings.

“We have found a buyer for the polypropylene strings, but he can only take it off our hands if the strings are completely clean. It takes about four years to clean the strings. The dry matter is used as compost in our poorer soil where hops is planted,” Barnard says.

Barnard this year also decided to start using drones in combination with satellite technology for remote sensing to help identify areas that are in stress on the farm, and he has used a drone to plant cover crops on some of his open lands.

“I did not think the planting with the drone would work, as there was a big difference in the size and weight of the seed that had to be planted. The drone, however, dispersed the seed very evenly.”

The future

Barnard says that winning the Western Cape Young Farmer of the Year Award has been a great blessing:

“My mouth hung open when I saw all the wonderful things that last year’s winner, Christi van den Heever of Graaff Fruit, is doing. Some of the things obviously will not work on our farm, but the exposure broadens your mind and helps you to think differently about things.”

Barnard says that he prayed and asked God what he should say when he was announced as the Western Cape Young Farmer of the Year, and he felt that God wanted him to tell the story about his mental struggles.

“I am not ashamed of my story anymore, and hope that it will encourage other farmers who are also going through difficult times.”

Email Dean Barnard at dean@oppieplaasvenue.co.za.

Source: Farmersweekly.co.za