I hate dung and donkeys. Then I discovered the world’s best farm visit

I’m an urbanite at heart. Most of us are. We like our farms to come with cellar doors, French-influenced restaurants and accommodation that assumes “rustic” means fat sofas and antique tables.

An actual working farm? Meh. Who needs muddy shoes, evil smells and lectures on sheep dipping? I was once bitten by a donkey on a farm, and don’t need to repeat the experience.

The renovated Soetmelksvlei historical farm.Credit:

So I’m a bit wary when I hear about Soetmelksvlei, a farm that was established in 1694 an hour east of Cape Town and which, after five years’ renovation, recently reopened as an interactive, working farm experience.

I needn’t have worried, however, because what I find is a 21st century open-air museum for our design-forward era, all cleanly whitewashed, prettily arranged and presided over by unmuddied farmhands.

Even the donkeys are well behaved.Credit:

I’m relieved to find even the donkeys, Faf and Tjokkie, are miniature and well-behaved. The white oxen that pull kids around in a cart are placid and spotlessly clean.

Archaeologists, heritage consultants and craftspeople helped revive Soetmelksvlei but, more unusually, so did interior designers and creative tourism thinkers.

The result is a farm with serious historical credentials but without the battered, hay-blown, amateurish effect that you get in most open-air museums.

My first hint of something different is the slick reception building, with its orientation film and giant suspended fibre-glass peach. Soetmelksvlei, which originally produced wine and some meat and wheat, turned mostly to stone fruit from the 19th century.

The revived farm hovers around the late 19th century, just before electricity and motor vehicles changed everything. My first stop is the Cape Dutch farmhouse, which is surprisingly fine: piano in the parlour, four-poster bed and William Morris wallpaper in the main bedroom.

Inside Soetmelksvlei.Credit:

The detail is superb, from the antique Lee Enfield rifles on the office wall to the embroidered heritage textiles in the bedrooms. The functioning kitchen has gadgets newfangled in their day, such as cast-iron fruit peelers and a coffee grinder.

So far this is my kind of farm, where I can talk history with costumed staff members and imagine myself teleported to another era without its nasty bits.

Yet everything is fully functional at Soetmelksvlei. Bread is baked in the farmhouse kitchen and offered to visitors slathered in farm-churned butter.

The wheat used to make the bread comes from a recreation of a period water mill. The kraal-like courtyard outside the farmhouse is surrounded by functioning stables and workshops.

Kids will enjoy the regular activities such as milking cows, churning milk to separate the cream, and clambering up haystacks. These are farm activities that make even me smile.

I’m particularly fascinated by the blacksmith’s workshop, where blacksmiths use traditional methods to make farm implements and wagons. I spend a good half hour talking to chatty blacksmith Dan Devonshire about how wagon wheels are made, as he produces old-fashioned drill nails on the fire.

Adjacent farm buildings have been turned into a wonderful cabinet of curiosities, where I inspect an apothecary’s chest, model ships, stuffed animal heads and old maps.

The highlight is a Voortrekker-covered ox wagon complete with all its worldly goods: mattresses, pillows, baskets, buckets, lamps, stools, fishing rods, wooden chests and a wine barrel. It looks as if it’s ready to lurch out across the grasslands.

Later I head for lunch in the Old Stables, among the oldest surviving buildings on the farm. The walls are hung with old farming equipment, and water bottles cool in a drinking trough. Meat is being roasted and cauldrons of stew bubble in the fireplace.

This is my kind of farm. I haven’t been bitten, muddied or pestered by flies. But I’ve learnt plenty, and enjoyed a mighty fine morning.

THE DETAILS

TOUR
Soetmelksvlei costs ZAR350 ($30) or ZAR200 for children and is open Wednesday to Sunday. It’s part of Babylonstoren, which has several accommodation options and restaurants and other attractions including a cellar door and magnificent gardens. See babylonstoren.com

FLY
Qantas flies from Sydney to Johannesburg with onwards connections on South African Airways to Cape Town. See qantas.com

MORE
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The writer travelled as a guest of Regent Seven Seas Cruises (rssc.com) and Babylonstoren.