For Mandela Day last year, Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve joined ChangeAbility and Taquanta Investment Holdings in installing vegetable gardens at five homes belonging to people with disabilities in Kayamandi. The partnership continued with four more on-site workshops throughout the year, with the latest one taking place past Wednesday. Here knowledge, victories, and overcoming the challenges in growing a food garden in conditions which seem at first not possible were shared. 

An ongoing programme in Cape Winelands Biosphere, is to educate and empower people to maintain home-grown foods and make use of their surrounding area at home, whether it is sparse of water or space. This programme focuses on sustainable food security, nutrition for healthy living, being water-conscious, and community involvement. CWBR has been running workshops and talks and through this programme actively exchanged and shared knowledge. 

Taquanta, for their 64 minutes on Mandela Day, approached ChangeAbility in 2018 to sponsor the Kayamandi food garden community project for people with disabilities. ChangeAbility, a non-profit organization who pioneer programmes to encourage more inclusive communities for people with disabilities, brought together a big team of helpers from Taquanta and approached CWBR to run the first horticultural workshop of their programme. 

The initial workshop was received so well that the programme was extended from two follow up workshops over two months to four follow up workshops and three additional visits throughout 2018 ensuring additional intervention in the gardens, sustainability of the project, and ongoing support to the community until they have a self-sustainable food-producing garden. 

Each garden, with its own environment, came with its own advantages and challenges for each participant. From learning to utilize small spaces and upcycling of waste materials to having potential for a large garden on grassy hills once the area has been prepared once more seedlings were populated from the initial planting. The support network amongst the families offered a great opportunity to share knowledge and experiences in their different gardens, to share amongst themselves and their community in assisting each other and overcoming physical disadvantages. 

Both the volunteers and participants were surprised to find out that not much is needed to build and grow a food garden. The project started off with upcycled material including wooden planting boxes, buckets, ice-cream tubs, newspaper, compost, and lots of seed produced by CWBR hub ranging from beans, spinach, tomatoes, beetroot, squash, and even potatoes. These were plants requested by the group.

On each visit, there was sharing of ideas and support amongst the gardeners and CWBR and volunteers. One garden with its first round, did exceptionally well, and produced an abundance seedling. These were shared with the ones who did not have such good fortune with their seedlings at the start. Veggies have also been shared amongst the neighbours and one of the homes has started a small tree nursery.

On this last visit, it was evident that the heat, drought, and water restrictions had affected the productivity of the gardens over the Christmas period. However, this is not a setback, but a learning experience for everyone. Each garden has been provided with additional compost, seedlings, mulch,  and more planting materials to kickstart their garden again in the next workshop. 

We look forward to our next visit and am thankful for the partnership with ChangeAbility and the sponsorship from Taquanta Investment Holdings.

Ants generally get a bad press. They spoil food, encourage aphids on plants, they bite, some of them sting, some even smell. When there’s lots of them in a swarm they can be scary, too, with all those little legs rustling around at high speed. The first question I’m always asked is “How can we get rid of ’em?”

                The answer is that you can’t. Ants are the most numerous insects on Earth, and if you should succeed in removing them from one place there are thousands more to move in and take their place. It’s far more rewarding, in fact, to get interested in them, because not only are they the most numerous insects, they’re also the most fascinating.

                Ants are social animals and they live in colonies where they organise themselves in many ways that superficially resemble human society. Ants feed and care for their young; ants cooperate to find food and bring it home; ants ‘farm’ other insects and ‘milk’ them for nutritious juices; ants care for and nurse their sick and injured comrades. Ants build their own castles from leaves or sticks or tiny bits of plant litter; they build ‘stables’ for their livestock; they excavate and turn over more soil than earthworms. They keep pets and they employ servants. Some of them grow their own crops for food; others employ living ‘nutcrackers’ to crack open seeds. They build road-like tracks across the sand and through leaf litter; they form living rafts and sail across lakes and rivers. And, in their most human-like behaviour of all, they make vicious war upon their own kind.

                There are about 25 000 species of ants in world, about 1000 of them in South Africa. Some are minute and hardly visible without magnification, while others are amongst the largest ants in the world, up to a whopping 25 mm long. Some have different sizes in the same nest; others are all the same size. Ants can be black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue or even the most beautiful shimmering gold or silver – or they can be combinations of the above. They are never, ever white – so-called ‘white ants’ are really termites, related to cockroaches. Real ants are closely related to bees and wasps, occupying top spot on the insect ‘tree of life’. Most of them are completely harmless to humans, and those that are the most troublesome – the food spoilers in your kitchen, the aphid-bearers on your fruit trees – have been spread around our human living spaces by our own human commerce.

                Ants are in fact one of the most fundamentally important vectors in a healthy ecosystem – and that means environmental health for us humans too. So next time they give you trouble stop and think about the good they do, consuming millions of even more troublesome goggas, like the larvae of fleas and flies; cleaning up dead insects and even small vertebrates; recycling plant and animal material back into the soil. You don’t have to love ’em, but if you stop and look at them they’ll give you endless interest.

– Peter Slingsby

On Monday 21st of January 2019 in the morning there was a beautiful sight in the sky – A Lunar Eclipse. CWBR reached out to its extended family for photos and received some fantastic photos which were taken just outside of Riebeeck West in direction of Moreesburg. The eclipse started at 5h43 and the moon disappeared behind the horizon at about 6h00. Don’t worry if you missed it there will be another one later this year in July.

The below is on behalf of the Astronomical Society of South Africa -

"Two lunar eclipses occur during 2019. The first is a total lunar eclipse on January 21st and is visible from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the Americas, most of Oceania and easternmost Russia. From southern Africa the event is marginal, as the Moon sets around the time the eclipse begins at 04:35, mid-eclipse is at 07:12.

A lunar eclipse is visible from anywhere on Earth where the Moon is in the sky at the time (unlike solar eclipses, which are only visible from within a much narrower path. In a calendar year between four and seven eclipses (solar and lunar combined) can occur; at least two, and at most five, can be lunar eclipses. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes into the shadow of the Earth, becoming dim until emerging from the shadow. The Earth's shadow consists of two parts – the dark inner umbra and the lighter outer penumbra.

If the Moon's orbit coincided with the ecliptic, there would be a lunar eclipse every Full Moon, but because of the changing orientation of the orbit, lunar eclipses occur only infrequently. Total lunar eclipses last for up to 100 minutes but do not require eye protection (unlike solar eclipses).

The second lunar eclipse is a partial one on July 16/17 and can be seen from Australasia, Asia (except in the north & east), Africa, Europe (except northernmost Scandinavia) and most of South America. From southern Africa, the Moon will be well-placed throughout the duration of the eclipse. Mid-eclipse is at 23:30 and the umbral magnitude is 0.658"Astronomy will be a new component to the 2019 FGASA and Life Skills course. At the end of December, a two-day Night Sky course to equip mentors for the upcoming course in March 2019 took place at De Hoop nature Reserve.

WC FGASA Meeting 2018 Recap

A big thank you to everyone who attended the WC FGASA meeting this December!

It was an exceptional meeting hosted at the Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town with a continued group of speakers who have a wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm, and love for what they do. Thank you to Danial Cunnama for making this meeting extra special. 

The Programme

Arrie Combrink from National Sea Rescue Institute. Author and trail mapmaker Peter Slingsby. Biologist, researcher, and author George Branch and his wife Margo, marine scientist and author.

The Guide of the Year Award was presented to the winners, with a special mention for Cameron McMaster.

The meeting drew to a close with a tour of the premises and Astronomical museum by outreach astronomer Doctor Daniel Cunnama.

The Talks

Arrie spoke about breadth of work that NSRI are involved in and showed a video of the volunteers, who give of their time 24/7/365 days a year, training at sea. It became apparent that NSRI in Stillbaai are one big family, who work hard and give of themselves and their time completely to the community. To the motto in their work is communication, knowledge of the vessels capabilities, knowledge of the sea, and continuous practice in what they do. The volunteers at NRI are truly one of a kind.

Peter Slingsby then took the floor to talk about Ants of South Africa, and particularly his new book: Ants of South Africa The Ant Book for All. It became clear how incredible these little creatures are, and how dissimilar they are from termites, a mistake often made. They cover 10 – 15 % terrestrial animal biomass, there are over 20 000 species known worldwide, and they share at least 49 % of their DNA with you! Ants are excellent indicators of the natural environment’s health. There were also some very surprising facts, for example, ants don’t have lungs!

 George and Margo Branch spoke about what they both love: the abundant life in the shores of South Africa. And the new edition of their book Living Shores. South Africa is the only place in the world with such large diversity along the shores, in the water and on land, due to two very different currents – Agulhas and   Benguela. Margo emphasized the importance of safety when exploring the rocky shores. Always have a designated spotter to keep a look out for big waves crashing into the shore.  

Guides of the Year, nominee, and judge. From Left to right. Cuan McGeorge, Arrie Combrink, Tony Rogers, Dalfrenzo Laing, and Stephen Smuts accepting award on behalf of Cameron McMaster.