Over the last few months Tikologo has experienced what we are now identifying as a seasonal activity induced media blackout. We insure you that this is a legitimate condition but hopefully the worst of it has passed and slowly our digital and social presence will return!

That said it has really been a very exciting season on the ground. The herb garden that we started in September has established beautifully and this week will actually see our first ever dedicated harvest of medicinal herbs from the Tikologo site. These herbs are destined to become herbal teas with some amazing medicinal benefits. Winter will be used to develop our blends and work on the new tea brand so keep a look out for what will be blossoming in spring. A little part of Tikologo may just pop up in a health store near you!

As part of our focus on medicinal herbs a lot of energy has gone into the Tikologo nursery. We have spent many hours over the past few months propagating more herbs from cuttings and currently these are being potted up to grow up a little before they will be available for sale next season. We are thinking of establishing something like a metropolitan buying club so that we can bring all you lovely city folk some of our lovely farm plant babies.

A buying club basically involves a group of people from the same area ordering at the same time which then means that we can orchestrate a group delivery and this obviously works out to be much cheaper. This will also allow us to gain access to Jozi customers who are normally a little out of our geographical reach.  If there is anyone reading this in the Johannesburg area who would be interested in helping us with something like this please do get in touch. We may just give you some free plants for your efforts! growingtikologo@gmail.com is where you want to be sending those emails.

We have also been involved with helping PIppa to build her new house. As many of you may know Pippa is planning on retiring from her current role as TRC Manager and hence needs somewhere to stay which is not smack bang in the middle of it all. The house is being built on a beautiful site just over temple hill and is coming along very nicely.  We are using a building material called Compressed Stabilised Earth Blocks all of which are being made on site and of the earth. This has been an amazing process thus far and as we are half way up the walls the next few months will see the completion of the building and hopefully a happy Pippa moving into her new abode. We have tried our best to create an example of appropriate eco-building for this context. Some of the building features helping us achieve this include 49cm thick earth  walls, rainwater harvesting  tanks an onsite waste water treatment system, a naturally filtered swimming pond and solar panels which will make it 100% off-grid.

So this was meant to be a short update and we will leave it there for now but that’s not even the half of it. For the full story you will have to come and pay us a visit.

Two more things before we go.

  • Do check out our upcoming Homegrown Happiness course running over the Easter Weekend
  • Many of you who have been at TRC have tried and loved our EM Probiotics and this is just a reminder that we run a box scheme which means that you can have your seasonal EM fix delivered anywhere in the country.  The next box will ship in May so go on and get your order in.

Until next time,

Coen and the Tikologo Team