Buying into Hope for the future

Writer & Photographer: Elaine Davie.

The farm called De Draay was one of the properties owned by the pioneering Delport family of Ysterklip (The Village NEWS 15 January 2020). When Jack Delport sold the home farm, together with De Draay, about a decade ago, a portion was bought by the developers of Arabella Estate and a portion by the Cape Townbased New Property Ventures.

Sadly, the intervening years have not been kind to De Draay. Once a flourishing stock farm abutting the beautiful Bot River Estuary and well-watered by streams from the mountains, it has literally gone to seed. Over-run and throttled by a wilderness of water-guzzling alien vegetation, mainly Australian myrtle, port Jackson and pine, there is little or no evidence that it was ever a prosperous farm with rich grazing lands, interspersed with fynbos, dams and wetlands inhabited by several species of indigenous wildlife.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 17)