There is something irresistible about spending time in the middle of nowhere. It feeds the soul and slows us all down to sanity. When the current owners of this 2200 ha Klein Karoo farm stumbled on it (somewhere between De Rust, Klaarstroom and Meiringspoort), the land was temptingly raw and beautiful but the farmhouse derelict. Fortunately these were not any owners. The farm ‘lucked in’ to a couple both passionate about giving the farmstead, built in 1825, a 21st Century refurbishment, and she, Marielise van der Merwe, is an architect. They included a glass and aluminium wing, but retained its authentic framework that spoke of a time when buildings and their foundations were made to last a century. ‘We were determined to keep its soul,’ she says: so they retained the yellowwood flooring, ceilings and an Aga stove, which in homestead terms is the core of the house that remains warm day and night.
