The psychology of putting your stuff out there

 A year ago, I created a new product for YOLO, a YOLO Garden Sieve. A friend had sent me a video of something that he had seen. I found the product listed in the UK - same product sold under three different brands (probably made in Asia and imported by different companies with their logo stuck on to it). I read through hundreds of product reviews and the same complaints kept coming up. But, I thought the concept was a good one and I was sure that I could improve on it. I made five major changes, additions or innovations from components to materials to make this a really awesome product.

I know a steel manufacturing business in George so I contacted them to see whether this was something that they would be able to make for me. With their confirmation, I drew up the design and made a cardboard 'prototype' for them - and myself - to gauge the size and components.

The factory manufactured a steel prototype for me and with only one small adjustment, I was very happy with the result.

I asked the factory to make three stock units, which they completed. That was a bit less than a year ago.

Why have I waited so long to put this awesome product out there?

A day or so after I received the stock units, I left for Expedition Africa. A week after I got back from the race, I left for the Seychelles, where I spent two weeks visiting family and exploring trails. I returned home to the craziness of the dogs (I still had all three foster puppies then) and catching up on YOLO and AR Gaiters work.

And a week after this dad-drama began. We're 10-months down with no let up. This has sapped a lot of time - hours every week, and both psychological and emotional energy. I've felt depleted and lacking in capacity to deal with anything new.

To get the YOLO Garden Sieve to market, I still had a lot that I needed to do: finalise packaging for courier delivery, work up assembly instructions, make videos, take photos, create the website page, write content and set up the product listing.

I had a good early part of this year with a lot of travel and event work. Returning each time meant catch-up time again (admin waits for no man).

Over the last few weeks, I have been sufficiently settled to attack these tasks. Earlier this month, I put the product up on the YOLO website, creating a page, adding content and images, editing video clips, and adding the online-order product listing.

For the last half-dozen days, I have worked intermittently on the assembly instructions, and creating all the drawings. I'm no CAD designer or technical draughtsman, but my drawings for each stage of the assembly have come out really well.

On the bright side of the delay in launching, I have used the YOLO Garden Sieve many times over the seven or eight months to sift compost and soil for a variety of projects. I've separated out roots, stones, leaves, uncomposted material and also beetle 'houses' and large white grubs with great success. I've filled bags of material and also a new raised bed. This has allowed me to assess the wear-and-tear on the sieve to send this product out there knowing that it is robust and that it does what it is meant to do.

While time, capacity and energy have been factors, there has also been a psychological component to getting this product out there.

I think the sieve is awesome and for people who need to sieve soil or compost regularly, it is an incredible asset. It works effectively, and it is made to be strong, robust and long lasting. 

I like it, but what if no one else does? What if I get no orders? While this sounds silly, one has to be able to handle the disappointment of a product not taking off. 

Realistically, this is a niche product, like my YOLO Compost Tumbler. But, it is perfect for the right type of person.

With the sieve now out there on the YOLO Compost Tumbler website, Facebook and Instagram, there is still work to be done to reach out to potential customers to let them know directly about this fabulous YOLO Garden Sieve.

The base work is done and I am pleased to now have it out there. Holding thumbs.

Rebuilding YOLO Compost Tumblers business

I started the YOLO Compost Tumbler business in early 2017 with Celliers' superb design of the compost tumbler unit and my passion/obsession for recycling / waste reduction. At this time, we needed a composting solution for our home and while Googling concepts for compost heaps, Celliers stumbled across compost tumblers. They made so much sense. We ran with it.

YOLO has never been a big business as it has often struggled with product supply challenges from the factory. This makes it really difficult to market and promote a product when you do not have anything on the shelf to supply to customers. Nonetheless, YOLO has a niche, loyal following and scope for expansion.

YOLO was also severely compromised by last year's factory closure. When I got my assets back, I moved the moulds to a moulder here in George. Through summer, they struggled with loadshedding and keeping up with their existing orders and were not able to get to even test moulding my YOLOs. I moved the moulds in February to another moulder in Cape Town who had more capacity. 

In late March, I travelled through to Cape Town to approve the moulding and assembly of the test units. They were perfect. These were the first units moulded since May/June last year! The first moulded and completed products started going out to waiting orders four weeks ago.

I have a lot of work to do to get YOLO properly up and running and out there again. The first step is having stock on hand - I do have some stock now with the moulders. And then getting word out there more. This means making videos and sharing content more regularly.

I've met with a marketing guy (a YOLO customer who loves his YOLOs and sees much scope for expansion) but have yet to secure his services until I get my stock flow sorted. I look forward to hearing his ideas. Good to have an outside perspective.

YOLO is quieter over winter so I have some a bit of time to prepare and look at a push for spring and summer.

Factory sale success

 I've got a factory sale on my YOLO Compost Tumblers at the moment. I created a Facebook advert for this and put it out there. 

I've found Facebook ads to be a hit-and-miss. The last one I did got many likes from dummy profiles and people completely outside of my target market. I once addressed this to Facebook - and got a response. The customer care person suggested that my ad was perhaps recruiting new customers. Hard to describe to someone outside of South Africa how I know my market and how I know when I look at the profiles of people that these people don't really exist. I left it.

This ad seems to have hit the mark with better-than-expected uptake.

The factory sale is well timed as autumn and winter are great season to get into composting. Lawn cuttings are at a low (less volume to deal with when you're starting out on a composting journey) and carbon-rich dry leaves are abundant - a key source of dry materials to 'balance' out moisture-rich kitchen peelings.

Over the past year or so, the factory has collected a bunch of tumbler shells that have blemishes of some or other kind. These are usually the same colour as the plastic and range from pre-heating marks to porosity, smudged logos or overcooking discolouration (darker than normal) inside. Blemishes have no effect on the structure and longevity of the shell. Purely aesthetic, like a scar or pimple on you. The factory passes on a good discount to me to move the units, which take up space, and to get back some of their spend on material, gas, and labour.

The factory sale has gone well with all but three units (one small, two medium) gone. This has been a good exercise to go through.

Incremental behaviour changes for waste management

 My mom thinks I'm a bit radical when it comes to recycling, composting and waste. 

I separate my trash into general and recyclables for our municipal waste collection. Our general waste is low - less than a shopping bag each week. Recyclables - from packaging - make up the bulk. We're fortunate to have a municipal collection of recyclables in George, but really, recycling is not the solution to waste. Not bringing these items into your home in the first place is the solution.

I compost organics in my YOLO Compost Tumbler.

I ecobrick plastic packaging and take my ecobricks to the environmental centre at the Botanical Gardens (previously I sent them to collection projects).

I save plastic bottle caps for the Sweethearts Foundation - these come from home, work and those I pick up off the roads/trails.

I don't use straws (even paper ones). I have a reusable, glass, Restraw for those times when I want to use a straw for a milkshake, smoothie or beverage.

I love my fabric shopping bags and have not bought a plastic bag in about four years (and at this stage it was only about 4 bags that year!). I've got smaller net bags to use for loose fruits and veg. These live in my car and handbag.

If I know I'm going to get takeout, I take along my own containers. I do use long-lasting, reusable plastic containers for almost everything from lunch at work to leftovers in the fridge, and takeout.

I've got bowl covers to use instead of cling wrap.

I swopped to cotton buds with paper stems when they became available a few years ago. 

I abhor disposable face masks. There is no good reason you can give me to justify their use when there are washable, fabric masks readily available.

I stopped buying baby wipes years ago. If I may need these like, for example, when on a roadtrip, I have a facecloth and bottle of water in the car.

I switched to a Mooncup and washable cotton pads more than six years ago to replace disposable pads and tampons.

I didn't start off doing all of these things. One-by-one I've added one conscious behaviour and then another so that they have become habits over time. 

I'll walk out of a store with my goods bundled into a 'pouch' of my tee-shirt rather than purchase a plastic shopping bag (principle, not cost). If I visit a place without composting, I would rather dig my banana peel into your garden (or a bed on the sidewalk) than put it into your trash bin. I save bottle caps that I pick up to add to my collection - I just can't leave them on the ground.

If you, like me, are in your 40s or older, you will have parents who grew up without clingwrap, ziplock bags, shopping bags and mountains of packaging, and too many disposable, single-use products. What has happened to us?

Enviroment-conscious actions have to be as convenient as the waste-generating behaviours to which we have become accustomed. 

Small, light and compact reusable fabric shopping bags, like my Forget-me-not Pouch from SUPA (Single Use Plastic Alternatives) has made it easy to always have a fabric shopping bag on hand for when I pop into the shops. My YOLO Compost Tumbler has changed the game for me in terms of composting convenience and effectiveness.

Have I arrived at Zero Waste status? No. I'm not even close. I'll count my actions as progress when I can seriously cut the amount of packaging that goes out each week for recycling collection and to eliminate my use of single-use products. 

In December, I babysat my mom's dog for two weeks. A Maltese, Bella gets tear-stained cheeks. We've got an eye solution that we use to wipe her eyes daily. To apply the wipe, we use a cotton pad. I did her eyes twice a day. That's two cotton pads a day. I started washing them to reduce my waste. They do last a few washes but the disposability and waste of this process really hit me.

Around this time an ad popped up on social media for the Danish-designed LastObject products - reusable cotton pads and earbuds. Of course, this caught my attention.

We've got a Danish customer who was heading this way in January. I ordered, had them sent to him and he brought the products out for me. 

It was love at first sight. Both of these are practical and functional, and they come in great colours with outstanding design. The earbud should last 1,000 uses and each round (cotton pad alternative) is good for at least 250 uses (there are 6 in each pack). The rounds can be machine washed. They are made from cotton and wood fibres so they can be composted at the end of their life.

I got in touch with LastObject because these products beautifully complement my YOLO Compost Tumblers. They agree too. I'm in the process of putting together my first order.

I also reached out to Restraw. I first ordered their glass straws about six years ago. They reminded me of glass pipettes from the lab in my past life. I broke my Restraw a few months ago after it slipped out of its holder when my bag when flying. I made contact with them and will be adding these to my YOLO shop - because I really like them and they work.

We certainly can't plead ignorance when it comes to waste and the environment. There are alternatives and replacements so it really falls on us to be more conscious and to see how we can change our behaviours - one at a time - to do better.

Building a garden for The Joburg International Flower Show

During this past week, I was involved with building a garden for The Johannesburg International Flower Show, a new event created to be South Africa's equivalent of the 'Chelsea Flower Show'. I teamed up with landscaper Danielle Day - The Garden Girl. We'd met last year through YOLO. I love her work and ours has been a great partnership.

Dan created our design for a kitchen courtyard garden - it is charming. What I love most about it is that you'll look at our garden and think, "This is awesome, I can do something like this in my courtyard / small garden space". And you can!

Dan had a clear plan for the week starting with the layout of the site on Monday and brick laying of the pathway and perimeter to installing our wall and washing line, the planting boxes, and then the planting and finishing touches.

What was really exciting is that we use my pre-production YOLO Concrete Mixer to mix the concrete to plant poles. The one challenge we'll have in the marketing of this unit is really around behaviour change. If you've mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow for 15 years, it will take a bit to change to using something that is neater, cleaner and more convenient purely because it is different.

Using the pre-production YOLO Concrete Mixer for stand building. We emptied a 40kg concrete premix bag into the YOLO and added water. The tap was downhill - about 15m from our stand. We rolled the YOLO up to where we needed it and poured the concrete into the holes for the poles. Job done.

Compost delivery - kindly sponsored for our show garden by Stanler Farms. This compost is so rich.

Paved walkway. We used bark chips in the gaps and for the rest of our flooring.

Composting plays a big role in any garden to improve soil quality and provide nutrients to plants. The theme of our garden is "From table to garden" because all of the organic materials that come out of your kitchen as a result of meal preparation can go straight into a YOLO Compost Tumbler to create compost that can go into your garden. Less trash going out of your home and more goodness going into your soil.

We've incorporated a medium-sized YOLO Compost Tumbler in our kitchen courtyard garden.  Organic material from your kitchen and home, like fruit and vegetable peeling, egg shells, egg trays, tea bags, and coffee grounds can go straight into your YOLO. And the compost, can go straight back into your garden.

Danielle has cleverly planned our four planting boxes with plants for Health & Immunity, Digestion, Skin and Mental Health. Take a look at the plants, see what you can identify. Which colour corresponds to each health theme? Elands Nursery kindly provided the strong and healthy plants that decorate our stand.

We've got garden judging on Monday afternoon and the show starts on Wednesday through to Sunday. It should be an interesting adventure this week.

JHB International Flower Show collaboration with The Garden Girl

The new Johannesburg International Flower Show (30 Oct - 3 Nov 2019 at Waterfall City) has been on my radar for a few weeks after a YOLO Compost Tumbler customer, whose company is involved with the event, contacted me saying that it would be a great to exhibit YOLO (she loves hers).

After five days of exhibiting at Decorex two weeks ago, things have moved along very speedily and I'm really excited about the direction that things are going.

Last year I met 'The Garden Girl', a Joburg-based landscaper, when my pink-and-grey YOLO Compost Tumblers caught her attention. Her company colours are pink and grey. Danielle (aka 'Dan') does a lot of residential work and my compost tumblers fit in perfectly - she has installed a couple of tumblers for her clients. From the get go, we connected.

I follow Dan's 'The Garden Girl' Facebook page and just love her before-and-after photographs. What I appreciate most is how she uses clean lines, simple upgrades, existing materials and clever use of practical plants and flowers to create a garden that is pleasing - a space that can be used and enjoyed.

She recently assisted a client with a small project where the client sent Dan a photo or the space they wanted to improve, and Dan sent back a 3D rendering and instructions on what plants to use and how to create the improvement. I just loved it!

When I moved to Parys, I totally revamped my front 'garden' by creating a geometric pattern with 'quadrants' using gumpoles - there are two identical shapes on either side of the walkway. The big oak trees on the pavement creates dense shade throughout the summer and so plants don't do very well here. I'm not big into watering or maintenance, which doesn't help either. I've got existing plants and newly planted plants... all in all it is not what I envisaged and it looks scruffy when I wanted neat-and-tidy.

I emailed Dan before I went to Decorex to say, "I need your help please".

At Decorex, I met a lady from the Johannesburg International Flower Show (a different one to the lady that I'd been in contact with). Shelley had made a bee-line for our stand announcing, "You just have to have YOLO at the flower show!". She didn't yet know that I'd already had comms with the event; she specifically handles gardens and outdoors exhibits. Shelley suggested that I incorporate the compost tumblers into a garden display, which is something totally beyond my frame of reference. I got back from Decorex and called Dan.

The wheels turned quickly and the next day (last week only!) Dan met with Shelley to get the specs and rundown, during last week we whatsapp'd inspirational images to each other, and today Dan came through to Parys.

Hanging with Dan the Garden Girl.

Our theme is 'Kitchen Courtyard Garden' and Dan has really come up with lovely design for a garden that even I would be able to manage!

She will rope her mom and dad into creating some of the bits that we'll need; I'll rope in my mom, Celliers and our factory to create others. Dan has things and I have things that we will incorporate and then there will be other items that we will need to borrow and source for the show. She is definitely the brains and skills behind this design and the implementation. I'll be a good assistant.

Tickets for the show are already on sale. This show is destined to become an annual feature event - to be South Africa's own 'Chelsea Flower Show'. Considering how well South African landscapers, designers and gardeners have done abroad, we will be in for a treat on home soil. There will be gardens to see, plant, flower- and garden-related items to purchase, live music to listen to, and workshops to attend. The Johannesburg Flower Show website is johannesburgflowershow.co.za

I have never been involved in anything like this before so it will be an exciting journey. We have two months to get the pieces together to create magic.

Digesting 2018: YOLO & Vagabond (pt 1)

We're two weeks into January and I haven't even begun to digest last year. It was one helluva ride. 

This was my lowest blog-count year since 2006! It wasn't that I didn't have anything to write about, I just didn't get around to putting my thoughts down.

My memory of much of the year is actually pretty fuzzy. I worked too many hours on too little sleep, which over many months definitely messed with my memory.

While the year left me feeling like I'd been run over by a freight train, it had a dose of good with the bad. I have to really think about the good because bad has that awful way of permeating into every aspect of one's life whether it really was a significant proportion or not.

YOLO Compost Tumblers

My year started out with a bang on the YOLO  side - very, very busy. 

I had stock in the factory from before xmas and by the end of the first week of Jan I was all out. On one side, this is a great position - sold out and having a product that is in demand. On the other, being out of stock means a lot more admin. Customers have to be kept in the loop about how production is progressing and when they can expect their unit. This significantly ramps up the amount of communication needed for each order.

The year went in waves of building a little stock and then having orders exceeding production speed.

The winter months of June and July were quiet (as expected) and gave me the chance to focus on Vagabond (see below). August kicked off with the Decorex show, YOLO's second time there. We had another good show. The show coincides with spring, when people are searching online about gardening and composting... We've been busy ever since.

We do sell YOLO through Takealot too, although I've found it challenging to keep enough stock there. Mainly because I setup a production list including orders and a bunch of extras for Takealot and for factory stock and before I even get all of the units from the factory, I've already assigned them to direct orders. I've had quite a bit of stock on Takealot since mid-December.

We'll ramp up production this year. I'll have some more units going off to Australia in February.

YOLO really is a delight and I thoroughly enjoy my interactions with customers. I've learned a lot about composting since I started YOLO (most two years ago) and I keep learning from experience, articles and my customers as we go along.

It really is heartening how many people are trying to do better with their waste at home by refusing items that they don't need, reducing what they consume and use, reusing where they can, recycling what can be recycled and composting organic waste. Makes a huge difference!

If you haven't liked the YOLO Facebook page yet, please do so.

VAGABOND KAYAKS

Our new company, Vagabond Kayaks, has dominated my existence since before we launched at the beginning of July 2018. My role kicked in a few months before with the design and building of our website.

This is the biggest and most complicated website that I have ever created. I created well over 100 pages  (110 pages just for kayaks), wrote content, designed and created all of the graphics... In the build-up to launch we were working crazy non-stop hours with barely any breaks to eat or sleep.

All the while we were working in the factory and Celliers and our incredible team of workers were making moulds for the kayaks, running test kayaks and dealing with hundreds of elements that makes manufacturing what it is - not for the fainthearted. You need the constitution of an ox to wake up every day.

We went to a tradeshow in the US at the end of August, squeezed in a one-week roadtrip from Parys to East London to Cape Town to Parys, meeting with dealers along the way. I spent almost every hour in the car on the phone (email, calls, whatsapp, internet) and managed to flatten my battery every day. I didn't see much scenery despite the perfect weather. We got to paddle briefly and hangout a little in Cape Town.

Me paddling in a super-fun novelty event at Paddlesports Retailer in the USA.

An early morning demo session. Here I am paddling with Celliers on Zandvlei. What a magnificent morning! Photo by my friend Ray Chaplin.

Three days later we flew to Germany for another paddle sport tradeshow there - PaddleExpo.

Getting to tradeshows means a lot of logistics, especially where you have to ship kayaks over. Your heart lodges in your throat as you wait for them to arrive safely on the other side.

Returning home meant a lot of juggling here as we entered our main summer season and needed to build relationships with people we met at the shows ahead of their seasons in 2019.

So most days were really about getting as much done as possible. From building our new brand through social media to fulfilling orders, dealing with transport logistics (not anyone can transport 4.5m kayaks!), interacting with dealers, responding to customers on Facebook, email, whatsapp, Messenger... If the platform exists, people use it. And as a company, we have to respond - fast.

We've been trading since August and the two single-seater sit-on-top models that we think will do the best are only going to come out this month. These will complete our recreational sit-on-top range.

There is no doubt that Celliers' designs are the best in the world and our kayaks outrank other brands in performance, stability, features, quality, strength and design. No debate here. Any new company has a lot of work to do.

Our Vagabond year ended with a three-day trip on theOrange River. My personal kayak is the Marimba, the longest, narrowest (but still very stable) and fastest in our range. I knew it would be good but it was even better!

Back home on the 23rd, I had a few days with chunks of work and then took off the whole week of 1 Jan. I really needed it. I didn't turn on my computer, I didn't check email on my phone and I mostly ignored everything.

We had beautiful rains that week and magnificently cool, overcast weather - perfect for a bit of Netflix indulgence.

With the rains and water release from Barrage, came higher water levels in our Vaal River.

2018 was marked with very low water levels in the river for pretty much the whole year - starting from January. We tripped occasionally but it was rocky. After 1 Jan, we got water! Instead of the usual 15 to 25 cumec we'd been having, the river went up to a beautiful 70 to 80 cumec and even higher (up to 130 cumec) for a bit. We did two trips with our Marimbas before getting back to work.

// end of part 1

Tumbling at Decorex

My posting frequency is at an all time low, despite me having so much to write about. We're in a flat-out spin here with both YOLO and Vagabond Kayaks - so much excitement, so little time for everything.

I've just had a good week away at Decorex with my YOLO Compost Tumblers. This is now my second time exhibiting at the show and it was even better than last year.

With my mom at our stand.

My mom has now done three shows with me: Decorex last year, Homemakers Expo this year and now Decorex again. She is officially a compost-tumbling-demonstration pro.

We are inundated with orders from Decorex - so this has been a heavy, but delightful week of admin. We've got a production run on the go to get orders out as soon as possible.

In eight sleeps I fly to the USA to exhibit our Vagabond Kayaks at the Paddle Sports Retailer Show in Oklahoma City. I'm looking forward to a good sleep on the plane to recharge for the show. This pre-departure week is chock-a-block.

Expo-ing with my YOLOs

I'm back at my desk after last week spent at Homemakers Expo, my first time exhibiting our YOLO Compost Tumblers at this event. I was very fortunate to have my mom with me. She was at Decorex with me last year so she knows the ins and outs of expos and demonstrating compost tumbling.

We went through to JHB on the Tuesday afternoon, staying with friends in Fourways. We took our dogs with us; the were very well looked after by our friends during the day. In the mornings my mom would take Rusty and Tansy for walks within the estate and each evening when we got back from the show I would take Rusty for a good hard run. The estate has a lot of rabbits hopping around; Rusty was delighted. We would slowly walk up to the bunnies and got to within 20cm of them a number of times.

On the Wednesday morning, mom and I went through to setup. We had one compost tumbler unit of each size and a bunch of decorations. My new acquisition includes six block-mounted photographs of our customers' YOLO Compost Tumblers. My favourite 'decoration' was the window, which I made from insulation tape (I got the idea from a search on Pinterest).

This is a before-and-after of our stand.

This is the 25th year of Homemakers Expo and the 20th at the venue, The Dome in Northriding. The Thursday and Friday were quiet overall - not a lot of people milling in the corridors. Nonetheless, we had a reasonable flow of people coming to find out what our compost tumblers were all about.

The Saturday and Sunday saw the crowds coming in and there was a bigger volume of people at the venue. We had a number of direct sales during the event. With experience from Decorex, I know that sales and enquiries will continue over the weeks and months to come.

On Sunday, two of our factory workers came through to see the show. Joseph has worked on YOLO from the start and he has been primarily responsible for moulding, finishing, assembly and boxing. Stoney has worked with Celliers in the past and she has only recently joined us again. She is very good at finishing and assembly and has come on board to work with Joseph so that he can focus on the moulding. We're at that stage in our growth curve where we need more hands.

I was really glad that they got to see our YOLOs nicely presented on the stand. From a bucket of plastic powder to a finished product, Joseph and Stoney create each and every YOLO Compost Tumbler.

Liz, Stoney, Joseph and Lisa

Our overall experience was very positive and it echos our experience from Decorex last year. People are trying to do better with their waste. They're thinking about what they're throwing out, they're separating their trash and they're looking for options that are clean, tidy, efficient, effective and convenient. For organic waste, YOLO ticks all of the blocks.

We had great interactions with visitors, learned from the experience and we look forward to being at Decorex again in August 2018 at Gallagher Convention Centre.

The best tomatoes e.v.e.r.

I've gone quite minimalist with my garden in that I have three 1mx1m raised beds, a few plants in a small section and a strip along the back wall. I decided to primarily grow edibles in the boxes. For pretty there are some flowers, all of which have actually self seeded.

In my boxes I have tomatoes (all but one of the four plants must have self seeded from last year's attempts), parsley, mint, basil (growing crazy), two chilli plants and three brinjal plants.

Along the back wall I have five cherry tomato plants, one full-size tomato plant (gifted to me by a friend), some grasses and a standard iceberg rose.

On Sunday morning I spent some time staking my tomatoes and marvelling at how amazing they are looking. Strong, healthy and with an abundance of tomatoes on each plant - both the cherry tomatoes and the full size ones. I've never had much luck with full-size tomatoes - these are magnificent. I'm also quite surprised about the plants that just came up. They could be from my attempt last year at growing some of my old seeds for some heirloom varieties - I'm not quite sure what I have there.

I've done some veggie gardening in years past and cherry tomatoes always faired from ok to good. These... they're my best e.v.e.r.

I totally put it down to my compost from my YOLO Compost Tumblers. For the first time I have an abundance of nutrient-rich compost on hand and every time a shell of compost matures, I toss it into the beds.

Without a laboratory analysis I know that my YOLO compost is better than bought compost because it has so much more added to it than grass and leaves. All of my veggie cuttings and trimmings go into it as well as things like egg shells (calcium rich), coffee grounds (from Celliers), tea leaves (from me) and odd bits of fruit. It comes out dark and rich and, evidently, tomatoes love it.

Take a lookie...

The marigold self-seeded too. It is one plant that is COVERED in flowers - like I have never had before.

And with a bang the new year has begun

What a first week of 2018! I have not yet had a chance to reflect on 2017 as I'm deeply immersed in 2018 already.

I've had a really great week on the work side. Our YOLO Compost Tumblers were listed on Takealot.com on 15 December. Our timing was really late for the xmas shoppers as a result of a bunch of supplier-side delays for components and then time to build the needed stock... It happened and the process with Takealot has been superb from the start.

I thought that I'd get a notification when sales went through so that I'd be alerted to replace the stock. Come 1 Jan I thought that we had not had any sales, despite receiving a number of direct orders. I didn't think this unusual as it is the holidays and I suspected we'd only see sales in late January.

On Tuesday morning I checked my seller portal: 3 sales before 31 Dec and one that morning! I sent off two boxes on Wednesday and one on Thursday to replace stock. How very exciting!

At the same time my phone and email were pinging with direct orders. The boxes I sent on Wednesday were delivered on Thursday morning and the one was dispatched to a customer by Takealot by noon the same day!

The stock we built up before the start of the holidays is almost completely depleted and so we're moulding again. I've got two orders on standby for the one colour combination. Our plastic supplier opens on Monday and we're hoping that he has stock of the colour that we need. We stockpiled plastic before xmas but are out of just this one colour!

It seems that many New Year's Resolutions are waste / recycling / composting related. Nice!

Celliers' friend came to visit for a night this week. I took him with me to Otters Haunt to enjoy some river scenery. Rusty always loves it there.

Rusty loves visiting Otters Haunt, which we do at least once a week. Whether we walk on the island (as in this photo, on the section of winding trails or for a longer run in good company with our friends Karen, Rocksy and Skally (the latter two being border collies), she just loves every visit (I do too!). She appreciates the scenery too. Otters is the most divine, dog-friendly place to stay for a weekend getaway and only 5 mins from town.

It has been swelteringly hot so my running was been downscaled this week to longer walks with Rusty. She was a hot dog this morning at parkrun. She did the first kilometre to the turnaround marshal and a big tree. I was planning to just take her on one loop but she plonked down in the shade of the big tree and definitely didn't seem keen to continue. I lopped her lead around the post and the marshal, John, kept and eye on her. I ran the two loops (stopping to give her kisses after the first loop) and then we ran together for the one kilometre to the finish.

I haven't run with my morning group the past two weeks. I'm going to aim to join them for at least one morning a week at 6am. I'm back into my late-night working mode, which is not very useful for waking up early. One morning I can do.

Returnable box project for YOLO

We received our new double-walled boxes for our large YOLO Compost Tumblers last week. They're very strong and, well, large! Packaging is expensive and so wasteful. When I picked up our large boxes last week, a quick chat with our box supplier gave me an idea...

The box for our large YOLO Compost Tumbler is returnable. We want the boxes back so that we can reuse each one a number of times before it is retired to compost. Every time that we send out a large YOLO Compost Tumbler, we'll include three reusable velcro straps inside the box, which will be used to secure the box and flaps. We'll arrange for our courier to collect the box from the customer to bring it back to us.

I must have looked pretty comical yesterday. In these photos you can't quite gauge how big the box is. It is 1210mm long, 800mm wide and 820mm high. It weighs 4.5kg.

For now, we're just doing the large box as returnable. My next box order for the medium tumblers will be for the double-walled version and we'll probably make these returnable too.

 As we order small quantities i.e. 20 or 30 units as opposed to minimum order quantities of 250 or more (new business cash flow challenges!), the price that we pay per box is really high. It saves us money to courier the box back to reuse. The benefits really are aligned here with saving money and being able to reuse the boxes so that we generate less waste. We also take the problem of disposing of such a large box off our customers' hands.

We are fortunate that our customers are environmentally-minded; they have embraced our returnable box project with enthusiasm and appreciation.

The first return comes back to us next week.

Measuring our YOLO Compost Tumbler's social impact

Last week I submitted an application for Chivas Regal's 'The Venture' business awards. "We're looking for innovative start-ups that use business to solve global social or environmental challenges," their website stated.

"The Chivas Venture is a global search to find and support the most promising start-ups with the potential to succeed financially and make a positive impact on the lives of others. One social entrepreneur from each participating country will make it to the global final and have a chance to win a share of $1 million in funding."

It took me four hours to complete the application and in the process I wrote almost 3,000 words. One of the questions asked about the social impact of our product and asked for figures, if possible. As I had no idea how to measure the social impact of our compost tumblers, I turned to Google. A response in one of the dozen pieces I looked through suggested looking at my customers and assessing where they were before the intervention and what changed afterwards.

 Our YOLO Compost Tumbler solves a problem for our customers: what to do with their organic waste. Many people in apartments, townhouses, estates and retirement complexes cannot have compost heaps (due to space or rule restrictions). Those on properties with sufficient space deal with other issues like pests (rodents, snakes, monkeys, dogs), complexity of heap management and lack of interest that prevents them from composting their organic waste.

Before my customers bought their YOLO Compost Tumblers, their organic waste (kitchen and garden) went out on the street for collection by their municipality on trash day. These bags of organic waste would then end up at landfill sites where they rot anaerobically, under tons of garbage, to give off methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

 After my customers receive their YOLO Compost Tumbler, their organic waste goes into the tumbler - instead of the trash. The contents get regularly mixed and aerated, and around three months after emptying their first tub of kitchen cuttings into  the first shell, my customers are able to dig a shell of nutrient-rich compost into their gardens, gift to a friend or donate to a community gardening project. That they get nutrient-rich compost out is very much a positive byproduct of YOLO's problem-solving function.

As the YOLO Compost Tumbler has two shells, one will be active and the other maturing so after the first shell has been filled, the customer enters a cycle where every six to eight weeks they're emptying a shell of matured compost.

 How can we allocate numbers to this process?

 Consider 100 YOLO Compost Tumblers. Assuming that between our users of small, medium and large units, they may average one black bag of organic waste (kitchen & garden) per week during the year (more waste in summer, less in winter). For each customer, that equates to 52 black bags a year that would have been put on the street for municipal collection.

For 100 customers, this is 5,200 bags in a one-year period. Accounting for only 100 units, we can already see the social impact and potential for incredible growth with every YOLO Compost Tumbler that finds a happy home.

 This is also about more than the actual organic waste materials. This is about the 5,200 less garbage bags that have to be picked up by municipal workers. This is about the 5,200 less bags of waste that are dumped at landfill sites. This is also about the 5,200 black plastic bags will no longer be used once-off and discarded.

 In addition, every other form of waste recycling has a long chain of interactions that have to happen. Plastics, for example, can be separated at home and put out for informal recycling collectors to pick up or these can be dropped at a recycling bin or centre. At the recycling centre, plastics are further separated. They're compacted and transported to a facility that can turn the waste plastic into plastic pellets - or the like - that another company can purchase to manufacture products from the recycled material.

With a YOLO and your own organic waste, no further intervention is necessary. Neither collectors, transporters, nor manufacturers. Kitchen cuttings and garden material decompose inside the YOLO shell and a product results - mature compost. This can be dug directly into the garden to put valuable nutrients back into the soil for our vegetables, flowers and other plants to absorb.

This is the measurable social impact of our YOLO Compost Tumblers. And we're only just beginning.

Learning about retail

YOLO is a big learning curve for me. A lot of what I have been doing comes from 'educated' gut instinct and it was good to have some of this verified.

Setting prices for products is difficult. We know our production costs and also need to make something on each item to cover salaries, marketing and other business expenses. But pricing isn't as simple as 1 + 1 = 2 because the price has to be one that the market will be prepared to pay for the product. For us, this means compromising to give our customers the most reasonable deal.

Our YOLO Compost Tumbler was very kindly 'hosted' by a gardening place for a few weeks to gauge interest from the public. Despite August and September being our busiest months to date, I didn't receive a single order through them. As I had to be out their way on Thursday, I dropped them a quick note to say I'd be through and that I'd collect my tumblers. I also thanked them for being so willing to put my compost tumblers on display and that I hoped in time, as our brand builds, that there will be more demand from the public for our product to be in their store.

The guy replied to say they'd had lots of interest but that the price had put people off. As I believed that my YOLOs were priced there at my recommended price, I'd been thinking that what was missing was the one-on-one interactions that we've enjoyed at expos and which the compost tumblers would have missed at his place.

It was only after I collected the tumblers that I saw the price tags...

We sell the small double at R2,295.00. Their price: R3,469.95.
We sell the medium double at R2,995.00. Their price: R4,159.95.

No wonder!

Unfortunately hundreds of potential customers may have been put off ever considering a YOLO Compost Tumbler but there is also a silver lining in that now have confirmation of what the market is not prepared to pay. I wouldn't either!

If people are not composting already, by any means, our YOLO Compost Tumbler is the best solution for them - apartments, townhouses and homes with gardens. But, starting to recycle organic waste from your kitchen and garden doesn't happen overnight. This is a 'behaviour change' process and it comes with a price tag, unless you have space in your yard for a compost heap in which to dump organic material. Whether a person decides to go with a YOLO Compost Tumbler, bokashi system, hot bin or wormery, it costs to buy something to help you turn organic waste into nutrient-rich compost.

We're still in the first few months of our business and while we have a long way to go, we're doing things right by considering the customer first. 

Want to know what our most popular YOLO Compost Tumbler colour combinations are? From the beginning, green-yellow has been a favourite combo. We introduced our brown and grey colours in late August and have seen a rise in the popularity of green-brown. Green-orange is a favourite in the medium and large sizes while brown-grey is also currently trend in these sizes. The orange-yellow combo comes in waves. We have made a number of units in 'outlying' combinations like grey with green, orange or yellow; these look amazing too.

We didn't win but what an experience

We didn't win at the Sage Small Business Awards with 702; but what a good experience this has been.

From filling in the form to the on-air interview, video crew at our factory and this afternoon at the 702 studio with the other finalists, it has been an uplifting experience.

Aside from the wider exposure and subsequent orders, which we appreciate and need, just being selected as a finalist has been a pat-on-the-back to say we're OK, our product is a good one and it is interesting. This has been a thumbs-up that we needed.

We're enjoying great feedback and interactions from customers, which makes up for the generally tough time that small businesses go through to get them off the ground.

The past year has definitely not been all 'Facebook'. It has been tough and the road is not going to be any less bumpy for some time.

There is light. We're making a great product. And we're making a difference too.

I'm off on Thursday morning to head to The Garden Show in Pietermaritzburg - it runs Friday to Monday.

Hip-hip-hooray for YOLO!

Sage Small Business Awards with 702 finalist

I am caught up in the most delicious whirlwind of excitement around our YOLO Compost Tumblers.

We are a finalist in the Sage Small Business Awards with 702. Last week Wednesday I was interviewed in the evening on Bongani's show and we have had such a great response from this.



On Thursday their video crew came through to our factory and we moulded a compost tumbler shell there and then to show them the process. They have created a lovely 45-second video showcasing our small business and featuring the guys who work all the magic in the factory - Joseph M., Joseph W., Jeremiah, Abe and Thabiso.


Tomorrow afternoon I'll be in Jo'burg, at 702's studio, for the finals. I have no idea how it works but I am excited nonetheless.

The first prize is a laptop (and I'm sorely in need of a new one!), a year of Sage accounting software and R250,000 in airtime advertising on 702. Oh wow!

There are two second prizes with Sage accounting software and R125,000 in airtime advertising.

I'll be very delsighted with either of these.

That two minutes of interview on the radio can have such an impact on our business... Imagine what an effect a campaign can have!

My first YOLO video

I felt really silly standing in my garden talking to a video camera on a tripod... but that's how I managed to tick "Make a video for YOLO Compost Tumbler" off my to do list today.

Back in the day (from late 2002 into 2004 or so), I worked on Drifter Adventure Zone - a adventure racing / activity series on Supersport. I was a 'camerachick' and I also wrote scripts for the show and I sat in voice over and sound editing working with the voice-over artists and sound editors. I absolutely loved it. I learned so much about tv and content and editing and production. Since then, I haven't had a need to do any video work, despite the passion I had for my work there at the time.

Yesterday, I shot a bunch of clips in my garden for YOLO and last night I put them together in a 1:50 video that briefly explains how to use a YOLO Compost Tumbler.

I'm using the online video editing program WeVideo. My current (and previous) laptop doesn't have the capacity to run video editing software (I've got Adobe Premiere but I've never been able to load it!). I found WeVideo online and I worked through their tutorial a few weeks ago. I found it to be simple, efficient and user-friendly.Ba-boom! Video done.

I have a list of short and snappy videos that I'd like to make for YOLO over the next few weeks. Both my editing and presenting is sure to get better with practice! This first video is the start.

Even with my background experience in video, I've never felt the need to video blog or shoot footage of all and sundry. Writing is my chosen medium but now it is time to adapt. Woof-woof (old dog learning new tricks).

Here is my video...
 

An experience at Decorex

The past two weeks have been full and energising. I spent last week in Jo'burg for the Decorex show, a home and design expo held at Gallagher Convention Centre. My mom came along to help on the stand. I'm so glad that she did because we were non-stop busy with visitors. She has her own YOLO Compost Tumbler so she knows how it works and by the end of the week she was a composting demonstration pro.

Me and Liz in our expo outfits - complete with gardening wellies.

We were located in Hall 4 - Outdoor Lifestyle, which suited us perfectly.

Over the five days of the expo we spoke to hundreds of people and demonstrated how to use our compost tumblers. We had all three of our sizes on the stand - small (left), medium (top right) and large (bottom right). We pulled the large out of the oven on the Monday night, just in time to take it to the show for setup the next morning! We're still busy with R&D on this unit to finalise the amount of plastic needed, the frame and other bits. It will be ready in a few weeks.

A photo wall with photos of our YOLO Compost Tumblers sent to us from customers.

Expo days are long and tiring but the experience was totally worth it. We had some on-the-day sales and have had other post-expo. I think these will trickle in steadily over the next few months. Many people that we met were about to move or in the process of building new homes.

For us the big benefit of the expo was in meeting and talking to people. We were astounded by how many people are separating their trash, recycling and trying to reduce the waste that comes into and out of their homes. In dealing with organic waste, our YOLO Compost Tumbler is an excellent solution, especially where you just don't have space for a heap or if you're just looking for a way to compost kitchen waste - like in an apartment (no garden) or townhouse (tiny to no garden).

Many people that we met are composting - to some degree. They're trying wormeries, bokashi, hot bins and the like. This is great because it shows that more and more people are giving value to composting as a means to deal with organic waste and they give value to the compost itself.

I've felt so despondent recently around waste and recycling. If there is one thing that is a big problem in my home town of Parys, it is litter. It really is a serious problem. In the week before Decorex, I was at Pick 'n Pay, packing my groceries into my reusable shopping bags. I looked down the row of checkouts and saw that I was the only person there not using - and buying every time - PNP's plastic shopping bags! (no, they didn't pull old bags out of their handbags to reuse, these were crisp and new)

Coming back from Decorex I'm far more optimistic that there is change happening. 

Nice way to see the size difference between the medium (2 x 100 litre shells) and large (2 x 200 litre shells).

As a result of being at Decorex, we have added two new colours to our range - grey and earth. We met a number of people in complexes and estates where they are restricted from having brightly-coloured items that do not go with the colour scheme of the place. Our new colours go well with each other and they also pair beautifully with our existing green, orange and yellow colours. I fetched plastic from our supplier on Thursday and we'll be moulding the first of the new colour units on Monday.

We also learned a bunch of other things from the visitors to our stand:

• Many are not composting but they want to. They're currently tossing all of their kitchen waste and garden waste out with the trash. They want to do better.
• People think that compost smells. A healthy compost should smell earthy. Good health is achieved by adding a mix of wet and dry materials and regular tumbling.
• Different areas of Jo'burg have rat problems. The rats go for compost heaps and so people have stopped composting as a way to prevent rats coming to their gardens. Our YOLO Compost Tumbler is a closed unit with a lockable latch. Rats, mice, monkeys and dogs can't get into it.

A jar of 8-week old, unfinished compost from my small YOLO Compost Tumbler at home. The jar started off almost full and by the end of the expo it has reduced in volume by half - natural composting process. These jars of compost were really useful to show people what unfinished compost looks like, why it needs to mature (for the last-added contents to compost and catch up to the first-added contents) and for them to smell the mix ("not bad", "earthy", "amazing" were some comments).

A jar of finished compost from my YOLO Compost Tumbler at home. This mix is just kitchen waste with egg shells, torn up egg trays and dry leaves to balance the wet materials from the kitchen. Again people were amazed that it doesn't smell. Friends, compost shouldn't smell bad. The only time it smells bad is if it is too wet and it doesn't have enough oxygen. It's the anaerobic decomposition that makes it smell nasty. This tumbler shell that I emptied (and put some into a jar) was my 5th shell emptied since mid January, when I was using a prototype tumbler. I weighted the contents of the shell when I emptied it - 7.5kg! And mostly just kitchen waste that had composted. Amazing!

We're quite certain that 10 years ago - and even five years ago - our YOLO Compost Tumbler would be a harder sell. Times have changed and people are becoming more conscious and aware of the state of the environment and that we have to do our bit in our homes. Our timing is just right.

When you hear reports that there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050, scientists are not being alarmist. Just looking around me at the litter in my town, this statement is hardly surprising.

Over the past 18 months, since I moved to Parys, I've been making small changes to our household to reduce the waste coming into our home and what we put out on garbage day.

The most significant changes include filling up glass bottles with milk instead of buying two-litre plastic containers, composting all of our kitchen and garden waste and, recently, taking my own fabric bags to the store to buy loose items like bananas, ginger, garlic and rolls. As a result, we've downsized our trash bin twice and are now down to a waste paper bin for our weekly household trash. I'm sure we can do better too.

The road with our new company is still long. This experience at Decorex was immensely valuable for speaking to people and making new contacts. There are a number of exciting opportunities to come.

What I have learned thus far about dairy farming

Before I tell you what I've learned thus far about dairy farming, a bit of background.

As a child, I spent many a school holiday on a family friend's farm up in Zimbabwe. They were large scale farmers growing tobacco, cotton, corn, sorghum and coffee. They had cattle, which I remember going to round up on horseback for dipping. They weren't cattle farmers, they just had a herd of cattle. There was a dairy on the brother's farm nearby - I never saw it. But I do remember seeing a worker spinning cream off the milk and I had the pleasure of having fresh farm milk and cream with my mielie-meal porridge in the morning.

I spent my days mostly at the stables, helping to groom and feed the horses.

I have always loved farms and I fine the process of farming interesting. But not enough to want to be a farmer. This is a tough profession and I can recall our family friend being up before the crack of dawn and to bed late at night. Fields, harvest, animals, rainfall, farm machinery, farm workers and their families... I learned early that you need a strong constitution to be a farmer.

Fast-forward many years and I was looking at getting out of my MSc studies in Medical Cell Biology (with a focus on cell biology, developmental biology and reproduction), which wasn't going anywhere. I was depressed and frustrated, and despite loving the part-time lecturer and lab demonstrator post that I held, I wanted out. For lack of any other driving force, I wanted to spent my days adventure racing (which was hardly practical either).

I started looking at job opportunities, first within the human in vitro and reproduction realm. It didn't sit right with me and so I began investigating opportunities in the cattle and wildlife industries. I visited a number of research places and was either told that I was overqualified (WTF?) or that I could work there but they couldn't pay me. At one place I had the opportunity of wearing shoulder length gloves and putting my arm bicep deep into a cow's nether region to feel her ovaries and watching this on an ultrasound. I loved it.

My favourite option was one at Onderstepoort where I met an awesome professor doing incredible work. He didn't have funding for his project but we clicked and I liked what he was doing and my skills suited his lab. As luck would have it, he called a few weeks later as I was driving away from my old life, car packed. I'd deregistered from university and had no idea what I was going to do, other than the adventure race two weeks later. He called to say he had funding and wanted me there. I was in such a bad space then so I kept driving.

I had toyed with the idea of large animal veterinary sciences. I'd already been at university for 6.5 years and I needed out. In the state that I was I couldn't face another bunch of years of study and neither could I fund it nor expect my mom to fund it.

With our YOLO Moo Igloo, I now find myself out on farms - and I love every visit. I love the smell of the farms and this has brought up a lot of childhood memories of being on the farm in Zim.

Having our YOLO Moo Igloo online (FB page specifically), I've experienced what I can only term vitriol from strangers. We're a plastic rotomoulding company, not dairy farmers. Yet they comment on how cruel it is to have a calf hutch for calves, how they should be frollicking in fields and how calves should be left with their moms.

Firstly, directing vitriol at a rotomoulding company completely misses the ball. Very, very few people abstain completely from dairy products (vegan do not consume dairy). That you and I drink milk and eat cheese and yoghurt means that we create a demand for dairy products. I bet that those criticising my calf hutch do not have a cow in their garden which they milk by hand and neither do they know anything about calf rearing and the dairy industry.

The calves that I've seen on a local farm are well cared for (they have dedicated carers). The calves spend their days in the 'garden' part of their hutch-fence, lying on grass in the sun. They have 'friends' nearby that they can see and chat to (but not too close that disease transfer is likely) and they have shelter from the elements from their hutches. When they are old enough and their immune systems are sufficiently developed the roam around in a field with their friends.

What I have experienced is not the intensive calf rearing of Europe and major large-scale producers (I've seen photos online so I certainly know it exists). I started to read up on calves and dairy farming and over the past few months I've been learning as I go.

On Thursday I attended a workshop presented by the Milk Producers Organisation (MPO) in the North-West province about 'Raising calves'. I was there officially to show my calf hutch but personally to learn about calves. There was an excellent speaker lineup and thank goodness my Afrikaans has improved to the point of being able to understand everything bar random unusual / long / difficult words - I still get the context. I most enjoyed the physiological neonatal and postnatal elements as well as content on disease and immunity - taking me back to my past life in developmental and cell biology.

Here are some fundamentals about dairy farming that I've learned from some farm visits and the recent MPO workshop.

• Farmers care about their animals - calves and adults.
• Dairy cows are bred for their milk production genetics, not maternal instincts. Dairy cows are not necessarily great mothers and they may neglect the calf, not cleaning nor feeding it. This is a very good post by a dairy farmer on why farmers separate calves and cows.
• Beef cows are very good mothers. What has been successful is when dairy embryos are implanted in a beef cow and she gives birth to the dairy calf and raises it. 
• Cows come on heat not according to their age but rather according to their weight.

• Human babies are born with antibodies and disease fighting immune factors that they received from their mom while in the womb. Calves are not. They have a developed immune system by no passive immunity nor circulating antibodies from their mom. They get this from drinking colostrum (post-birth milk) after birth and in the first few days that follow. The colostrum from the first milking is the most potent.
• Colostrum contains both immune factors as well as hormones and super-boosted nutritional elements (proteins, fats, sugars, vitamins and minerals). 
• Within six hours of birth, a calf must get 10% of its body weight in colostrum. Its system is geared for maximum absorption of all this goodness. 24-36hrs of birth this ability to absorb the goodness from colostrum diminishes substantially. 
• A newborn calf must drink with its head up, so that what it drinks slides down its throat and into its true stomach and not into the rumen (where food sits for roughage to be broken down by bacteria). If colostrum and milk sit in the rumen, the calf will get diarrhoea.
• A healthy calf and good milk producing adult is directly linked to the quality and quantity of colostrum the calf receives as well as when (timing) it receives this nourishing milk.
• Over the first few weeks of a calf's life, the passive immunity received from its mom diminishes and from about five weeks of age its own antibody production starts to kick in. During the first six to eight week period of a calf's life, it is most susceptible to infection.
• Colostrum is everything! It is better to give more than less. What a calf receives directly after birth and for the first four days has a long-lasting effect on their growth and weight gain and future milk production. If it is born in winter, the calf needs even more milk as it expends a lot of energy on keeping warm. Growth slows if it isn't getting enough milk so what summer and winter calves receive is quite different.

• Illnesses generally take three forms: enteric (diarrhoea - from two days after birth), respiratory (lung infections from three weeks to six months) and reproductive illnesses (from 18 months of age).
• Various bacteria, viruses and protozoa are to blame - fortunately there are vaccinations for these and immunity from vaccinations given to mom can be passed on to the calf in the colostrum.

• The key way to prevent infections is:
• the calving area should be clean with good drainage
• calf hutches should be moved to fresh ground regularly
• Sun (UV) is important to naturally disinfect the ground
• Calves should be kept apart for their first few months

Not all farms are the same. Some milk less than 150 cows (small) and others milk over 1000 every day (two to three times a day). Some house their calves in buildings ('permanent rearing facilities') and others use calf hutches and open fields. There is also an in between with small, individual metal 'pens' that are raised off the ground with slats and mats for faeces and urine to pass through.

Hygiene is critically important. Thorough cleaning of the floors of walled pens in buildings and the bedding and mats is essential for disease prevention. This means disinfectant solutions and high pressure hoses and regular changes of clean bedding. I think the small metal pens raised of the ground are almost worse and they too need to be thoroughly cleaned.

I'm obviously biased towards our calf hutches as I've seen them in use (read this post from a dairy farmer that explains why they have chosen to use hutches). The protocol is simple: move the hutch every few days on to fresh lawn. The calf gets to chill in the hutch or the attached garden pen and it can enjoy the sun and benefit from shelter from the hutch. To clean and disinfect the hutch, turn it over, spray it out and leave in the sun to dry. Let the sun's UV rays do the work (both on the hutch and the previously used ground).

It costs R12,000 to R14,000 to raise a calf - a sizeable investment. Multiply this by 20 or 40 or 80. That's a lot of money.

As far as intensive farming goes, I'm not a fan but I'm also realistic and I know that it happens. I also feel that even in this environment it is a better investment for even these big producers to go the route of calf hutches instead of buildings. I have no figures but my gut feel says disease incidence would be dramatically reduced and quality of life for the calves would be far better in individual hutches. Not having to spray down cement stalls translates to reduced labour demands, less water usage and also less chemical/disinfectant use. All of this saves rands. Lots of them.

The dairy industry has been hard hit. We've gone from 50,000 dairy farms 20 years ago to only 1,600 today. A guy I spoke to on Thursday is one of two dairy farmers in his area. There used to be 72 of them in the 90s. Cost of production, local milk prices, global prices, oversupply in Europe and importing of these into SA has taken its toll. 

Interestingly, we're not producing enough milk for our dairy needs (remember that dairy includes cheese, yoghurt, milk powder, long-life milk and not just liquid milk). We had a 100 million litre deficit last year. The drought in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces has severely affected production too.

I've also learned that dairy farmers support each other through hard times and stronger farms work with struggling neighbours to help them through a tough time. Farms going for five generations have had to close their doors. And then there are the violent farm attacks that have taken out farmers and their families. More than 75 farm killings already this year. Isolated on farms, these poor people are sitting ducks for attackers.

Dairy farming is also a high-technology field where the health of a cow and her milk production is closely monitored by sophisticated systems. The farmer knows when a cow is under the weather before she has a clue that she isn't feeling great.

I still have a lot to learn - my minimal experiences have only given me a taste - and in a few weeks I hope to spend a full day at our local dairy for some experiential learning of calf care, the herds, milking process and herd monitoring.  

While I have absolutely no inclination to be a dairy farmer, I have developed a keen interest in the process, the technology and the logistics of dairy farming. 

Dairy farming definitely isn't all Heidi in the Swiss Alps. There are so many ways in which farms and animals are managed. What I have learned from the farmers that I have met is that they all want to do their best to provide quality care for their calves and cows and to learn how to do even better for them.