The Restory Retreat Centre

  Dear friends and supporters, As many of you may have heard, for five days, Monday to Friday, we were completely without power here on Tafelkop after the snowstorm last week. For us, the rain and snowstorms are always a big challenge. We are located at the very tail end of a long, sparsely populated Eskom supply line, and this unfortunately means that we are often at the very back of the queue when repairs are made. This time it made us very aware of how vulnerable we are. For example, we had someone here on a private retreat, and he had to cope with the entire week without electricity with us. By day 3, the goods in the freezer had to be transferred to a freezer on a neighboring farm that has solar power. This made us realize that we can’t just hope that there will be few outages this coming summer, or that the next one will be shorter. There is also another side to our power problem. Our Eskom bill starts at around R3 400 each month (fixed line charges and tariffs), before we ha...

  Liewe vriende en ondersteuners, Soos baie van julle dalk gehoor het was ons die afgelope week hier op Tafelkop van Maandag tot Vrydag vir vyf dae heeltemal sonder krag ná die sneeustorm. Vir ons is die reën- en sneeustorms elke keer ’n groot uitdaging. Ons lê aan die heel stertkant van ’n lang, yl bevolkte Eskom-toevoerlyn, en dit beteken ongelukkig dat ons dikwels heel agter in die ry is wanneer herstelwerk gedoen word. Hierdie keer het dit ons weer baie bewus gemaak van hoe kwesbaar ons is. Ons het byvoorbeeld iemand hier op privaat-retreat gehad, en hy moes die hele week saam met ons sonder elektrisiteit klaarkom. Teen dag 3 moes die goed in die vrieskas oorgevat word na ‘n vrieskas op ‘n buurplaas wat sonkrag het. Dit het ons laat besef dat ons nie net kan hoop dat daar hierdie komende somer min onderbrekings gaan wees, of dat die volgende een korter gaan wees nie. Daar is ook ’n ander kant aan ons kragprobleem. Ons Eskom-rekening begin elke maand by ongeveer R3 400 (vaste l...

Years ago, while still living in Gauteng, I told Matilda that my big wish is to live in a place where, when you switch off your bedroom light at night, it must be pitch dark. I do not want to see lights of any kind. Least of all security and flood lights. I am definitely not striving to be anachronistic, singing the praises of the Stone Age, but electric light in all its forms symbolizes for me a type of infiltration and colonization. In our human advances, we no longer plant flags when arriving on  terra nova , we switch on a light. On moving to Barrowfield my dream came true. The stars are bright and near, the Milky Way arching majestically overhead, everything wrapped in black velvet.  I felt spoilt, immensely privileged. The date my ideal world was shattered I cannot pinpoint exactly. But one night, on stepping out of the front door to check on the kiln in the pottery studio, a pinprick of light in the far-off distance, maybe 30 km away...

Barrowfield night sky Photograph by Frans Marais On settling here at Barrowfield, there were quite a few boxes that were on our initial wish list that we could mark off: silence –check; nature –check; workshops – check; beauty – check; gardening – check; definite change of seasons - check. These were all elements that we regarded as important when we started searching for a place to establish The Restory. Often based more on instinct than knowledge, we knew these things to be important factors in helping people to get in touch with God, themselves and life in general. Nothing mind-blowing or extreme. Actually very simple, but also very basic to being human living on this earth. In the years preceding our eventual scouting and exploring I often talked to Matilda about another element on the wish list as well – darkness. I often said to her: “Wouldn’t it be nice to live somewhere that is absolutely dark when you switch off your light at night.” Once, on travelling at night fro...