Camdini means place of honey in the old Khoi language of this area. Being a Cambray and being partially of Khoi descent this is a special name for me as it sort of combines a number of themes of things that resonate into one name.
Towards the end of last year, after David’s visit and Kyle’s passing, I decided to move the meadery from the “Old Powerstation” where it currently is, to a new, specially made home at my house, where I could integrate it into a sustainable vision I have been working on for the past 15 years.
Over the past decade and a half my efforts have resulted in us being able to run the meadery on renewable fuel, and to sell more than we use, to convert the entire town of Grahamstown/Makana into a town which runs on wind power, and produces more power now than it uses as well. The next step is to make this sustainable development even stronger, and moving the meadery to my property made sense in that regard, as being close to Rhodes University, I can help a lot of students adjust their trajectories to tread more lightly on our future.
Making the New Makana Meadery at Camdini
Bees are all about the trees. They collect nectar, propolis and pollen from trees. They make their nests in trees. Without trees, no bees. Hence the new Makana Meadery is made with the memory of trees – timber entirely harvested from trees which had died and were of historical significance.
The story starts in the hills above Grahamstown, at Greys Dam – a reservoir built to provide water to the town in the 1840’s. About the same time an ambitious person planted a row of slow growing ceder trees – one is still visible standing in the background. In the shallow soil these trees struggled and in 1991 as a kid I remember being very sad when one blew over in a storm.
A couple of tugs with the trusty old biodiesel powered land cruiser and the tree weighing over a ton and a half bounced happily down the hill to the wall of the reservoir.
Here using a well built and heavily abused Stihl chainsaw I cut the tree into smaller log like planks trying to keep the memory of the tree in the wood. It had a termite damage – another social insect – and that was preserved as it adds character and is the story of the tree. The tree had a number of lead bullets in it fired most likely from an Enfield 1850’s model with the help of a most likely drunk soldier – these resulted in some wobbles in the shape of the beams – and cost me a few chainsaw blades. The second log that I cut from the tree was rolled down the hill into a ravine by some drunk students. So it is for another day. Our lives and alcohol intertwine in so many ways.
More timber was needed for the doors as a result and this was cut by myself and Chris and on a separate occasion, Raksha, in the hills above town in a small patch of land that used to be a fortification. We cut an indigenous South African Widrentonia cedar which was planted by an optimistic Forrester towards the end of the 1800’s. It had fared poorly and perished in a fire when I used to live nearby that tree and my lynx cat used to play in it when she was a kitten in the early 2000’s.
Chris and I cut the door frames from this old Widdringtonia cedar that had died a decade and a half back and was nicely ground cured.
Raksha and I cut the slats for the building and door from this old fir tree – counting the rings showed that is was about 120 years old – most likely an escaped Christmass tree. History unknown. It blew over in a tornado last year.
The back of the new Makana Meadery at Camdini. The tower for the fermenter is nestled in a large Mgwenya tree (whose offspring grow at the B.United Command Center), which protects it from most of the sun, and with a bit more TLC will most likely swallow the whole tower. The wooden slats will be finished on that tower this weekend, as will the gutter.
The roof of the meadery drains into two 10,000 litres rainwater tanks ensuring that we will have up to 40,000 litres a year of crisp clean rainwater for mead making. My house provides a lot more if there is more needed. I just finished the gutter as a thunder storm came in this weekend and the tank overflowed about an hour after I connected it. Quite a down pour.
Next was to move the tower fermenter down – managed to drain the mead off the top of the yeast bed, but not disturb the bed, and Chris and I took it down to the new meadery.
This picture (right) captures a few important things. A 1984 Land Cruiser running on biofuel driven by a 1976 human who grows 80% of his own food in his garden, with a 2001 model continuous tower fermentor heading to the 2016 model meadery with the 2015 model wind farm that runs it all in the background. Was quite proud of this upon reflection. Changing the world one bottle of mead at a time.
Above is the front of the new Makana Meadery. Note that the lines are not straight, because the wood was not – I worked with the wood as much as possible to create a Hobbit like feel. If the big beam had a little wiggle in it because some drunk soldier shot it in 1857, so be it. Was a lot of fun doing this.
The inside of the new Makana Meadery – still a lot of work to do, but, importantly, have been able to start making mead and fill the tanks up. We have space in the stainless tanks for 6,000 litres of mead, and in the flow bins, once they are all down for 5,000 litres mead and then a row of barrels and a few outdoors under trees etc for 15 barrels of method accidental. With time I will extend the structure to hold more.
And all of this made me think that in a world where so much is built on destruction, that with this we have managed to create from things that died naturally, and have trodden as lightly on the future as possible. Because it all starts with the memory of trees and their bees. And therein/theirin is the next exciting chapter.
Ghost trees – planted by famous and infamous people of the past, as their dreams die, or are vilified, or live on or are forgotten, the trees remain –and I have a whole lot of oak from various famous and infamous people whose dreams have thrived or died in the history of SA. On the floor in the meadery are a few pieces of such oak – some planted by Lord Charles Somerset (generally infamous now) in the 1850’s, others by Professor Beth Dickerson (respected) and one from the site of the battle of Egazini where 20 000 warriors died due to a rapidly and tragically disproven belief that a special magical ointment made by Chief Makana (famous) would stop bullets.