Fruit trees, veggie patches and chicken coops are fast becoming a reality in suburbs. In the 1960s, I grew up this way and am glad to have experienced this, when the backyard supplied the kitchen. Extra meat and special veggies were only bought for special occasions. In rural Europe, this lifestyle is still in place and villagers get rid of extra produce at the town market.
In the sixties, the general public in SA looked down their noses at this practice and even at school I was ridiculed for this. Yet, it was a wholesome lifestyle. With sewerage works breaking down in SA, the septic tank concept would be a useful solution and is still in use on smallholdings in Gauteng. My issue with local legislation and regulations is that we can’t buy directly from local producers and must pay the ‘cold chain’ middleman.
For us to live a real organic hippie lifestyle, local councils will have to scrap many regulations against the suffering middle class, for example regulations against keeping fowls in a suburb. I might sound like a romantic type, but replacing lawns and flowerbeds with veggies, and replacing foreign shrubs and trees in our gardens with fruit trees makes a lot of sense. Similarly with catching rainwater in tanks. Life could be a lot more fruitful in the suburbs of SA.
