The spring sunshine in Cape City has a brittle high quality, the place intervals of intense readability are immediately muted by bursts of rain. Moments later the sky clears, Desk Mountain reappears from the shrouding clouds, and the world sparkles. At Jaftha’s Flower Farm in Constantia, fields of ranunculus and shares are in bloom, posies of violets are bought by the fragile bunch, and long-stemmed, aromatic freesias are purchased by clients who bump down Brounger Street (freshly potholed by a sodden winter) to the small, fifth-generation farm. (Study the historical past of the farm in our earlier story.) Jaftha’s is a vacation spot for any flower-loving customer to the town, and for me, lately, the welcoming farm supplied floral consolation throughout a go to from New York Metropolis to see my unwell mom.
Pictures by Marie Viljoen.
I final visited Jaftha’s Flower Farm in summer time, when its rows of plum timber had been dropping ripe fruit and the fields had been crammed with the dahlias for which the Jaftha household is known. Now, in early spring, the fruit timber are in bloom and the dahlia tubers that had been lifted earlier than the Cape’s moist winter are about to be planted once more within the wealthy black soil of the valley.
Shopping for flowers straight from any minimize flower farm is a deal with, and at Jaftha’s the identical flowers value round a 3rd of native store-bought bouquets. For visiting Individuals, there’s an exchange-rate bonus: The costs are exceptionally favorable at a time when one US greenback buys round 18 South African rands. For instance, on the time of writing, a R50 bouquet of vivid ranunculus is $2.65. And people flowers last as long as 10 days, in recent adjustments of water.