Green grows their valley: Swakopmund’s asparagus pioneers

FANIE van Niekerk is the original Swakopmund asparagus farmer – he started producing the slender, green delicacies nine years ago.

Although asparagus is his main crop, he also grows more than 20 different herbs on his smallholding about 10 km from Swakopmund in the Swakop River. Swakopmund asparagus is known and loved all over Namibia.This is because the brackish water of the river gives it a distinct and unique taste.Few people know that you can eat asparagus raw.”Many people do not know how to eat raw asparagus,” Van Niekerk says.”It is rather simple – you take the asparagus and eat it from the tip down, as the bottom tends to have a fibrous part which you just discard.Should you eat it from the other side, your first bite will be fibrous and that will spoil the rest of this wonderful vegetable.”Asparagus is grown from seeds and it takes about two to four years before harvesting can begin.The crown of the asparagus fern is underground and the shoots break through the earth.If left to grow, they open up and the fern then feeds the crown.An asparagus field is harvested for six weeks and then left to rest and replenish for six weeks.Harvesting usually takes place from September until the end of May.If conditions are ideal the field can be harvested twice a day, as the shoots grow at a very fast pace.White and green asparagus come from the same plant.The only difference is that the green asparagus is exposed to sunlight, while the white shoots are produced by covering them with sand to shield them from the sun.Once a field has reached the end of its lifespan, the field cannot be used for asparagus again, as the plant has a natural poison with which it protects itself against other asparagus seedlings.”It is a natural protection, much like the peach tree also has, so that the children will not outgrow and smother the parent plants,” Van Niekerk explains.ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER When harvesting asparagus, the fern is cut off and discarded.Van Niekerk’s wife, Leonie, did not like to see this go to waste and persuaded her husband to buy a few goats that could eat the ferns.Very soon, the Van Niekerks had a surplus of goats’ milk.The next logical step was to make feta and cottage cheese, and so Leonie went to South Africa to attend a cheese-making course.An added benefit of feeding the goats asparagus ferns is that it removes the characteristic goat smell and taste from their milk, and produces a very smooth cheese.”The feta that we produce here is the real thing, as feta must be made from goat’s milk.The imitation is made from cow’s milk,” Van Niekerk says proudly.But Fanie van Niekerk is not a man to rest on his laurels.Once the cheese-making project was up and running, he was already on the lookout for something new and exciting.Oyster mushrooms came to mind.So off to Henties Bay the Van Niekerks went to do a course on mushroom cultivation.Mushroom farming proved to be the couple’s biggest challenge yet.They struggled to find the necessary information and had to learn by trial and error.Moreover, mushrooms are pretty tricky things to grow.Temperature and humidity must be strictly controlled and the soil must be kept absolutely sterile.”We have to be 100 per cent sure that only oyster mushroom spores are allowed to grow and no other species of mushroom, otherwise we could poison people,” Van Niekerk says.The Van Niekerks’ farm produce can be bought on the fortnightly market day at the camel farm outside Swakopmund, where they sell asparagus, feta and cottage cheese, herbs, oyster mushrooms and free-range eggs.Swakopmund asparagus is known and loved all over Namibia.This is because the brackish water of the river gives it a distinct and unique taste.Few people know that you can eat asparagus raw.”Many people do not know how to eat raw asparagus,” Van Niekerk says.”It is rather simple – you take the asparagus and eat it from the tip down, as the bottom tends to have a fibrous part which you just discard.Should you eat it from the other side, your first bite will be fibrous and that will spoil the rest of this wonderful vegetable.”Asparagus is grown from seeds and it takes about two to four years before harvesting can begin.The crown of the asparagus fern is underground and the shoots break through the earth.If left to grow, they open up and the fern then feeds the crown.An asparagus field is harvested for six weeks and then left to rest and replenish for six weeks.Harvesting usually takes place from September until the end of May.If conditions are ideal the field can be harvested twice a day, as the shoots grow at a very fast pace.White and green asparagus come from the same plant.The only difference is that the green asparagus is exposed to sunlight, while the white shoots are produced by covering them with sand to shield them from the sun.Once a field has reached the end of its lifespan, the field cannot be used for asparagus again, as the plant has a natural poison with which it protects itself against other asparagus seedlings.”It is a natural protection, much like the peach tree also has, so that the children will not outgrow and smother the parent plants,” Van Niekerk explains.ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER When harvesting asparagus, the fern is cut off and discarded.Van Niekerk’s wife, Leonie, did not like to see this go to waste and persuaded her husband to buy a few goats that could eat the ferns.Very soon, the Van Niekerks had a surplus of goats’ milk.The next logical step was to make feta and cottage cheese, and so Leonie went to South Africa to attend a cheese-making course. An added benefit of feeding the goats asparagus ferns is that it removes the characteristic goat smell and taste from their milk, and produces a very smooth cheese.”The feta that we produce here is the real thing, as feta must be made from goat’s milk.The imitation is made from cow’s milk,” Van Niekerk says proudly.But Fanie van Niekerk is not a man to rest on his laurels.Once the cheese-making project was up and running, he was already on the lookout for something new and exciting.Oyster mushrooms came to mind.So off to Henties Bay the Van Niekerks went to do a course on mushroom cultivation.Mushroom farming proved to be the couple’s biggest challenge yet.They struggled to find the necessary information and had to learn by trial and error.Moreover, mushrooms are pretty tricky things to grow.Temperature and humidity must be strictly controlled and the soil must be kept absolutely sterile.”We have to be 100 per cent sure that only oyster mushroom spores are allowed to grow and no other species of mushroom, otherwise we could poison people,” Van Niekerk says.The Van Niekerks’ farm produce can be bought on the fortnightly market day at the camel farm outside Swakopmund, where they sell asparagus, feta and cottage cheese, herbs, oyster mushrooms and free-range eggs.