In the week following Easter we set out from Cape Town with a film crew to visit the Flower Valley Trust near Gansbaai in Agulhas area. Here we chatted to Roger Bailey, the conservation manager of this non-profit organization that aims to instil widespread practice of ecological sustainability and social equity as it goes about developing top notch wildflower harvesting and exporting practice in the area. One of the new harvesting entrepreneurs in this is Lydia van Riet, who has chosen the riskier life of the self-employed to a regular job in the local agricultural co-op. "I would never go back to a job in which I am confined by 4 walls", she told us. "To be in nature is something wonderful". (check quote in original Afrikaans). We followed Lydia, and captured activities in a typical day in the life of her and her team of harvesters; from the pre-dawn pick up of workers, to the delivery of harvested material at the kaleidoscopic packing shed. Later, around sunset, we joined Roger on the magical beach at Gansbaai to reflect on a day spent working with nature, before visiting Lydia at home to talk about the more mundane issue of paper work. But she did tell us about her dream to one day have her own farm.
