Six weeks upside down in the dark

The cutting window is about three weeks in late summer, and when it closes there is nothing more until the next one. Everything here comes off the Overberg roadsides and one leased strip of renosterveld outside Napier, cut by hand and driven straight back to the shed the same afternoon. It hangs there head-down in the dark for six weeks, because sun bleaches the colour out and a fan dries the stems so fast they shatter in the hand. Marlene cuts and binds, Werner drives. When a line runs out we would rather leave the shelf empty until next summer than bring dried stock in from Holland.