

NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO
LOVE WHERE YOU’RE LIVING
And yet, every time we dare dream these thoughts, we thought of a hundred reasons why not. The impracticalities of it all. Will I be able to work from home? Will there be Internet? Where will my children go to school? What will we eat? Lovely as it sounds, I’m not a farmer.
And so we file the loveliness of the dream away and dismantle our very souls, slogging it out behind high walls and electric fences – trapped in our cosy zoo made for human consumption.
And yet.
And yet. What if it could be true? What if you could work from home? What if a place like that does exist? Where you can live off the land, even without being a farmer. Where the cows roam free as kids should. Where there is safety, where you choose to be connected, not just to the world, but to the land underneath
your feet?
And wouldn’t you know it – it took a pandemic to show us we can. That working from home is a real possibility. It took a lockdown to show us the faults in our thinking. To understand what it is that is important. It took time away from distraction to realise that life is short, that possession is a trap, and that there has to be more to it than first-world luxuries, wrapped in the ever-important guise of making more money instead of more time.
Because that’s what it is all about. At least for this writer. What lockdown taught me is that the world has changed. Forever. That I have changed. It might be akin to a near-death experience, where the survivors suddenly give up everything to go travel and spread the good word of Carpe Diem.
And yet.
If only a place like that exists. If only someone already had the vision, made a good start at it. Believed in it to make it a reality.
And yet.
It does. A place that is a working farm. That does offer living off-grid, connected to nature and the Net, that offers farm-fresh vegetables, clean air, a mountain to call your own and an opportunity unlike anything else currently on offer.
And if you for one moment think that this is an advertisement for Crossways Farm Village, then you would be right. But don’t make that mistake. Because it is also an advertisement for loving where you live. For getting back to it all: working from home, playing with your children, breathing pure air, eating clean, exercising in nature, living the good life. This is more than an advertisement – it’s a manifesto.
Crossways Farm Village just happens to be the place that can give this to you, and me. Situated 30 km from Port Elizabeth near the Van Stadens Bridge, Crossways is South Africa’s first contemporary new rural town. It’s all big vistas and farm-fresh living. Conceived and brought to life by the same people who created Thesen Islands in Knysna, Crossways is a real opportunity to escape.
I’m not thinking of another lockdown. I’m thinking about the rest of my life.
Where would I rather be? For me, the answer is clear.
I want to be at Crossways.