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What is normal? As psychologists battle it out, defining normal almost by virtue of what is considered abnormal, the goalposts keep on shifting for the rest of us. What is normal today was not normal two years ago. It’s all just a matter of perspective. What is normal to you is not normal to me.

So what is the new normal?

Freezing food seems to be the new normal. Working from home. Loadshedding. Washing hands. Wearing masks.

At the moment, the new normal doesn’t seem all that great. Luckily, like Cape Town’s weather, if you don’t like it, just wait. It will soon change. The beauty of being forced into the new normal is that when things go
back to the old normal, we come out of it with more understanding.

We understand for instance that loadshedding is not alright. That there are other ways of generating electricity. We understand that freezing food was a necessity. But that nothing beats organic, fresh farm produce. We get that some jobs require you to go to an office, but we’ve now seen that what was once normal, can adjust. And if you’re one of the lucky ones that can work from home, why would you not?

So who’s to say that the new normal can’t become the norm? What if you could live off-grid, with your own water, electricity and sewerage? With fresh produce grown on your doorstep? What if you could work from home, but you can choose where that home is? Maybe it’s on a farm, in between mountains, where the air is clean and the lifestyle active.

Maybe the new norm is Crossways Farm Village.

A vision created by the developers of Thesen Islands in Knysna, Crossways is South Africa’s first contemporary new rural town. The plan is to go off-grid and have its own municipality. It is safe. It is open, made for outdoor living. For families and neighbours sharing the same organic vision of living off the land – even though they don’t have to farm themselves.

A working dairy farm, Crossways provides in every way. From clean air to fresh milk and organic vegetables to internet connectivity, mountain bike and hiking trails to invisible state-of-the-art security and exclusivity to children being children again.

520 hectares divided into 3 nodes – agriculture, reservation and residential – Crossways offers 660 opportunities to invest in the new ruralism. Situated next to the Van Staden’s Bridge near Port Elizabeth
and designed by award-winning CMAI Architects, it truly is the future of sustainable living.

A future designed to be the new norm. With plots ranging from 200 to 8500 square meters, and an architectural style defined as Farmstead – the new normal needn’t be the grim version we’re living through now.

It can be glorious.

In fact, at Crossways Farm Village, it already is.