Writing from his mother's farm near Cradock in the Eastern Cape, Toast Coetzer reckons that future happiness is determined by how many Consol bottles you have in the pantry.
It's a Saturday morning at Rietvlei and my mother and I drive to a camp called Waterkloof, where we find Drakensberger cattle at the salt lick, each one black as an oil slick.
A lone gemsbok - of the fancy, golden colour variant - is also there, but it's further back, between the bushes, showing off its spectacular horns.
It jumped over the fence from the neighbouring farm a couple of years ago and seems to have settled in.
My mother has been a farmer all her life. She can tell at a glance that there are a couple of calves missing from the herd.
She farms on feel, on instinct, rather than in a scientific way.
We walk a short distance up the stony jeep track to see if we can spot the two missing calves. Ah, there they are, lying down behind a clutch of blinkblaar trees.
Happy with her herd, we get back in the bakkie and drive down towards the main kloof road, where we turn left. A few hundred metres further, Ooievaarkrans (Stork Cliff) rises on the right, named after the black storks that once nested here, back when I was a child and the kloof carried more water.
The big, untidy nest you can see today belongs to a hamerkop.
My mother recalls when she and her two grandchildren (my sister's boys, Slater and Oliver) stopped here last year and saw four hamerkop fledglings trying out their wings.
A couple of days ago, just before we received more than two inches of rain, I came across a leopard tortoise digging a hole on the side of the road, here at Ooievaarkrans.
The tortoise was old and the ground was rock hard and dry. She struggled.
When I returned an hour later, she had urinated to soften the ground and dug down 10 cm already. This was early evening - she laid her eggs overnight. When my mother passed the same spot the next morning, she watched the tortoise tamping down the earth, job done.
Our neighbour, Tannie Karin, phones later that afternoon. She asks if we'd like to come and fetch more tomatoes, peaches and apples - just bring a few baskets.
Karin has had a bountiful season and my mother has already fetched a few boxes of produce from her. They've both been drying fruit, making jam and bottling fruit - common fruit like peaches but also rarer pickings, like quince.
Everyone else is busy, so I drive the short distance (about 2 km up the kloof) by myself, past the poplar grove where our spring lies hidden, and through Diepdrif before turning right into Tannie Karin and Oom Johann's farmyard.
Their farm is called Leliekloof and much of the extensive garden was laid out over a century ago. They have prickly pears, cherry trees, walnut, mulberry, quince and many apricot, peach and apple trees.
Apricot season has come and gone. It was a good one, too: Tannie Karin made enough jam to last her for years to come.
Of course, every child, grandchild and other visitor drove away with a Consol jar or three.
Later, after we've picked a basket of apples, a basket of peaches and another of tomatoes, we sit down for a cup of coffee.
Glancing over Oom Johann's shoulder, I can see into Tannie Karin's dark pantry where bottles and jars gleam with the promise of nourishment and motherly love.
Nothing is wasted on this farm: Everything gets eaten, shared, dried, canned, saved for later.
Some of the produce might even make it to Canada, where their daughter Louise lives, or to their sons in Phalaborwa and Bloemfontein.
As dusk gathers and the kloof cools down, I say goodbye and drive out of the yard.
Just before Diepdrif, I stop and get out of the car, marvelling at the low sun lighting the high outcrops.
They look like ripe peaches, and it makes me think of all those Consol jars again - the jams, the pickles, the syrupy delights - and how they are an investment towards a happy future.
Together they sing a quiet, uplifting song about family gatherings to come, everyone sitting happily around a table laden with food, the chairs occupied by people who love each other deeply.
Thanks Tannie Karin.
And thanks, Mom.
