The lonely Karoo farmyard appears like an oasis in its rugged landscape.

Skills honed over generations ensure production to feed both farmer and a share of townsfolk. Agricultural methods improve in living, learning systems over time, or decay. Buried ancestors would gape or turn in their graves at the practices of those that came later, be they offspring or newcomers; progressing or losing the plot. Some farmers have to lock their doors at night. Sometimes in vain.

Times change, speeded up by science or slowed down by social and economic realities. Is it sustainable? Civilisation does not progress in linear fashion. It is finite, but recurs cyclically and adopts forms that hold surprise.

Some peaks represent rhythm and progress, not always for nature. Some troughs last longer than the capacity of the resident population… and nature unperturbed, breathes again.