My Intro Post, this is who I am.

Hello Hive Community, I am going by Roekeya here but known as Jane in everyday life and this is my story.

The beautiful Kwazulu-Natal Midlands of South Africa is the place I call home, on a small holding, which has been my home from the start. Growing up in a farming environment around nature and animals is a blessing, as children we were always outside building something, riding our bikes, playing with ponies and learning to ride horses and care for farm animals.

Sun up was the start of our day and at sundown it was time to come in for dinner and family time. Everyday was a new learning experience, there was always something that needed to be done from putting in new fences to fixing the road, planting trees, tending pastures, building a new block of stables and extending the homestead as the family grew and my brother and sister arrived.

My school years were spent in our local town, I was not fond of being there and never really fitted into the school box. After school I started sharing my knowledge of horses and horse riding, which led to me obtaining my instructors qualification and then pursued a career with the horses. This in turn lead me down many avenues within the horse industry from horse transportation, grooming techniques, clipping, therapy, training both conventional and natural techniques, later leading to a combination of both.

I went on to working on a Thoroughbred Stud and spent some time as a Vet assistant but after a few years I returned home to the small holding and began my own operation. That was when my livery yard and riding stables opened, while pursuing my passion for competing in the disciplines of show jumping and eventing.

After starting the livery stable I quickly learned that farm and pasture maintenance alongside the animals heath and wellbeing was going to either make or break my success.
Horses are eating machines and if I did not implement a very good pasture maintenance program this was not going to be profitable, which then became the beginning of my journey into regenerative agriculture. I had to find a way to make a small piece of ground and grazing carry the maximum number of horses it could.

The other challenge would be to keep the animals healthy and parasite free. In order for this to happen and work in symbiosis with the regenerative farming practice it would be necessary to go natural for all the various medications and parasite control measures. At this point everyone told me I was crazy and this could not be done!.

The stage was set and I was on a mission to prove them wrong! It was at this point in the journey that I met @serowa. It started as a usual day when a call came through asking if I would be available to transport a horse from Thornville back to Merrivale. The lady that arrived to go with me was very nervous, so to make her more comfortable I started chatting to her as we set off on our journey. This was going to be her first horse that she would own and that she was wanting to go into the field of agriculture too (her profession before this and still today is a Cinematographer), we really connected and became very good friends with very similar visions.

This friendship led to her inviting me to assist her at the No-Till Farming Conference, which was awesome because this is when I realised I had been doing Regenerative Agriculture already and other people were sharing the same information.
This gave me confidence to really push forward and continue without any doubt that it was the right route.

The next hurdle was keeping everyone in tip top health and due to a virus known as African Horse Sickness which the vets will admit does not respond to pharmaceutical or veterinary drugs, there was only one alternative and that was to go natural. this proved to be very successful and so began my conversion to natural medicine.

With all my energy and focus going into farming and caring for the animals, I had neglected to take care of my own health which resulted in me gaining weight and developing psoriasis (an auto immune disease).

The journey back to optimal health was exciting, it began by detoxing my entire body with the use of herbs and a complete diet change. Gut health became my main focus.

The initial change was difficult, however looking back it has been the most amazing journey. The re-introduction and legalisation of Hemp/CBD into South Africa was a complete game changer for me as a person dealing with an auto immune problem and this was when I began sharing my info with like minded people and @serowa joined me on the journey to optimal health though Natural Medicine.

Who would have thought that working with what I had access to and by going natural in the way that I ran my operation would lead me to the forefront of a couple of global trends later on in my life.

Looking forward to meeting many of you here.