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DAVE ABBOTT - Crafter
The Kwa Zulu-Natal Midlands has an abundance of interesting characters, crafter Dave Abbott is one of them. Dave has lived in Lions River for about twenty five years and knows the area and the people really well. I recently spent a morning at Steampunk Cafe chatting to Dave about the midlands. I will soon visit Dave's workshop to see what he does and find out why he loves life in the midlands. Dave told me about the many 'unknown legends' of the Midlands - I don't think he realised it but he's one of the unknown legends himself. Hopefully I can meet others sometime and tell their stories here. Artisan bread-maker Graeme Taute is one of the few people I've met who have turned the life they wish for into a reality instead of (like most of us) just talking about it. The time I spent with Graeme got me thinking about Henry David Thoreau's words: "I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life ..." I think Graeme has done that. Here's his story. - SEE PHOTOS OF GRAEME AT WORK IN THE SLIDESHOW BELOW - A few years ago one of the last things Graeme Taute did on the evening before he moved from a comfortable home and a successful long term career as a psychologist was to check his email. When he opened his mail that night an unfamiliar poem popped up from a weekly poetry site he subscribed to. The poem began like this: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there of clay and wattle made;…” Considering the timing, the words of W.B. Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree were apt - in fact the whole poem was apposite considering what he was in the process of doing. The poems’ appearance at that very moment might have seemed a coincidence; some might’ve called it synchronicity: but as a student of Carl Gustav Jung (he did his Ph.D on Jung and considers him his psychological father) Graeme felt it, at the time, as a much needed affirmation for what he was about to embark on - to step forward towards the things he was drawn to: writing novels and baking natural bread. So he took a big step - he swapped the life he had, for a thatched wattle and daub cottage in the woods and the life he sought. He’d decided, from that moment on, to live deliberately. Since then he has built a life as a full-time artisan bread-maker and writer. His life has settled into a continuous natural rhythm of baking and writing, writing and baking. A rhythm which begins quietly each Wednesday evening with the measuring out of the essential ingredients - the wild yeast, the flour and the water - for his weekly bake and ends like a full-stop after a long hand-written flow of consciousness - sentence at the Karkloof Farmers Market at about noon each Saturday every week. The market is the highlight of his week: “I love everything about it ,” he says, “especially the interaction with people.” By contrast he spends most of his week in virtual solitude. On Friday’s at about noon, three days after the first mix and the first build, the baking begins. It’s like the final step of a silent dance; every move of which he knows by heart. Between the first slow moves and the final ones - the baking, he adds to the dough with every build. (the build is the process of adding ingredients to increase the quantity needed and to allow time for fermentation) For effective fermentation the builds are several hours apart. Between the builds he waits patiently giving the yeast time to work. Patience, needless to say, is a long forgotten ingredient - the big difference, between the traditional and modern method of any craft. While he waits the fermentation begins, the yeast works - like magic. A process Graeme loves and describes as mysterious and with which he has been fascinated since he discovered the art of artisan bread making in 2003. Or as he says, “when it found me,” adding “I fell in love, I was smitten.” In his own words - he’s passionate, possibly even obsessive about it. It is much more than bread making that interests him however, “it’s the whole process of fermentation that really captivates me because it’s a living thing.” At the start of the process on Wednesday evening, and with the first build complete it’s dark by the time Graeme switches off the lights in the kitchen of his little wattle and daub cottage in the heart of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.And the ‘living thing’ - large buckets of wild yeast ferment, either outdoors (in summer) or in winter, in the kitchen. Two further builds follow on the second day and a fourth on the third day just a few hours before last step - Friday’s baking. On this Friday the final build begins with bright sunlight flooding the cottage’s kitchen through a small window. Graeme always works in silence with only his dogs and a poem posted to the fridge door for company; today it’s Goethe’s, The Holy Longing. He’s learning it by heart; committing poetry and prose to memory is like yeast for the mind, he says. Food for the subconscious. This Friday, is a little different though, his routine is wrecked; his silence shattered with inane questions and a clicking shutter - I’m here; trying and failing to be unobtrusive as he goes about his work. Graeme, nevertheless,is polite, quite shy, reserved even, as he explains what he’s doing. The last build is nearly done, the oven is fired up, ready. He stretches and folds the dough several times; moving between the physical, tactile work, and reading the poem tacked to the fridge. Thats one of the things he likes about bread making. It’s tactile, it’s repetitive and there’s a rhythm to it; and for Graeme it’s the most structured part of his week. “It’s very grounding working with the bread, working with my hands,” he says. Its ironic that he works in silence though, since he studied music before moving on to psychology. His life experience and his knowledge in music then psychology and now bread making inform his work as a writer in the same way that the yeast he's using today - which he carried from the mother yeast he started with in 2003 - informs the present fermentation process. Graeme divides his time, almost equally between making bread for the market and writing a novel; the work he has been busy with for a few years now and the main reason he moved to the midlands. “[Working with] the hands help you think, they keep you grounded. I couldn’t do one without the other.” he says. “The writing life is madness, chaotic, and I go to where the writing takes me.” Over the last few days the pace has increased steadily, imperceptibly, from the slow fermentation of the yeast through the flipping and folding to this final task, the baking. As always, as he works with his hands, his mind is working subconsciously on something else - writing perhaps; creativity is like the yeast - unseen, mysterious. After the last build he begins separating the dough with a dough knife and measuring it into proofing baskets. He works systematically, the tempo increases, there is a rapid rhythm to the work. Before long the proofing baskets are stacked on the shelves waiting to be emptied. Shaped loaves are tipped out, slashed diagonally - to control the rise - dusted with flour and packed into the oven on a bakers peel - a type of long handled shovel that bakers use. In a while freshly baked loaves appear from the oven and are stacked onto a rack to cool. The kitchen in the little thatched cottage smells wholesome. The last loaf is removed from the oven and Graeme sets the bakers peel aside. He’s ready for tomorrows farmers market.
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