Can’t keep a good woman down
MULDERSDRIFT – At 86 years young, Millicent McKenzie feels that all the secrets to keeping young, lie in hard work.
Deep in the heart of Muldersdrift Agricultural Holdings, lies a horticultural gem in the form of Austraflora Nursery.
At the heart of the nursery, however, you will find Millicent McKenzie, who has dedicated her life to the flowers, the trees and all the plants grown there.
Merely 86 years young, McKenzie and her late husband, Tom, began building the nursery with their bare hands in 1963.
Tom was an American Naval pilot who came to South Africa in search of new opportunities in the late ’50s. He and Millicent, a farm girl from the Karoo, met in Port Elizabeth and their romance continued to blossom throughout the better half of the last century and beyond.
“There was nothing here when we started and we weren’t sure of what we wanted to do with the property in the beginning,” remembers McKenzie. “Everyone was farming things like mielies and so forth, and everyone sold their goods like fruits, eggs and jam at little market stalls in Honeydew.”
She continued to explain how severe drought began affecting all the farms in the area later on. “Water was scarce and boreholes were drying up one by one, we battled for a long time, but eventually, we persevered.”
It took a good couple of years before the McKenzies could reap the financial benefits of their tireless efforts to make the business – and flora – grow substantially. “We worked every single day, every waking hour. Even though my husband worked a full-time job, he still came home and did the books every night,” McKenzie spoke fondly of her late husband. Tom became one of South Africa’s first computer engineers in the ’60s. “I still feel that this nursery was built on computers,” she said with a giggle.
Tom passed away in 2006 when he was 80 years old. “It was very difficult, you know, spending your life building something with someone just for that person to suddenly not be there anymore.”
Most incredibly though, in all their years working together, they never once took a vacation. “We just had too much to take care of, too many plants and animals on our farm that needed us to be there every day.”
Although she still receives a lot of help from her family and ample support from her go-to horticulturist and right-hand-man, Michael Phillips, to this day, she still refuses to take time off. And dare mention the word ‘retirement’?
“No, absolutely not, there’s too much that I still need to do.”
Details: Austraflora 082 724 9586
