UPDATE: Since this interview was conducted, sisters-in-law Ria (Belmont) and Denel Moolman have swapped homes.

 

Ivor Markman

 

The last thing one would expect from a walk in the veld is the inspiration to make and sell barbed-wire balls.

Yet this is exactly what happened to Ria Moolman of the farm Glen Ross, in the Baviaans River Valley, when she went for a walk with her husband, Henry.

When they came across a bundle of barbed wire lying in the veld, images of wattle bark balls came to Ria’s mind.

“In a while wattle bark will be definitely go off. Even if they put stuff on it to let it last longer, it will definitely go off.

“When I saw the barbed wire lying there I though, well, that can work and it will last longer, so I picked it up.

“Henry said to me 'what do you want to do with that rubbish? So I said 'No man, I want try something - you've got to give me space here’,” she said.”

Ria asked one of the farm labourers to bend the wire into a “ball shape”.

The balls were placed on boxes and on the ground. Ria started advertising them for sale and looked around for new ideas.

While on holiday in the Free State she saw articles made using the same raw material.

“I paged through magazines and saw other articles made from barbed wire.

"You can't believe how many ideas came into my mind about barbed wire in the last year,” she said.

The men responsible for manufacturing the articles, brothers Gert and Hompie Commons, are both employed at Glen Ross.

Both are members of the farm working team and have to complete their day’s work before they are able to start working on the wire articles.

As they work during their own time they are paid per item produced.

In winter, when the days are short, this is problematic as the cottages do not have Eskom electricity and the light emitted from lamps and candles is insufficient under which to work.

This leaves them with only the weekends to work the wire.

Somebody gave Ria a wire pumpkin as a present so she asked Gert to try and make one.

“After a while the profits came and so I just let my mind go, (and) I started with hearts and pumpkins,” said Ria.

The wire pumpkins sales took off and sales are growing by the day.

“You can put them on the table, and if, for instance, you've got a dinner party, you can put a little flat key candle, ivy leaves on the side and it looks as if there’s a pumpkin growing on the table. It's beautiful,” said Ria.

“Also, you can put lemons in it,” she said.

The pumpkins can be bought at the road stall in Bedford.

The large one sells for R50 while smaller pumpkins goes for R40.

 If they have decorations or rose petals, the price will be more expensive.

“The heart with the chicken wire costs R60 and the ones without the chicken netting costs R45,” said Ria.

Roses are to be found in most of the Bedford and Baviaans River Valley. It’s almost regarded as the national flower.

It’s natural to associate the beautiful and aromatic rose with affairs of the heart, so next on the list of things to do was to create a heart-shaped basket filled with dried rose petals to serve as potpourri.

The more decorations used, the more expensive the end product. Hanging baskets are also in the pipeline.

“At one stage there were pieces of wire left, offcuts.

"One day Gert brought me little buckets he made.

"I didn't ask for them, he just said to me he can't waste the wire so he put them into small, medium and large buckets,” she said.

Ria, a keen gardener, has placed some of the wireworks in the garden.

One of the most exciting pieces is a realistic life-sized donkey.

At first glance, when you drive up the driveway, it looks like a real donkey standing in the flower bed munching the flowers.

Ria was inspired to have the donkey made after Gert made a realistic life-sized angora goat for the Port Elizabeth firm, Mohair South Africa.

Ria has plans to have a rooster made, so if you’re in the area, look out for a huge wire rooster atop a pole in the garden.