“FARMBOI FS”, reads the license plate on Nkosana Mtambo’s double-cab, on the farm Verduin in Vrede in the northeastern Free State.

“Boerseun,” laughs Nkosana, who is built a bit like a bakkie himself: stout, sturdy, ready to get into gear and tackle the land.

The land, dotted with cypresses and weeping willows on the banks of the serpentine Vredespruit, stretches for more than 700 hectares against the foothills of the Maluti Mountains.

On the day Nkosana turned 21, his father, Jabu Mtambo, gave him the farm as a gift, in the process sowing a few words of sage advice.

“Be disciplined even when no one is watching you,” he said, and a decade later, Nkosana continues to reap the harvest.

Mtmabo Boerdery now spans three farms, producing maize, soybean, Dohne merinos, and a breeding herd of Bonsmara cattle, a hardy, red-hued variety, well-suited to the Free State’s searing summers and bitingly cold winters.

“Nature,” sighs Nkosana, mulling over the most gruelling elements of a farmer’s job.

“But in farming, you don’t give up. Instead, you plan for what’s coming. That’s how it works, and that’s what keeps you motivated and driven.”

Nkosana, who grew up in Three Rivers in the Vaal Triangle, was still a little boy when he began planning to be a boerseun.

His grandfather, Samuel Mtambo, owned a farm in Frankfort in the Free State, and Nkosana would help check on cattle and get to grips with the fences and water-points.

On weekends, Nkosana worked behind the counter at his dad’s butchery and shisa nyama in Evaton.

“That was where my understanding of the red-meat value chain started,” he says.

Farming is in his blood and his bloodline, as proved by the Free State Farmer of the Year award he won in 2020.

To his great astonishment, that earned him a phone call from President Ramaphosa, who told Nkosana how happy he was to see him doing well. “Congratulations, young man,” he said.

But one thing Nkosana has learned about farming is that you never stop learning.

“We have successful people on this side of the Free State who know a lot about agriculture,” he says of his neighbouring boere.

“One day I sat down with them, drank coffee, and asked them, ‘Can you help me? I want to learn.’ Then I took the knowledge they gave me, brought it back to the farm, and implemented it.”

He quotes the old proverb about going fast versus going far. “If you want to walk fast, you can walk alone,” he says. “But if you want to walk far, we have to walk together.”

He has formed a small co-op, working with other farmers to pool resources and strengthen their position in the market. One day, he hopes to take it nationwide.

“I’m a first-generation farmer,” he says. “By the third generation, it should be a huge co-op across South Africa.”

He loves farming and he loves the land, but every night, when he finally gets into bed after rising before dawn and toiling all day, he thinks to himself, that’s it, tomorrow I’m going to resign.

“But I redeploy myself in the morning because I love what I do,” he says.

Some nights, he sleeps out in the field as a precaution against stock theft, one of the persistent perils of life on the farm.

What drives him to carry on, aside from his double-cab and his father’s advice? The answer comes quickly.

“What drives me is the reality that you need a doctor twice or three times a year, a lawyer once or twice a year, but you need a farmer three times a day,” he says.

“At the end of the day, you cannot download food and eat from your cell phone. You need a farmer.”

It’s a full-time job, a down-to-earth, get-your-hands-dirty job, and it leaves little room for gentler pursuits.

But still, every Sunday, he manages to find the time to play the trumpet in his local church band, and when his birthday rolls around, he steadfastly pursues a tradition that brings comfort and joy to others.

“I don’t throw a party and ask Kurt Darren to come and sing for me,” says Nkosana.

“What we do, through our family foundation, we find a school where the children face a lot of hardships, and we buy them shoes, food, clothes.”

His hope is that one day, a child will look back and say, “That man came to our school. He brought me shoes and food, and it helped a lot. Today, I am a doctor, and I’m very happy.”

That’s the legacy Nkosana wants to leave, as a reminder of the birthday gift that changed his life and taught him the value of hard work, discipline, and sharing the harvest of the land.