Nemvelo Farm’s Mhlekhona Hlongwa Waffles on About Chickens in South Africa

The name Nemvelo translates from isiZulu (the Zulu language) as “with nature.” Perfect for Nemvelo Farm on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast set up seven years ago to supply a legendary South African eatery, dating back to 1957, with free-range chickens.

Little did f imagine back then, when he left an environmental nonprofit to help set up Nemvelo, that he would soon be flying the coop and spending a year ruffling feathers on a chicken farm in the U.S.

We’ll get back to this in a minute. But first, a little culinary detour.

So, picture the scene. You sit down and order something delicious at an eatery. In this case, The Waffle House in Ramsgate has no connection with the U.S. chain. And Ramsgate? Not the (more famous) English seaside town. Instead, a cool little coastal village about 15 minutes by car from the aforementioned farm.

We read the menu, which ideally gets the taste buds tittering. We notice the ambiance, enjoy the company and perhaps think appreciatively of the chef as we engage with the servers and place our order.

And there, our involvement often stops.

But what about the rest of the picture? The behind-the-scenes elements. The heart of the matter. Heart of the platter? The essentials? The indispensables?

For this story, the freshly picked organic veggies. The salad micro greens. The stone-ground flour. The free-range chickens and fresh farm eggs. The elements of nature: sunshine, rain. And the people: the Nemvelo Farm crew. For our purposes, the team led by Hlongwa. The out-of-sight circle of life often overlooked but the essence of any meal, whatever and wherever we eat.

The Waffle House

Back to Nemvelo Farm . “It all began when we needed relatively small quantities of free-range chickens and we couldn’t find a suitable local supplier, so [we] bought this 6.5 hectare (16 acres) farm and transformed it,” says manager Clinten Peters.

The Waffle House is something of an iconic spot for locals and visitors to this part of South Africa. The place opened in 1957 as the Tea House of the Blue Lagoon. The family that owned it then — and still now with offspring and partners — ran it for 19 years, then went to live in the U.K. for 15 years, during which time they leased it out.

In 1991, they returned, renovated and reopened as The Waffle House , their son by then having opened two thus-named eateries in the U.K.

All three, then and still now, serve “deliciously sweet and savory” Belgian-style waffles “using locally sourced free-range and organic ingredients.” Interestingly, no sugar is used in the waffle mixture for either sweet or savory options.

On the savory side, their popular chicken curry waffle, served with a papadum, sambals and fresh banana slices, features free-range chicken from Nemvelo Farm.

As do the chicken-a-la-king waffle with deboned tender chunks of chicken, fresh peppers and mushrooms simmered in a creamy sauce.  And the chicken mayo waffle with organic salad greens, pickled cucumber and baby tomatoes.

All veggies and salads are served as sides and in the vegetarian and vegan options are, you guessed, from Nemvelo Farm.

Decadence on a Plate

On the sweet side, think chocolate brownie waffle decadence on a plate. The waffle is topped with choc-encrusted vanilla ice cream alongside (if this be your choice) your dense, chewy, bite-me chocolate brownie indulgence.

Or one might opt for a salted caramel “avalanche,” where the ice cream, locally made, has a thick and crunchy, which turns melt-in-the-mouth, topping of salted caramel with macadamia praline.

A couple eating what is on the menu as “banoffee” told me they had driven for five hours to indulge in their waffle treat, this one topped with ice cream, bananas (banana and macadamia farms are abundant in the area), and housemade caramel sauce.

Meet Mhlekhona Hlongwa

“Mhle” Hlongwa was born and raised in the rural township of Gamalakhe, which had its origins in the racial segregation policies (keeping Black South Africans out of urban centers) during the dark days of apartheid, prior to the country’s first democratic elections 30 years ago (1994) when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president.

After high school, the family was financially strapped and had limited tertiary options, so Hlongwa stayed in the family home and studied agricultural management through distance learning at the University of South Africa ( UNISA ).

“I was interested in farming and in the land. This is a farming area. And truly, I wasn’t keen to move to the city,” he says when we meet at Nemvelo Farm, 20 minutes from Gamalakhe.

Brought up to value the opportunities offered by education — one of his two older brothers is a secondary school teacher, and the other lectures at the tertiary level — he sailed through his assignments and with his diploma under his belt, applied for and got an internship through the South African nonprofit Future Farmers Foundation.

“What they do is help students to get bursaries. In my case, I got a paid internship at Siyavuna,” a job creation and skills development nonprofit where the focus is “green” farming, sustainable agriculture and nutritional security.”

Siyavuna is in Ramsgate, close to The Waffle House. While there, he ran a seedling nursery and later, their vegetable cold-storage facility.

The Chickens of Indiana

His internship ended just as Nemvelo Farm was setting up as a free-range chicken and organic produce start-up. He accepted a job offer to assist.

After two years of experience working with the chickens, he became eligible to apply for a year-long internship on a poultry farm in the U.S. funded by the World Poultry Foundation , headquartered in Tucker, Georgia, where the mission is “to be a catalyst for improving lives globally through the sustainable production of poultry by empowering farmers in developing regions.”

Yet another U.S.-based foundation, Wise , located in Tennessee, sponsored the necessary visa exchange. Hlongwa jetted off on his first international trip to destination Rose Acre Farms in North Vernon, Indiana; one of America’s largest egg producers.

“There I worked with layers, learning a lot about egg production. Here we have broilers,” he says when he shows me Nemvelo Farm’s small on-site abattoir.

On this day, an “of-age” (43 days) group of eggs has been moved from one of three large chicken houses, each of which opens into a substantial outdoor plot with shrubs and trees and sand and shade and where they have “enjoyed a short and healthy life in a pleasant environment,” as Peters puts it.

The birds are clucking, seemingly happily and oblivious to their pending farm-to-plate fate, as the abattoir team engages in their quick, humane, and what is conceived of as minimally traumatic work.

Don’t Put Your Eggs in One Basket at Nemvelo Farm

When the internship ended, much as he had enjoyed and appreciated what he experienced and learned, Hlongwa was pleased to come home to roost. Specifically, the bitter chill of winter in Indiana got to him, accustomed as he is to his sub-tropical home environment.

With the internship dollars he had managed to save, he bought a car and worked on his house, which adjoins his mom’s. Four months after returning, he was invited to participate in leadership coaching via the Waffle House’s in-house training program and to run farming operations at Nemvelo Farm.

It’s not easy to blow one’s own trumpet. But Peters was happy to oblige. “Mhle is amazing with chickens, but his passion is vegetables. He’s always trying new and innovative ways of producing seedlings and looking at different aspects of growing,” he shares.

“He’s used a lot of his knowledge from school, adapted it, and continues to come up with all manner of ideas that you wouldn’t learn from books.”

Hlongwa works with interns who come from government programs and arrive green, not in a good way. They are not taught organic practices at college. Know nothing about natural herbicides and pesticides.

The interns are blank slates when introduced to day-to-day Nemvelo Farm practices such as recycling from the Waffle House kitchen back to the fields, the worm farm, the composting program. Natural enzymes. Egg shells for pest control. The Nemvelo Farm Instagram page is a veritable treasure chest of good practices and ideas.

Hlongwa and I walk the farm, the greenhouse, the fields, and the macadamia orchard, where the first trees, planted four years ago, are providing their first crop. He shows me the micro greens and seedlings in the expansive greenhouse and instructs me on how to thin out the clumps of tiny spinach plants to ensure a sturdy crop.

Then we wander the organic produce fields. Talk about hand-weeding and regenerative farming, as in building soil health, eschewing pesticides and herbicides and earth-to-earth composting.

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Nemvelo Farm, these days, provides organic veggies and herbs to many of the eateries in the area. The Waffle House opened a deli two years ago where customers — anyone — purchase free-range chickens and organic produce to take home.

Something I noted, so let me share.

Having walked the fields of Nemvelo Farm with Hlongwa, seen the veggies growing, met the chickens head-on (and heads off), ordered from the menu and seeing and eating the waffles, knowing somewhat how the meal got onto my plate, added an extra element of flavor and, well, everything tasted better.

This story originally appeared in Cuisine Noir Magazine