Dreamfields and Paths

Pedestrian footpaths are evident on virtually all the football fields we see in villages.
Our soil fields have fences to keep out the cattle and goats but pedestrians continue to have their shortcuts with minimal impact on the playing surface.

Dreamfields and Rivers

South Africa is a dry country. There is one unique feature on most informal soccer fields that I will share with you tomorrow.
However the Imizamo Yethu field in Hout Bay, Cape Town, has a river running thru....

Dreamfields in Villages

This is a typical football field in the villages across South Africa. Our passion is to give the children access to a level field where the ball bounces consistently, they can have fun and build skills to take them to the level of their dreams.

Cape Town's Field with a View

One of our dreamers, Craig, has the vision of converting some old tennis courts next to this beautiful field into artificial seven-a-side fields for the children of the inner-city of Cape Town.
Green Point eat your heart out!

Grass to Soil

Grass fields can quickly turn into soil fields in Africa. The high temperatures, lack of rain and maintenance can turn a green grass football field into a soil field in a few months.
Having spoken to a contractor who has build grass fields over the past 15 years his estimate is that 40% of grass fields will ultimately become soil fields.

Richards Bay Keep it Green

Obie Oberholzer from Keep it Green is the prime contractor for our first grass DreamField in Richards Bay.

We are waiting for the municipality to provide water and electricity at the site before we can commence construction.

We are hoping for this in the next week!

Tshisahulu DreamField Drainage

We have 2 DreamFields at Tshisahulu which is 8 km's from Thohoyando in Limpopo province.
In October we installed drainage around the fields in anticipation of the rainy season. We also used soil-saver on the left of the photograph to plant grass and secure the banks.
Now that we have had really good rains we look forward to the grass growing and the drains draining!

DreamFields and Microsoft Project

An old friend came to visit.

We have new fields at Driekoppies in Mpumalanga and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal in the pipeline.

We have just received the latest version of Microsoft Project that will enable us to plan and monitor the construction of these fields much more closely. It has been a few years since I last used this software and I am looking forward to the new features in the 2007 version.

DreamFields and Rain

Rain is important for soil stabilised football fields as it is for grass. The good news is that we had rain on our soil fields at Tshisahulu in Limpopo and our new fields under construction in Gopane in the North West.
We need rain during construction so that we can compact the soil to get a durable base.
Once constructed the rain activates the stabiliser to rebond the sand and provide a more compact surface again.
Thanks to Weather SA for enabling us to track the rainfall online!

Hardware for Soil Fields

Above are some items of machinery we use to prepare the soil fields before we do the laser levelling.

DreamFields in Villages

All our football fields so far have been built on tribal land. Above are the offices of the Gopane Tribal Authority The top photograph is of Chief Janjo Gopane (extreme left), his 2 assistants and Danny from the local organising committee. They have made all of us extremely welcome!

Gopane DreamFields Emerging

We are "under construction" with our 2 fields in Gopane Village.

From the photo you can see the fields in 3 stages. On left is the soil having being riiped by the grader. The soil is then wet to aid in the compaction. To the right is the roller used for stage 1 compaction. On the extreme right the surface is being "shined" to get a level playing surface to be ready for many boots and feet.

Gopane Fields Local Organising Committee

Each DreamField we build has a LOC (local organising committee) to ensure that the community welcomes the new arrival.

In Gopane we have Danny as the head of the committee. Included in the photograph are representatives of the sports clubs, government, municipality, tribal authority, community workers and local business.

Gopane DreamFields Turftek

Len Ludick from Turftek is our field builder at Gopane. Turftek is the prime contractor for these fields.

We are busy constructing 2 soil football fields in the village of Gopane and tomorrow I will be driving from Johannesburg to Gopane via Zeerust, about a 3 hour drive.

Watch tomorrow for the latest update.