Queen of the Aga

The legendary Aga, warm heart of the Karoo, is not the easiest girl in town. However, Miss Aga has finally met her match in the form of Emmie Heathman, the Stove-Whisperer…

The Fixer

Emmie Heathman trips out of Annie’s Guest House on Adderley Street in Cradock, bangles jingling on her wrists and toe rings twinkling, a total match for her roguish eyes. She wears mascara and girly sandals, and apart from her no-nonsense mien and a toolbag, she’s not exactly what you’d expect from someone who fixes large, legendary anthracite stoves for a living.

But there’s no time to hang about chatting. There’s a farmer up the road with a sick Aga, and we’re expected. She and her husband Morris jump into their white bakkie and we head out on the Hofmeyr road.

The farmer (let’s call him Oom Piet) has had it up to here with the stove. It’s been burping hellfire-scented smoke into the kitchen for the last year or more, staining the ceiling yellow. It was bad enough when he and his wife were on their own. But now they have a gorgeous little baby girl with tender lungs, and Oom Piet is muttering that he wants to strip the thing down and turn it into a kaggel (fireplace).

The smoking Aga has messed up his whole, dearly cherished, daily routine. For decades, winter or summer, he’d sat in his frayed armchair beside the warm stove, his hands wrapped round a hot cup of coffee. Now where must he sit? Next to a cold lump of metal? No, rather make it into hearth, he reasons. In fact, he’s clearly hoping Emmie will diagnose the Aga as being beyond all repair so he can vent his frustrations on it with an oxy-acetylene torch.

Getting Heated

But this stubborn slow-talking Karoo farmer with the wild hair has met his match. Emmie never gives up on a stove, and she makes him what sounds like a rash promise:

“Oom, if this stove is still smoking when I’ve finished with it, you don’t have to pay me.”

It’s a deal that would appeal to any tight-fisted sheep farmer. But he’s clearly still smarting with disappointment that he can’t hack up this misbehaving stove.

“Ja, ja, orrait” he mutters grudgingly. “I just don’t want to sukkel anymore.”

To the Oom’s chagrin, he gets a crash course on the cunning inner workings of Aga stoves, a difficult thing for a boer-maak-‘n-plan (the farmer makes a plan) kind of guy to stomach.

Emmie points out he needs a different attachment to his chimney, and plus, the way he’s been loading the stove with anthracite, just chucked in with all the dust, has slowly worn away the precision-engineered galvanized iron plug on one of the plates.

“Do you fish, Oom? Because you can sommer use this for a sinker, it’s useless. We’ll make you a new one.”

Despite himself, the Oom is fascinated. Who would have thought that the current bane of his life was so beautifully designed? He’d just inherited the farm from his parents and barely knew how to use the stove. His new wife is town-born, and she didn’t know either.

Emmie’s passion is persuasive. She considers Agas to be one of the industrial age’s finest products, cunningly devised by Swedish engineer Gustav Dalen, unchanged in 70 years by English manufacturers to deliver maximum recirculated heat with minimum fuel.

“The more you use it, the better it gets. You should never let it go out, in fact. It’s far cheaper to run than an electric stove or a gas stove – about R40 a week, so less than R200 a month. You’ve got hot water ALL the time, and food tastes much better. The best porridge you’ve ever tasted comes out of an Aga oven. You can put lamb roast into the slow oven in the morning, and by suppertime, it’s so tender it’s falling off the bone. It will outlast you, and your children, and their children.”

A Wandering Life

How did she and Morris end up tracking back and forth across the country, fixing ailing Agas? Morris started with them when he was in the spares business back in KwaZulu Natal. The stoves and their spares became a bit of a sideline.

He married Emmie, who had her own car repair shop, about twenty years ago.

“Morris taught me all he knew about stoves. He made me strip them down and put them back together, again and again and again. Then I went over to the Aga factory in England to do a course.”

Morris is the handlanger (assistant) these days.

“Emmie’s got the finesse, the eye for detail,” he says proudly. “She’s much better with the stoves now than I am.”

It’s also easier for a woman to be welcomed into a kitchen.

Heart of the House

“You know, a kitchen is a very private place – it’s the heart of the house,” says Emmie delicately. “And sometimes the stove is something a man and woman fight about. She wants it fixed, but he’d rather buy another sheep or a cow. So you have to be diplomatic.”

It’s a never-ending job, and they spend about 25 days on the road out of every month. They have a beautiful Aga they’ve restored back at their home in Hillcrest, but they’re never home long enough to fix it.

The upside of this wandering life, they say, is meeting the incredible people they do, and adventuring around the country.

The downside? Apart from the punctures on remote farm roads, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been bitten by dogs,” sighs Emmie. “Especially by dogs that ‘never bite’….”

• Call Emmie on 082 965 6560  or Morris on 082 672 0292

“AGA OWNERS MAKE BETTER COOKS”

The “place where Aga lives” in South Africa is the Karoo, the country’s stark arid area that covers more than 40% of SA’s land mass.

In a land of weather extremes the Agas exude warmth, comfort and the enticing smell of slow-cooked roasts. The steady comforting heat of Aga stoves have saved many a frozen Angora goat or orphaned lamb in the middle of a harsh Karoo winter.

They’re found all over the world and are still made by hand in England. The South African Aga website has a list of famous owners. Actors, singers and models seem particularly partial to them. Madonna has one. So do singers Shania Twain, Billy Joel, Sting and his wife Trudy Styler. Models like them too – Elle McPherson, Claudia Schiffer and Elizabeth Hurley have them – presumably more for the heat than the food.

Kate Winslet, Sharon Stone and Colin Firth each have one, and famous soccer players too – including Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand. Jamie Oliver has even said that Aga owners make better cooks.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are proud owners too, but that’s hardly a surprise. There’s no mention of the Aga Khan, though. A pity.

• For more information, see www.agastoves.co.za.

Story: Julienne du Toit - Photographs: Chris Marais