Oake Woods & Co

Oake Woods & Co was born in the Karoo, in a landscape of dust, stars and silence.
For us, the Karoo is a place of purity, far from bright city lights, where the night sky still belongs to the Southern Cross.

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The Southern Cross

In our logo you see this sky, the Hantam Mountains and a single windmill.
The Southern Cross has always been a sign of home in the South. The name Negester comes from the poem “Negester oor Ninevé” (1947) by the South African poet D. J. Opperman and, for our family, it has become an image of what it means to live rooted in a place: with responsibility, with gentleness and with a quiet trust in one’s place in the world.

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The One-Star

Oake Woods & Co. was founded by Eben and Kristi, Eben from South Africa and Kristi from Austria.
The two stars in the logo tell our own love story. In Styria, beneath a full moon and a bottle of red wine, we sat together in the vineyards and saw that we were like “two stars that shine as one”, a single star.

Later we realised that the same star – Sirius – appears above the Karoo when the Southern Cross rises. For us, this is a quiet reminder that love, like the sky, stretches across continents and connects us even when oceans lie between us.

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The Windmill

The windmill stands for the unyielding spirit of the Afrikaners: the ability to make something out of almost nothing, and to draw water and life from dry ground.

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The Hantam Mountains

The Hantam Mountains behind it are our image of permanence and constancy: rock that cannot be shifted, that withstands every kind of weather and reminds us to do our work calmly, honestly and without shortcuts.

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Oak Wood

The oak wood stands for our craft. Bacon is smoked over oak and sliced on oak boards.
The ring made from this wood, which surrounds everything, is our symbol of tireless work: of repeating the same careful movements again and again until the result is right.

The name Oake originally comes from an old English family and a historic bacon company but, for us, it simply means this: wood, fire, salt, meat and durability, too.

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Family

Elmar, Eben’s brother, and his wife Juanita live the same spirit of Negester: creating a home where people are seen and where care happens quietly and naturally.

All four of them, and their children as well, share a deep love for braai and for the craft of working with meat, from the first cut to the last slice on the board.

The images in the logo therefore tell not only the story of Eben and Kristi but also echo in the lives of Elmar and Juanita. It is a shared story that exists between them without needing to be spoken, the way it is in a family.

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Where the worlds become one

Under the vast sky of the Karoo and within the stillness of the Alps, the circle closes. Here, the dust of our heritage merges with honest craftsmanship into that very flavor which brings the images of our childhood to life in every bite. It is the union of South African soul and Austrian constancy, held together by an invisible bond. Above all stands what keeps us grounded as a family: a deep love for our roots and the unshakable power of resilience.