Originally published on LinkedIn on 2020-07-02.
Over the last years I learned why it is important to grow your own food. It’s much more than eat something, it’s kind of lifestyle and also my part against climate change. But why? In my case I focus on regenerative agriculture. Thats even more than a sustainable agriculture does. One of my goals is to give back more than I take from the soil. That’s nice, isn’t it? But I can tell you it is really difficult. It is really hard to increase the amount of humus in soil when you try to harvest at the same time.
This year was really interesting. I started to humify the manure from our horses. It’s more than create compost, it’s about create microbiology for soil with indigestion.
In this case the compost has around 55-65°C and a special fungi together with other microbes is disassembling all the fabrics and nutrients. When the energy is getting less, bacteria is getting more, takes over and builds very good earth. After the whole process it isn’t a fertilizer anymore, but it is very good microbiology that you can take to rebuild the microbiology at the fields. A bit of activated biochar and the chance to build up carbonized soil is very high. Do you ever thought about how much carbon could be saved in soil and what humus is, or terra preta? Just google it, and also it’s impact on climate change. After that think about industrial agriculture…. but that’s another topic.
At first we plow the field, but not with a heavy machine. Because we like it, we plow with the horse. This is really nice work, it is silent, slow and you really can feel the soil.
At the moment I can’t plant with the horse, but with a small tractor it is also okay for me to plant potatoes and vegetables. After that we take care as whole family. Weed control is really important. And with some people around you it is also funny. This year we where able to work with our horse to control the weeds, which makes things much easier. And we saved a lot of time.
And after some time it looked like this.
This is the best time in the year. We planted 7 different types of potatoes. So the time to harvest are different. I always got into the fields with my children when I harvest some potatoes. The joy of the children is the best reward that I can get for the whole work, because then I know that they understand why we plant our own food. This year the first harvest was for french fries, the kids liked it.
I know I wouldn’t like to grow food and sell it to the markets, but I would like to spread the knowledge about those things. So what came into my mind is to create a community here in Upper Austria where we can plant and harvest and exchange. What do you think about such a project, would you like to be a part of such a project/community, or is there already such a community and I didn’t know yet?
I’m curious and looking forward for your answers.
