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Letter From The Farm | Community Farming in Ireland

On Cloughjordan Community Farm it takes a village to grow 50 sorts of vegetables. The member-owned farm produces high quality, nutritionally dense veggies using agroecological methods. Community is central to the farm’s work, from its CSA scheme to volunteering, and most recently a big effort to plant 2,000 trees for syntropic farming. Letter from the farm by Oliver Moore. […]

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Letter From The Farm | All In A Day’s Tree Planting

We’re back with Martino Newcombe in the West of Ireland, where he reflects on a winter’s day of planting a shelter belt of native tree species. Not on his farm, but on that of his neighbour, a retired farmer, with the help of another neighbour – echoing the traditional Irish practice of helping each other out that is known as “meitheal”. As a wildlife corridor connects flora and fauna, local networks of knowledge and skills spawn opportunities to build resilience. Martino shares the insights of a day’s work. […]

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Letter From A Future Farmer | Living Alternatives

Can principles of local action, mutual aid and intergenerational cohesion help to revive rural areas? Jessica Girardi immersed herself in this question during a month-long Forum Synergies scholarship hosted by the Porto di Terra collective in Sicily in August-September 2024. She found living proof that rural areas can be dynamic, progressive and experimental. Letter by Jessica Girardi.  […]

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Letter From The Farm | The West of Ireland Never ‘Dewilded’

Martino Newcombe runs a small farm in Co. Galway in the west of Ireland. Biodiversity is a central focus of his work. He practices conservation grazing on marshy terrain with Kerry cattle, a hardy ancient Irish dairy breed. In his stewardship of the land he is careful to heed the inherent understanding of deep ecology passed down from previous generations. In this first letter from his farm, Martino explains that you don’t have to be a cow to tell milk from cream. […]

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Czech Republic | Fifty Years To Pay For A Farm

A rural European gathering is a special moment. A time for those working on the ground in different territories and regions to compare notes on common challenges at local level, and reflect on European solutions. Access to land is increasingly a barrier for aspiring farmers across Europe, even as an ageing generation of farmers often fails to find a successor. At our European gathering in Plessé in 2022, Czech farmer Terezie Daňková realised how pervasive this issue is in other EU member states. […]

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Luxembourg | A Good Gardener is a Teacher and Politician

A master gardener and co-founder of the SEED association for the preservation and use of the region’s traditional seed varieties, Frank Adams has long been involved in the legislative battle waged by seed savers to gain recognition for the necessity and specific nature of their work. Hannes Lorenzen spoke to Frank during a horticultural walk in the gardens of the Château d’Ansembourg, Luxembourg. […]

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Letter from Christiansen Farm – Breeding Time

Time waits for nobody – but it seems to travel quickly or slowly depending on circumstance. Organic breeding techniques have a different relationship to time and place than genetic engineering methods; other aspects of being in a market economy and of using specialised machinery have their own relationships to time too. Here, Hannes Lorenzen talks with organic plant breeders in Christiansen organic farm, up in Schleswig-Holstein, in the far north of Germany and what they do and why they do it.  […]

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Letter from the Farm | Wild Geese and Tamed Farming – is it All for the Birds?

Is farming for the birds? Like mountain farmers, some lowland farmers have trouble keeping economically afloat due to growing production costs, difficult market access, and the impact of climate change. Jan Gonne Thams is one of them. He lives on Pellworm island, in a remote and disadvantaged region of North Friesland, Germany.  There, the increasing numbers of protected wild Geese which arrive on Pellworm island have changed priorities of the young farmer. Now the farm shop is first and farming is secondary. In conversation with Hannes Lorenzen. […]

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Letter From A Future Farmer | Rethinking The Farm From The Ground Up

For Matthew Hayes, a flying visit to Groundswell 2024, the UK annual festival for regenerative agriculture, provides a brief period off the farm in mid-season, and a moment for reflection. There he visits his son Kristof, who is forging his own path in the regen ag space. It’s a solid grounding in shared values that led this farmer’s son to give agriculture another go – on his own terms. A father and son letter by Kristof and Matthew Hayes […]

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Germany | A Modern Subsistence Farm in a Postcard Landscape

Cycling through this beauty of soft hills, yellow-green meadows, scattered forests, small lakes, finely carpentered wooden houses, small villages with cows and horses grazing side by side, onion-crowned church-towers and cosy guest houses, you may believe that Upper Bavaria is one of those remaining paradise places where rural culture and small peasantry has survived. Letter from die Ötz farm by Hannes Lorenzen. […]

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Letter From The Farm | Strong Roots for a Surer Future

Investing in a small family farm is much more than an economic consideration: it can help to revitalise an entire village. In the Greek village of Trikorfo (Τρίκορφο), father and son Vasilis and Lukas Mylonas are two generations of olive farmers who are honouring their roots while looking to the future for their community. Hannes Lorenzen reports from his visit to the farm in May. […]