By Judith De Vor
As a farmer, like so many of us, I juggle a lot of things every day. Taking care of my animals, milking the cows and working the land. Of course I do many other things; I have work on the computer and receive many visitors on the farm. But every day I’m mostly busy with my cows and the land. This is also why we became farmers, the love we feel for our animals and working in nature. As an entrepreneur, you can make choices about how you structure your business, what you focus on and how you want to grow as a person in this. Driving a tractor on your fields with the sun on your face gives you a sense of freedom. This is one of the reasons why we love our work. Our land is our capital, and how we treat our soil today determines not only tomorrow’s quality, but how much life it will contain in a hundred years’ time. This knowledge ensures that we are committed to farming as sustainably as possible, every day and in all sorts of weather. Just like our ancestors who did the same for decades.
Living in and with nature still feels natural to us, but has become far from the norm. More and more people live in larger cities, barely connected to food and where it comes from. The enormous supply and availability in our stores is something we take for granted in the Western world. It is not. Who, in the cities, still realises how much time, energy and love it cost our farmers to produce safe and healthy food? During my travels for my Nuffield scholarship, I noticed that this is a problem in many countries. That’s when I knew I wanted to show people all that producing food entails. So several years ago I started to open the farm to visitors. We host open days, activity afternoons, offer a meeting space and farm tours.
But I want more. Not in the least because I love good food and conviviality. I got a lot of inspiration from the “More than farming” section of this magazine. It is so nice to read what’s possible but most of all what inspired all these women and why they started to make their own products. So I visited a number of different farms, where land use, food and enjoyment are linked. I have seen a number of CSA farms (Community Supported Agriculture). CSA is a nice concept, where people can help on the farm and often in a vegetable garden, in exchange for a share of the harvest and be jointly responsible for the result. In the more heavily populated areas, you see these forms of agriculture emerging more and more. I also visited farms with a farm store, selling homemade or home grown products. Those come in all sizes: from a little shack to an enormous store with cafeteria and playground. This then inspired me to think about what form of diversification would suit us and what would be doable in combination with the running of the farm. We now have a small self-service store selling cheese, juices and seasonal fruits. This winter, I’ll see what we can add without competing with the other farmers in my community. I think it would be good to add a terrace for cyclists and hikers to sit and enjoy. Still, I’m not satisfied and want more. I’m always full of ideas and am convinced I can set up something special. That’s why I went to other farms to look and get inspired. One of my favourite memories of those farm visits was one from two years ago in Spain. It was a hot summer day and I had the opportunity to visit an ecological goose farm specializing in foie gras. The geese roam freely there and are fed with homegrown grains. We were allowed to help with the feeding and see for ourselves how well the animals were taken care of. After our visit, we sat down to a feast. It was the setting and the atmosphere that did it for me. Lights, music, laughter and good conversations. Ever since, I’ve kept thinking how much I would love something like that here. And so now I’m figuring out how to implement something like that on my farm. I think it would be great if I could organize dinners in the orchard with a chef next summer. Just a few times to see how it goes. Hopefully, this will be an opportunity to help people reconnect with pure farm food and its production as well as see them enjoy all that the land has to offer.
This article was published in Women in Ag Mag 2024-003. Click here to read the magazine
