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World Urban Farmers Family

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21.01.2022 Meet Dainius and Zavinta from Lithuania I am an experienced electric motor winder, and I am currently studying welding in addition to working full time in ...our homestead. Zavinta is the designer and seamstress. We have been together for almost 9 years after first meeting in London. We returned to Lithuania 2 years ago. We bought a 3.5 hectare, hundred-years old abandoned farmstead in a small village in the northmost part of Lithuania. It is a home for a variety of ancient apple, cherry and plum trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, wild tulips surrounded by hundreds of old, big trees. Our wooden house, rock outdoor cellar and clay barn were almost unlivable when we moved in - there was no electricity, the roof was leaking, the wind was whistling through the windows, the floor was rotten, you name it. We started repairs as soon as we moved in but after 2 years of living here, we are yet to install the plumbing system. Our dream of living in a remote, quiet, idyllic place started whilst we were still living in the city. We both enjoyed vegetables and fresh food, but we knew that what we bought in the shops, was chemically grown eggs, veggies and meat had no taste, no aroma, and most importantly, eating them was not healthy and sustainable in the long run. We wanted to eat healthy food, knowing that it is grown organically, slowly and without harmful chemicals. We were also curious of the whole food-growing process observing plants sprout, grow, ripen. Since we came back, growing our own food became one of the key priorities. In the summer we eat fresh vegetables and fruits and at the end of summer season, we start getting ready for winter. There are vegetables that hold up well during winter months in the cellar like beetroots, carrots, potatoes, cabbages, radishes, turnips. We also ferment a lot of vegetables, make sauces, juices, fruit jams and keep them in our outdoor cellar. Our homestead is located in the Northern Lithuania. Currently, our organic no dig garden is about 1,500 square meters, and we grow a wide variety of vegetables, berries, and herbs. We grow hardneck garlic in an area of about 300 square meters, and we use it to produce black garlic. We have two 3m x 7m greenhouses where we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, chili, peppers. We also have berry bushes, fruit trees and two beehives. And how is the village without chickens?! We currently have 25 hens, 2 roosters, two beautiful peacocks and three cats. We use straws, tree leaves, our own compost and organic mushroom compost to improve the soil. It is not always possible to protect against plant pests, but we leave as many habitats as possible for animals, insects, and birds, such as a wood pile for hedgehog, the tree leaves for bugs, bushes for birds whilst trying to grow as much plant diversity as possible. We have not tried to save seeds yet, except zucchini seeds. We buy seeds from organic stores. Sometimes we exchange seeds with friends. Our place has long been abandoned for a very long time before we moved in, but little by little we are moving forward and seeing progress in all parts of our homestead. Eating healthy, fresh food is a luxury. Knowing how to grow healthy food and share it, is an incredibly rewarding experience. Miškiniai- krybinis kis instagram.com/miskiniai_creative_farm/ Facebook.com/humanswhogrowfood features stories of home gardeners, farmers and community gardens across borders and cultures. We want to connect with growers from countries that we haven’t featured yet. Please message or email us if you are from Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone. Tell us your story: [email protected] or message us on Facebook. Instagram.com/humanswhogrowfood LinkedIn.com/company/humanswhogrowfood Twitter.com/humansgrowfood

18.01.2022 Meet Harshita from Auroville, India I am a permaculturist and textile and fashion designer. I and my friend Kai Lindenblatt (Permaculture Designer), togeth...er describe ourselves as Makers and Problem Solvers. We together run an organization called Makers of Permaculture. Makers of Permaculture aims to continue growing as a social / environmental business with incorporating more members working together to share knowledge and shape the future and significance of applied permaculture design in the world as the key-tool to live in peace and security. We are physically present in India and Germany and work online and traveling to different parts of the world. While working on a reforestation project in Samburu County in Kenya I realized the importance of growing food. People do not have food and water, the bare necessities for life to continue growing, and it did hit me really hard. Producing one's own food and catching the rainwater can solve problems of hunger, malnutrition and failing ecosystems together. Now working as Makers of Permaculture, I try to pass on whatever I have learned in my own journey to help others in my full capacity. The magic of creation and and seeing any kind of life being born is such a breathtaking experience. To see the formation from flower to ultimate food form is so magical, and that sheer magic just keeps me going. The taste and love I feel eating the food I grow is just out of this world. I am currently living in Auroville, in India. The garden I have here is only 4m x 9m in area. I love forests, and I have tried to bio-mimic the same in my small garden patch. This garden is only two and half months old and it currently growing mung beans, long beans, cow peas, wing beans, rosella, moringa, cassavas, sweet potatoes, chaia spinach, malabar spinach, bitter gourd, bottle gourds, sunflowers, cosmos, tomatoes, egg plants, corns, pumpkins, butternut squashes, chilly, rockets, some indigenous herbs, chicken spinach, okra, papaya, rose moss, jicoma, onions, ramphal, lemon grass, passion fruit and many more... I constantly work towards improving the soil. I follow an easy and simple mantra well described by Masanobu Fukuoka Give everything back to the soil. I add all kinds of nutrients back to the soil by constantly mulching the soil with as many different varieties of dead organic matter. For me here it varies from algae to water hyacinth to cow manure to bamboo leaves and what not. What other people throw away, I collect and mulch our gardens... I believe in holistic design and management of my life and the gardens I work on. I do conscious companion planting to avoid pests. Since the garden is a bio-mimicry of a food forest, there is rarely any problem with pests. Usually there is enough for us and them so we all live in this happy balanced ecosystem. If there is a pest problem, I soak 4 tsps of neem powder overnight in 10 litres of water and water the plants with it once a week. I have never come across any big hurdle. There are some or the other challenges every day, but they push me to be more efficient and creative so I get my kick from the hurdles. I strictly do not purchase anything for my garden, most of the seeds came either as gifts from friends who are organic farmers or through seed exchange. I also collect seeds when I am traveling, and I consciously save the seeds. One can easily find me on the side of a street or at a farm with a small bag taking every opportunity to collect and save the seeds. Seeing the plants grow everyday is the biggest reward. When I have food in abundance for myself and I can share it with others, it truly makes me really happy, We want to change the world by teaching and inspiring others to be able to approach social / environmental change by applying permaculture design. This means to design resilient livelihoods, resilient landscapes, resilient economies. A model which we will replicate throughout the world. We work with social groups, NGOs, organizations, businesses and private people to introduce, promote and teach permaculture and holistic sustainable living. We want to support others with their projects and their needs to create positive change. Nature is abundant, one can take what is needed and rest can be left untouched and wild. To become one with ourselves and to grow in peace and harmony, we need to reconnect with our roots, mother earth... Once you connect, you are not above or below the nature, you are the nature... Let’s merge ourselves and go back to the womb of the earth we all came from, let’s become humans again... Let us all become one. https://www.facebook.com/makers.of.permaculture https://www.instagram.com//fbclid=IwAR06qhcM9cU_F7m_s2EVmY https://www.makersofpermaculture.com Facebook.com/humanswhogrowfood features stories of home gardeners, farmers and community gardens across borders and cultures. We want to connect with growers from countries that we haven’t featured yet. Please message or email us if you are from Palau, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Russia and Rwanda. Tell us your story: [email protected] or message us on Facebook. Instagram.com/humanswhogrowfood LinkedIn.com/company/humanswhogrowfood Twitter.com/humansgrowfood

14.01.2022 So often I see people start their farm and immediately get chickens...DONT! At least for profit. I explain why in this video. #growingfarmers #chickenfarming #farmmore #chickens

13.01.2022 Water can be planted.

11.01.2022 Meet Arianne from Iceland (First feature from Iceland!) I am an outdoor person, spending a lot of time in the highlands, mountains and glaciers of Iceland,... both in my free-time and in my work for the Icelandic mountain search and rescue team. In my other work, I teach children with special needs at the special school of Iceland. Working in my garden is my way to load batteries and to get over difficult rescue incidents. Most of the vegetables and all fruits have to be imported to Iceland over very long distances, with a very bad environmental impact. Good taste and freshness are often an unfulfilled wish. I started to grow veggies after we bought an old house with a big garden in Reykjavík, years ago when my 3 children were very young. I wanted to be able to offer them fresh and 100% pesticide-free food and involve them in planting and observing life circles. That has worked out very well: already 2 of the children are today studying nature science at the university. Furthermore, my boy was the youngest person in Iceland ever to learn to keep bees. He has 2 beehives in our garden. He is also growing edible mushrooms. We live in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. Iceland is an island country in the North Atlantic ocean, east of Greenland and immediately south of the Arctic Circle. In summer we have daylight 24 hours and in winter the days are short and dark. Our garden is 1000 m2. Beside the vegetables, we have bees and a small group of hens around the house. Our hens are very tame and one of them comes into the kitchen every day and lays an egg into the flower pot! Real home delivery!! I grow a lot of wild flowers for my son’s bees. Then I have 9 different types of berry plants for example bilberries, crowberries, blueberries and brambleberries. There is a lot of Rhubarb in the garden, potatoes, herbs, herbal tea plants, beans and many types of salad. I have no need for pest management here because luckily, many vegetable destroying species have not made it to Iceland yet. I do make my own soil with composting and by using the chicken manure. Some plants and seeds I find in the nature. I also keep seeds between the years and some are from the store or from gardening friends. What makes outdoor food growing in Iceland difficult is, how short the summers are here in the north and how long and dark the winters are. We already had frost at nights in September and sometimes we have snow in May. But the dancing northern lights over the house sure are beautiful. It is extremely rewarding for me to work in my garden; this feeling of doing something is profoundly good. The chickens are always around me and keep me company. I love to see the plants grow, to harvest what is ready and to prepare vegetable dishes for my family and friends. I am also a member of the very small Icelandic permaculture association. Keep calm and grow food. Especially now in 2020, the year of lockdowns. Many of us do spend more time in gardens, those places of peace and security, where even a pandemic cannot harm us. Arianne has also included some pictures of beautiful Iceland, her rescue work and winter photos of the house and garden to show what impact the cold has on gardening. Facebook.com/humanswhogrowfood features stories of home gardeners, farmers and community gardens across borders and cultures. We want to connect with growers from countries that we haven’t featured yet. Please message or email us if you are from Algeria, Albania, Antigua & Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Brunei, Burkina Faso and Burundi. Tell us your story: [email protected] or message us on Facebook. Instagram.com/humanswhogrowfood LinkedIn.com/company/humanswhogrowfood Twitter.com/humansgrowfood

09.01.2022 Design with & around nature ... don't remove it.

04.01.2022 Thought for food.

03.01.2022 Ben & Alicia rockin it!

02.01.2022 This is why Japanese melons are so expensive.

02.01.2022 Meet Cameron from Seven Hills, NSW, Australia In Autumn, when my persimmon tree changes from green to amber there are some nights when the moon glints off... the leaves, hypnotizing me with their bioluminescent glow. My earliest memory of me being involved with the earth was me bringing food to my Grandfather’s farm in the Pagas, Cabanatuan City, Philippines. I still feel the humidity on my skin. I remember thinking how cool it was that he was ploughing his plot with his trusty water buffalo. He would allow me to ride on the buffalo and I was always hypnotized with how the plough separated the ground. He would teach me about gardening and planting. ‘The soil needs to breathe’, he would say. I arrived in Sydney with my family in 1984, I was 9. I had few friends as I could not speak English, I remember joining my mum in the garden which sparked my interest in gardening. I would rather be in the garden than at school, I was not interested in reading but if you put any literature about gardening, I was on it like a seagull on a ship!. I now live in Seven Hills NSW Australia on a 575 sq mtr block of land, half of the land is taken by the house, a chook pen and a cubby house, I live with my wife Helen and our 2 daughters Ava and Isabella. I have 1 hen named Tosca, she is a Lavender Sussex. I am a registered beekeeper. I have 4 hives and thoroughly enjoy taking care of them (or do the bees take care of me?). They have definitely improved the yield on my veggies. I decided to keep bees to help me with my mental health. I once read that if you are depressed, it means you are thinking about the past and if you were anxious it was because you are thinking about the future but if you are in ‘the now’ your mind has nowhere to be but the ‘now’. Bees seem to keep you in the now because if you take your concentration off them, they could sting you! In saying that, my bees are very giving, they are amazing and each hive has its own character... I even have names for all my hives, Virginia Zeani, Gino Bechi (named for my favourite opera singers), Tais Taras and Grahame McIntosh (named after my voice teachers). We purchased our property because I was attracted to its cottage core feeling and it backed onto a reserve full of trees, so my backyard feels bigger than its actual size. I remember I came to the inspection more interested in the type of soil the house came with, more than anything else. It was my, ‘Under the Tuscan sun’! When we first moved in 2004, I planted my first tree which was an espaliered plum tree. I then planted 6 apple trees, 1 fig tree, 2 pear trees, all espaliered to save space and to make it easier to net against fruit flies. I also have 1 Persimmon, 3 lemons, 2 mandarins & 3 orange trees. I also have lime and 2 grape vines that have been cooked in the 45C heat that we have experienced in the last 2 years. The front garden at the time was all about the English cottage garden with beautiful flowering annuals and part of the back was ‘tropical’. My friend Kate introduced me to the Diggers club magazine and I was very impressed that they could landscape with edible plants, and I thought I would try to do the same. From there, my obsession with edible plants was born. I remember watching my grandfather use organic matter on his crops, so I introduced the same practice in my garden. I befriended a local wood chipper and he would deliver me truck loads of fresh mulch which I would use as a path and once the mulch has broken down I add them to the beds. My worm farm is also ready to be split. Helen would have a giggle that I was planting vegetables in the front like the Italians and Greeks but this was the only place I could get full sun. Helen cooks using the vegetables available from the garden. I love the organic and Permaculture principles, home grown vegetables and adore varieties that do not store or travel well. You will always find lettuce in my garden as I allow them to self sow. I also use them as a living mulch. I plant heaps of leafy vegetables (Lettuce & Asian greens). In between the edibles I also allow flowering annuals. I collect my own seeds which allows me to plant in abundance and succession, this ensures we have continuous salads from the garden, I love the idea of not having to store my vegetables in the fridge. Last season I was so excited with my seed collection I ran to show my wife and I accidentally spilled seeds everywhere!! Needless to say, I now have excess lettuce on the pathway. February is the hottest month of the year, so usually January and February we buy more than we harvest, no amount of protection can save the veggies from the heat. At the moment, I have a glut of Lemon grass for my mother in law as she makes satay sauce. I have self sown parsley, artichokes (also used for structure), I have coriander (Cilantro) around the garden. I often add aged chicken manure and compost to the garden. When we moved in, I brought in horse manure and grass clippings from the local lawn man. I was lucky I isolated these as there were heaps of weed seeds and the horse manure had antibiotics reside in it. The most destructive pests here are snails and slugs (which I trap using beer), white butterflies and fruit flies (I use the exclusion method by netting the plant). Growing up I always saw in magazines rows and rows of veggies thinking I needed to replicate this to be successful, but in reality all I needed were a couple of plants of each which gives me more variety to pack into the garden whilst helping combat weeds. My local council holds an annual garden competition and I would like to try my luck with predominantly edible plants. I would like to bring attention to permaculture methods and how gardening can bring people together and show kindness towards each other. Maybe it is just me, but I can feel that people are more unsettled and angrier. We need to cultivate more kindness in society. Looking into the future, I would like to move to a bigger block, perhaps share what I have learned in some sort of class scenario. What I love the most is my family, garden, bees and helping people understand themselves so they can live a more productive life. In the meantime, I need to find a way to keep a goat or two in my backyard so I can milk her and make cheese! Instagram.com/beautiful_and_edible

01.01.2022 Tori and her chickens lol