The Farm
The area around Arta has long been known as the orange growing centre of Greece. Lush orange groves can be found all over the place.
Our land was covered with dark green orange trees as well until the demand of Greek oranges declined dramatically and a severe frost caused a lot of damage to the trees in our area.
Today we cultivate about 2-3 ha of land where we grow a large variety of fruit trees besides oranges, some with more and some with less success. One of our aims is to experiment, to try out new things and to find out what suits this area best. We now have well known fruits like apples, peaches, grapes and pears as well as exotic plants like assimina, passion fruit or feijoa and tropicals like banana and guava in our large greenhouse.
Besides fruit trees there is a number of olive trees and walnut trees growing on our farm.
Our main aim is to grow whatever food we need to sustain our life, to be independent of industrially produced food as well as to reduce the amount of money we need to spend for every day life and possibly to exchange goods with other farmers instead of buying them using money.
Therefore we grow a variety of grains such as spelt and emmer. And of course every year we plant extensive vegetable gardens that provide us with fresh vegetables all year round.
Last but not least there is also a large variety of herbs and medicinal plants growing on our land ranging from typical Mediterranean herbs like lavender, rosemary and thyme, to medicinals like echinacea and some tropicals like lemon grass or turmeric. And not to forget the beauty aspect we have created a respectable collection of fragrant roses.
Since we are vegan, we do not keep animals on the farm except a cat and a dog.
Our methods of cultivation are predominatly organic however we do not use animal manure.
Instead we strive to preserve soil fertility by mulching and by rotating grains and vegetables with nitrogen fixing plants like chick peas, garden peas, lentils and various types of beans. Therefore our soil is particularly clean and bears little if any risk of food contamination.
At present we do not sell any of our produce. However we would like to exchange our excess produce with other agricultural products, that we can not produce on our own land and with other goods as well as work on our farm.
We recently joined the Peliti group and there exchange program.
For people who are interested in our way of life and plant cultivation and would like to visit our farm, we offer the possibility of becoming a volunteer and stay, live and work with us.
In summary our main aims are:
- Self Sufficiency
- Living in harmony with Nature
- Exchange and Bartering instead of Buying and Selling
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Who we are
He is the founder and most active member of this farm.
He grew up in Arta, Greece and on this farm where he was planting vegetables since a very early age. He later studied medicine in Athens and medical engineering in England. After living and working in England for several years he returned to Greece in order to become a farmer on his fathers land. He expanded the farm by acquiring more land nearby and spend a lot of time and effort to turn these abandoned and overgrown fields into lush and plentiful fruit orchards and rich vegetable gardens.
Already several years ago he turned his back to orthodox medicine and he is now promoting healing through change of lifestyle, diet and medicinal plants.
He is a man full of dreams and ideas, who is working every day towards a better world.
She grew up in Germany, holds a degree in horticulture, came to Greece and this farm as a volunteer and decided to stay and to live a simple life close to nature under the Mediterranean sun.
Besides growing food crops she deals with soap making, destilling essential oils from herbs growing in the herb garden and studying fine art painting when time allows.
The youngest member of our farm. Born 2007 at home without doctor, raised trilingual, vegan since birth (we do not count breastmilk as animal food, naturally), not following any of estabished medicine recommendations. The fields, gardens and beaches are his playground and he spends most of his time outdoors.
He is a family member, currently running a Hotel in the seaside town of Preveza and frequently visits the farm to help out and to escape his business life.
He contributed a lot of work and effort in transforming these fields into productive gardens and shares our ideas of simple living and vegan lifestyle.
