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In 2022, stichting kapitaloceen bought the piece of land where the tuinen van de egel is situated. Before it was bought free, it was a fruit farm where cherries, plums and strawberries were grown industrially. Trees and plants received their food automatically through an IV drip. The land was full of steel structures that, among other things, lifted strawberries to picking height. For most of the year the crops lived under plastic to “protect” them from the weather (cold and rain) and little animals.
This is the situation is 2018, before bought free by kapitaloceen:
Two years after, in 2024, it looks like this:
We farm on land where the legacy of industrial fruit farming is still present. On the right in the above photo you can see the monoculture rows of cherry trees, on the left the plums. We removed some of the steel, concrete and plastic remnants but this is difficult to do by hand everywhere. How we deal with this legacy is an ongoing question in which we try out multiple approaches.
What we do know is that the land — according to the terms of kapitaloceen — is divided as follows:
10 PERCENT — for humans
Here we grow a wide variety of annual and perennial vegetables and herbs for about a 150 people on half an hectare. We do this with as little violence as possible. This means without the use of fertilizers and poisons and with as little diesel as possible.
40 PERCENT — A shared space between humans and non-humans
This looks like an extensive food forest. We removed a lot of steel and plastic. In the winter of 2023-24, we planted hundreds of fruit trees, nut trees and shrubs, in great diversity. In time we will, like the birds, be harvesting here. For most of the year it will be free of humans.
50 PERCENT — for non-humans
Here we make space for non-humans. Where we can, we remove the remnants of industrial agriculture, plant native non-productive trees or remove trees (the adopted cherry and plum trees) to make room for other life. There is very little intervention by humans. Here, the nonhuman can do what she wants.
