A trip to Germany

Matthew and I took a short trip to Eastern Germany last week. The goal was to pick up an old steerage hoe for his vintage Fendt tractor. The right equipment is an important part of setting up a robust agroecological food production system. At Zsámbok, the majority of activities focus on what we call the ‘biointensive’ market garden, where beds are maximised for their output with close supervision from a skilled and dedicated human labour force. The light and appropriate mechanisation of field scale organic vegetable production is a complementary activity. Let’s look under the hood.

As some of our customers will be familiar, this time of year we experience ‘the hungry gap’ of the season. This is where we slowly sell our stored produce (through our webshop and in-person markets), but the new seasons’ sowings haven’t quite yielded fresh produce yet. We manage this by sourcing exceptional quality organic and seasonal produce from partners, locally as well as from further afield (oranges and lemons being an obvious example). This allows us to continue supplying our customers with a combination of our own and others’ products - it keeps farmers and consumers happy.

For us at Zsamboki Biokert an objective is to supply more of our own produce in the hungry gap. For this we need to significantly increase the scale of production of our stored winter staples - onions, carrots, potatoes. For this to be done effectively and efficiently, appropriate mechanisation is being introduced by Matthew. Even for an experienced grower setting up a new system (including its tooling) is a live experiment. Minimising costs mean minimising risk while learning about what will work in our context. We will be checking in with him regularly throughout this season to hear how it’s going. For now, he seems happy with his new toys.

As for you, our customers, we have sourced exceptional products at competitive prices from Hof Mahlitzsch, a long-standing biodynamic, organic farm in the Dresden region. They have their own veg box scheme, farm shop and wholesale business. Check them out if you’re in the area or buy some of their delicious parsnips, potatoes, carrots and onions from our webshop or market stalls.