A Good Farmer Knows How to Work Smarter, Not Harder

At the start of this year, four years after moving to the Netherlands, my partner and I finally rented a hectare of land in the province of Utrecht to begin cultivating my own farm.

Before deciding to commit to farming, I had interned at several small organic farms across the country. In the summer of 2020, I spent two months interning at Gordons Spoor farm in the east of the Netherlands; although I learned a great deal, the demanding ten to twelve hours of daily labour often left me exhausted.

Consequently, in April last year, I took an internship at ‘Happy Vegetables’, a farm that claimed to make a nine-to-five workday possible for growing produce.

● “Happy Vegetable Farm” is located in Gelderland province in the centre of the Netherlands, covering approximately 7.5 mu. Pictured from left to right are partners Jorian, Martin, and Sam. Source: Farm’s official website

The farm was founded by two optimistic young Dutchmen, Sam and Martin. Neither had a background in agriculture; they met and worked together at a small permaculture farm in the Netherlands.

They gained a wealth of practical experience there and established connections with other nearby small-scale ecological farmers. Having developed a deep understanding of the environmental issues caused by industrial agriculture, they were driven by the ambition to become small-scale ecological farmers and change the status quo.

However, small-scale ecological farmers in the Netherlands face numerous challenges, such as start-up financing for new farmers, the exorbitant price of land (in the fourth quarter of 2021, the average price of agricultural land in the Netherlands approached €70,000 per hectare, equivalent to over 35,300 RMB per mu per year), low-price competition from supermarkets, generally excessive working hours and low income, and the “uninspired” food culture of the Netherlands.

● Among the farmers who took to the streets last year to protest the Dutch government’s nitrogen reduction policy were many conventional dairy farmers who supply raw materials to dairy companies. Pictured are protests from July 2022. Source: AFP

Faced with this reality, Sam and Martin’s solution was to create small-scale, peri-urban vegetable picking gardens based on the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model.

1. Building a Farm from Scratch

Firstly, a plot of 0.5 hectares (approximately 7.5 mu) does not require significant start-up capital. The pair relied primarily on their own savings, supplemented by €30,000 (around 228,000 RMB) crowdfunded from friends and family to cover equipment and land lease costs. Secondly, the farm was located on the outskirts of the city. This allowed them to reach a substantial number of potential customers while making it easy for city dwellers to cycle to the farm, pick their own vegetables, and speak directly with the farmers. From a consumer’s perspective, this offers a rare ‘farm-to-table’ experience—a service that supermarkets and farm shops simply cannot provide.

Furthermore, the CSA business model secured their income. Picking subscribers pay an annual membership fee at the start of the year, effectively providing the pair with a year’s salary upfront. Another advantage is that the picking prices are fixed, removing the impact of seasonal fluctuations in vegetable prices.

● Chinese cabbage sown in spring. However, as they were sown too late, they eventually bolted.

In its first year, “Happy Vegetables” had 130 picking subscribers. Each subscriber paid an annual fee of 313 euros (approximately 2,383 RMB), which entitled them to pick one person’s share of vegetables from May to December. In addition to subscription sales, the farm diversified its income streams by hosting workshops and partnering with local primary schools. By the second year, 2022, the number of subscribers had grown to 250, and the farm welcomed a new partner: Jorian, a young Dutchman responsible for market development. He was brought in to help the farm achieve two goals: increasing income from cultural and educational activities in the short term, and establishing “Happy Vegetables” as a demonstration farm to launch a franchise model in the long term.

I remember Sam saying that they wanted to use the farm to show everyone that:

1) Growing vegetables can be efficient and effortless

2) Agriculture can be sustainable and environmentally friendly

3) Farmers can earn a decent living

4) Farms are community-focused, and consumers are valuable members of that community

5) Their operating model can be replicated in other regions of the Netherlands

During my subsequent internship, I gradually came to appreciate the importance of these points in running a farm successfully.

II. A Good Farmer Knows How to Save Time and Effort

Let’s start with “saving time and effort”. To explain this, Martin first introduced me to the farm’s efficient bed layout. At “Happy Vegetables”, each vegetable bed measures 15m by 0.75m, with an additional 0.25m pathway. Why 0.75m? When standing, a person can easily step across the bed and bend over to work. If crouching on one side, they can reach the other side simply by extending their arm.

A width of 0.75m also accommodates the row spacing requirements for various vegetables. For those that do not require much space, such as spinach, carrots, onions, and beetroot, 3 to 4 rows can be planted densely; for those requiring more space, such as celeriac, broccoli, and cauliflower, there is still room for at least one row.

As for the 0.25m wide pathway, it is ample for walking without restriction, and allows for the easy use of wheelbarrows and the placement of tools.

●Vegetable seedbeds designed for manual use in conjunction with small machinery. Shown here is the transplanting of seedlings after a gridder has been used to mark a grid on the bed.

Furthermore, the farm employs small-scale machinery that can be operated by a single person to increase efficiency, with the most ingenious being the paper pot seedling kit and its companion seeder.

The paper bags within the paper pot and drop seeder kit resemble accordion pleats when collapsed. During use, two metal strips spread the bags open from either side to fit them onto a mould plate, creating a structure that looks very much like a honeycomb.

Once these honeycomb-like bags are filled with potting soil, a dibber is pressed down and lifted, creating a series of indentations in the paper cells. Finally, a seed plate of the correct size is used to sow the seeds.

● The paper bag seedling kit was originally designed for sowing beetroot seedlings, but it can also be used for lettuce, fennel bulbs, beans, spring onions, kohlrabi and other vegetable seedlings. The images above show an unopened paper bag and one that has already been sown with seeds, respectively.

One tray of paper bags with a plant spacing of 10 cm has a total unfolded length of 27 metres. This means that a single tray can sow 270 seedlings at once, fitting perfectly into two rows on a 15-metre seedbed.

As it happens, the seedbeds were designed to be 15 metres long specifically to accommodate the length of the paper bags.

Another widely used tool for direct sowing is the hand-held seeder (Jang Seeder), which can be used in conjunction with the paper bag seedling kit; it is also used for crops that are not suitable for transplanting, such as carrots.

● Sam is preparing to transplant lettuce seedlings grown in paper bags using a hand-held seeder.

The seeder resembles a push scooter, complete with a frame and front and rear wheels; the most intriguing components, however, are the drive box and the seed box.

Inside the drive box are two gears; by adjusting their size, the spacing between plants can be controlled. The seed box holds the seeds, and at its base is a grooved wheel, with the depth of each groove precisely matched to the size of a single seed. As the wheel rotates, a seed drops from the groove, while the remaining seeds are held within the box.

As the hand seeder is pushed across the seedbed, it carves out shallow furrows; the seeds drop into these grooves at the predetermined intervals, and a Y-shaped component at the rear levels the soil back over them. Pushing along like this, listening to the crisp, rhythmic clicking of seeds in the box, I effortlessly sowed carrots, angelica, runner beans, mixed salad leaves, and cherry radishes.

3. Spray Irrigation, Drip Irrigation and No-Till

Modern irrigation systems have also given the farm a significant boost in production efficiency. Martin says that this was one of the largest investments, but it was “value for money”. Irrigation pipes are buried 70cm underground (the same depth as the wells), with sprinklers distributed across the fields. Location, time, and duration can all be configured via a mobile app.

For every newly sown field, sprinklers run for one hour in the early morning for five consecutive days, removing the need for manual supervision. In windless conditions, two sprinklers are just enough to cover one field.

Drip irrigation pipes can also be connected to the sprinklers; tomatoes in the greenhouses are watered this way, which effectively prevents soil-borne diseases such as late blight.

Compared to the days of lugging hoses around at my previous farm, the difference in ease is immense. Most importantly, efficient irrigation saves time.

● 15 parallel seedbeds make up one field, measuring 15m x 16m, which forms a single irrigation unit. There are two sprinklers in the centre of the vegetable area, with seven seedbeds on either side.

Finally, the biggest contributor to saving time and effort is no-till farming.

Before the farm started growing vegetables, it was a grassland. To nip weeds in the bud, Martin and Sam covered the grass with black plastic sheeting to block the light. After about two months, once the grass had withered and turned yellow, they applied a thick layer of compost directly on top.

Rich in organic matter, compost is an ideal substrate for growing vegetables. Properly decomposed compost is free from weed seeds and pathogens; regular, long-term application also improves the soil, and healthy soil nurtures healthy, beautiful vegetables. Furthermore, because the soil isn’t tilled, dormant weed seeds are not brought to the surface to germinate.

● The compost piles on the farm are a beautiful, healthy deep black.

I have experienced firsthand how tilling affects the amount of weeds; take the example of planting leeks.

When planting leeks in spring, holes about 30cm deep are dug in the seedbeds to bury the seedlings and promote the development of the white stem.

Many local farmers regularly heap soil around the seedlings as they grow. This not only disturbs the soil but also encourages the germination of weed seeds, increasing the workload for weeding.

At “Happy Vegetables”, however, the no-till method has significantly reduced the number of weeds. While some soil from beneath the compost layer is inevitably turned up when digging the holes for seedlings—bringing weed seeds with it—the soft texture of the compost makes weeding relatively easy. Even deep-rooted dandelions can sometimes be pulled out with a gentle tug.

● Leeks are a favourite vegetable in the Netherlands; they look similar to spring onions but have a sweeter taste. The Dutch primarily eat the white stem. Pictured here are sown leek seedlings.

The no-till approach makes the chore of weeding relatively easy; with periodic maintenance, weeds can be kept under control. Happy Vegetables currently has 18 vegetable plots. If 1.5 people spent one hour per working day maintaining four plots, they could get very close to a weed-free state!

I say “close to” because a farm is not a closed environment; wind and animals carry weed seeds onto the land. The farm belongs to us only when we are working it; at all other times, it belongs to nature’s visitors: hares, crows, oystercatchers, voles, moles, slugs, snails, spiders… and those lifeforms invisible to the naked eye.

Martin says that if nothing in your fields has been eaten by other animals, then you aren’t yet a part of nature. I suppose that is the true spirit of sharing with nature.

I am now implementing the lessons I learned from “Happy Vegetables” on my own farm. To what extent is their experience replicable? What is the difference between actually running a farm and interning on one? We’ll discuss that next time.

Foodthink Author

Wang Xianya

Graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University with a degree in Albanian and has worked as a translator for over a decade. She later studied organic agriculture at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where she became fascinated by permaculture. Currently based in the Netherlands, she focuses on growing vegetables, writing, and painting, with the ambition of becoming a professional “good farmer”.

Editor: Ze En

Published by Foodthink