A Good Farmer Knows How to Save Time and Effort

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

Before committing to starting a farm, I had interned at several small-scale ecological farms in the Netherlands. In the summer of 2020, I interned for two months at Gordons Spoor farm in eastern Netherlands. I learned a great deal, but the intense 10- to 12-hour working days were often exhausting.

So in April of last year, I came to the “Happy Vegetables” farm, which claimed it could make vegetable growing a nine-to-five job.

●Happy Vegetables farm is located in Gelderland, in the central Netherlands, covering about 7.5 mu. From left to right in the photo: partners Jorian, Martin and Sam. Photo: farm website

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

There they gained a wealth of practical experience, built connections with other small ecological farmers in the neighbourhood, and gained a deeper understanding of the environmental problems caused by industrialised agriculture. That is how they developed the ambition to “become ecological smallholders and change this status quo”.

However, small-scale ecological farming in the Netherlands faces enormous challenges: start-up financing for new growers, the steep price of Dutch land (in Q4 2021 the average price of agricultural land in the Netherlands neared €70,000 per hectare, equivalent to over CNY 35,300 per mu per year), low-price competition from supermarkets, excessively long working hours with low pay, and what can only be described as the country’s “barren” food culture.

●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 supplied raw milk to dairy companies. Photo taken at a protest in July 2022. Photo: AFP
Faced with such realities, Sam and Martin’s solution was: a small-scale, peri-urban, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model pick-your-own vegetable garden.

1. Building a Farm from Scratch

First, a plot of 0.5 hectare (about 7.5 mu) does not require much in the way of start-up capital. The two relied mainly on their own savings, supplemented by €30,000 (approximately CNY 228,000) raised through crowdfunding from friends and family, to purchase equipment and lease the land. Second, the farm was sited on the outskirts of town. This gives access to a sizeable pool of potential customers while also making it easy for city dwellers to cycle out to the farm to pick vegetables and chat directly with the growers. From the consumer’s perspective, this is a rare farm-to-fork experience — one that supermarkets and produce shops simply cannot offer.

Third, the CSA business model secures their income. The farm’s pick-your-own subscribers pay an annual membership fee at the start of the year, which is effectively one year’s wages paid upfront. Another advantage is that the picking price is fixed, shielding them from seasonal fluctuations in vegetable prices.

●Chinese cabbage sown on the farm in spring. Because it was planted too late, it all bolted and flowered.
In its first year, the young Happy Vegetables farm had 130 pick-your-own subscribers. Each subscriber paid €313 per year (approximately CNY 2,383) for a one-person vegetable allotment to pick from May through December. Beyond selling produce through subscriptions, the farm diversified its income by running workshops and partnering with nearby primary schools on educational courses. In its second year, 2022, Happy Vegetables’ subscriber base grew to 250, and the farm welcomed a new partner — Jorian, a young Dutchman responsible for business development. He was to help the farm achieve two goals: a short-term aim of boosting income from cultural and educational activities, and a long-term vision of growing Happy Vegetables into a demonstration farm and rolling out a franchising model.

I remember Sam once saying they wanted to show people, by running a good farm, that:

1) Growing vegetables well can be a time- and labour-saving pursuit.
2) Agriculture can be sustainable and environmentally friendly.

3) Farmers can earn a decent income.

4) A farm serves its community, and its consumers are valued members of that community.

5) Their model can be replicated in other parts of the Netherlands.

In the weeks of interning that followed, I came to appreciate, little by little, just how important each of these principles is to running a successful farm.

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

So let me start with saving time and effort. Martin’s first point of introduction was the farm’s highly efficient seedbed layout. At Happy Vegetables, every vegetable seedbed measures 15 m × 0.75 m, with an additional 0.25 m pathway alongside. Why 0.75 m? When standing upright, a person can easily stride across the bed and then bend down to work on it. Crouching at one side, you need only stretch out an arm to tend the other side.

A width of 0.75 m also accommodates the row-spacing requirements for all manner of vegetables. For crops with generous row-spacing tolerance — such as spinach, carrots, onions and beetroot — you can plant three to four columns in close succession. For crops that demand wider rows — celeriac, broccoli, cauliflower, for instance — at least one column still fits comfortably.

The 0.25 m pathway is wide enough to stand and walk along without feeling hemmed in, and there is ample room for wheelbarrows and tools.

●A vegetable seedbed sized to suit one person working alongside small-scale machinery. The photo shows a Gridder being used to draw a grid on the seedbed before transplanting vegetable seedlings.

Next, the farm uses small, single-operator machines to boost efficiency. The most ingenious of all are the paper pot and drop seeder kit and its companion seeder.

In the paper pot and drop seeder kit, the paper pots look like accordion pleats before they are opened. To use them, two metal bars are inserted from either side to spring the pots open and spread them across the moulding board, where they take on the appearance of a honeycomb.

Once the honeycomb-like trays are filled with potting compost, a dibber is pressed down and lifted. This creates a neat indentation in each seedling cell. Finally, you simply select the appropriately sized seed plate and sow. It could not be simpler.

●The paper pot and drop seeder kit was originally designed for sowing beetroot seedlings, but it also works well for lettuce, fennel bulb, runner beans, spring onions, kohlrabi and more. Top image: an unopened paper pot and a pot already sown with seed.

A single tray of paper pots with 10 cm plant spacing unfolds to a total length of 27 m. That means one tray can sow 270 seedlings at a time — just enough for two rows on a 15 m seedbed.

So the original decision to make the seedbeds 15 m long was also influenced by the length of the paper pot trays.

Another workhorse is the direct-sowing staple — the Jang Seeder — which can be used alongside the paper pot kit and is indispensable for crops such as carrots that do not transplant well.

●Sam preparing to transplant lettuce seedlings raised in paper pots using the Jang Seeder.

The seeder looks like a push-along scooter, complete with a frame and front and rear wheels, and the most fascinating parts are the drive box and the seed box.

Inside the drive box sit front and rear gears; swapping between gear sizes lets you adjust the plant spacing. The seed box holds the vegetable seeds, and at its lower end is a grooved wheel whose grooves are exactly deep enough to cradle a single seed. As the wheel turns, the seeds sitting in the grooves drop out while the rest are held back inside the seed box.

Pushing the Jang Seeder along a seedbed, it opens a shallow furrow; seeds fall into it at the preset spacing, and a Y-shaped implement at the back of the machine closes the furrow behind. This is how I walked the length of each bed, listening to the crisp rattle of gears and seeds bouncing inside the box, and casually sowed carrot, parsnip, green bean, mixed salad leaf, radish and other vegetable seeds.

3. Sprinkler Irrigation, Drip Irrigation and No-Till

The modern irrigation system has also given the farm yet another edge when it comes to boosting productivity. Martin says it is the single biggest investment they made, but it is “value for money”. The irrigation pipes are buried 70 cm underground (the same depth as the borehole), with sprinkler heads distributed across the fields. You can set the irrigation location, timing and duration from a smartphone app.

Each newly sown plot gets one hour of sprinkling each morning for five consecutive days, with no need for anyone to be on site. Two sprinkler heads cover exactly one plot in still conditions.

Drip irrigation lines can also be attached at the sprinkler heads. The tomatoes in the polytunnel are watered by drip irrigation, which effectively prevents late blight and other soil-borne diseases.

Compared to the days of lugging hosepipes around my previous farm, this is infinitely better. Best of all, efficient irrigation saves time.

●Fifteen seedbeds arranged in parallel form one plot, measuring 15 m × 16 m — exactly one irrigation unit. Two sprinkler heads sit in the middle of the vegetable area, with seven seedbeds on either side.

And finally, the single biggest contributor to saving time and effort is no-till.

Before the farm started growing vegetables, the land had been pasture. To suppress weeds at the germination stage, Martin and Sam laid black polythene sheeting over the grassland to block out the light. After about two months, once the grass had died and turned yellow, they simply laid down a thick layer of compost.

The compost is rich in organic matter, an ideal growing medium for vegetables. Properly rotted compost contains no weed seeds or pathogens, and long-term, regular application improves soil health too — and healthy soil nourishes healthy, beautiful vegetables. On top of that, without digging, dormant weed seeds in the soil are never brought to the surface to germinate.

●The farm’s compost heaps are a deep, healthy black.

I have experienced at first hand how much the decision to dig or not dig affects weed numbers — take leeks, for example.

Planting leeks on the farm in spring means digging holes about 30 cm deep in the seedbeds and burying the seedlings in them, to encourage the development of the white stem.

Many local farmers bank soil up around the leeks periodically as they grow. This not only disturbs the soil but also brings buried weed seeds into conditions favourable for germination, adding to the weeding workload.

At Happy Vegetables, however, the no-till approach means far fewer weeds. Of course, when the holes are first dug for planting, some soil from beneath the compost layer inevitably comes up, along with buried weed seeds. But because the compost is light and crumbly, weeding is relatively easy — even deeply rooted dandelions sometimes come out with the gentlest pull.

●Leeks are a favourite vegetable among the Dutch. They look much like spring onions but taste sweet. The Dutch mainly eat the white stem. Photo shows freshly planted leek seedlings.

No-till makes the drudgery of weeding far more manageable, and with regular, routine upkeep, weeds can be kept well under control. Happy Vegetables now has eighteen vegetable plots. If one and a half workers spend one hour each working day tackling weeds on four plots, the farm can get very close to a zero-weed state!

The reason it is “very close” rather than absolute is that the farm is not a closed environment — wind and other animals carry weed seeds in. The farm belongs to us only while we are working it; the rest of the time it belongs to nature’s visitors: hares, crows, oystercatchers, voles, moles, slugs, snails, spiders … and all the creatures beyond the reach of our eyes.

Martin says that if nothing in your fields has yet been eaten by other animals, you are not yet part of nature. And I suppose that is the truest spirit of sharing with the natural world.

These days, I am putting the lessons I learned at Happy Vegetables into practice on my own farm. How replicable are their methods? What is it like to run a farm in earnest versus interning at one? Next time, we shall explore that.

Foodthink contributor
Wang Xianya
A graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University in Albanian, she spent more than a decade as a translator. She later studied organic agriculture at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where she became fascinated with permaculture. She now lives in the Netherlands, focused on growing vegetables, writing and drawing, with the ambition of becoming a good professional farmer.

 

 

 

Editor: Zeen

Published by Foodthink