Farming in Germany

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby." -Bill Mollison

Just a quick note during a sunny afternoon in Bonn.

This is a wonderful place for farming and gardening - although I have not done such a great job learning the language - I have been able to go around and make friends all over the Organic and Biodynamic farming community of Bonn. My friends and I have arranged to have a large plot of land on an organic farm outside of Bonn and have turned it in to a little Permaculture garden complete with a giant potato patch, oats, buckwheat, an Iroquis Three Sisters mound corn and squash field and companion plants of all varieties.

The farming plot is next to a small woodlot with a semi abandoned apple orchard and a whole lot of wild edibles.

The day is auspicious and I am sure to get some more sun, some more wild food and some more fresh veggies out of the garden.

More about Permaculture from Bill Molison's Urban Permaculture Guild.

Learn more about the Three Sisters companion planting from Renee's Garden website.

Learn more about companion planting from the No Dig Vegetable Garden.

More about biodynamic agriculture from the article Gardening by the Moon.

Cory's Dr Green Blog Posts:
Beekeeping
No Work Farming
Growing Organic

Wild Dinner

Last night I had an excellent dinner of wild greens and flowers.

There is a perfect little country road outside of Bonn where wild edibles grow aplenty. It runs beside an old apple orchard near 'Gut Ostler' and along a hill leading up to one of their fields. The road has at least three wild hops plants, numb nettles and loads of small fresh dandelion leaves.

We walked out there and picked to our hearts content last night - intending to feed at least two more people my friend and I picked many bags full of hops shoots and dandelion greens. On the bike ride home we picked the first few flowers of the Elderberry bushes along the bike path. The Hops shoots were parboiled and then fried lightly in garlic and butter. The dandelion greens were fried with bacon and potatoes, spiced with chili.

For desert I mixed up a simple pancake batter with buckwheat flower (eggs, milk, little sugar little salt) which an Italian Farmer left at Biofach in Nuremberg. The flowers were pressed into the pancakes while they were still wet on top and then the stems were timmed off quickly before the pancake was flipped.

Ecstatic to be eating from the wild.

Cory's Dr Green Blog Posts:
Small is Beautiful
Give Organic a Chance
Beekeeping
No Work Farming
Growing Organic