VFH Project 9 | 2021 | Autumn

Autumn

Jeanne de Bont Henk Lamers

Forestgarden groundwork © October 7, 2021, Jeanne de Bont, Almere Oosterwold.

After three years of construction stress, illness and hard work, our house was completed. But because of Corona, all the moving companies were fully booked. We had to wait another month before we could finally leave for Almere Oosterwold. The move was a huge transition.

The noise of downtown Eindhoven is dominated by alarming police cars, fire trucks and ambulances. There is also a lot of traffic pollution from cars with crackling exhausts and yelling soccer supporters. In addition, there is always a party or festival somewhere. Almere Oosterwold is extremely quiet. You only hear birds and construction workers. You sometimes see people walking or cycling and there is no traffic pollution. Most cars and truck traffic keep reasonably within the thirty-kilometer speed limit.

There was a lot of work to do. For example, we didn’t have a kitchen for the first few weeks. Our work tables were partially emptied and turned into kitchen surfaces. This is how we prepared our meals. We did the dishes in the shower sink. When the kitchen was installed, it was a real revelation.

One of the first things we did was join the Odin cooperative. The store is half an hour’s walk away at the local farm Vliervelden. When you’re a member of the cooperative you pay the member prices for all the products, which saves quite a bit on the price. You pay a twenty Euro fee each month for your membership and you pay an amount of your choice to become a member. So you become a little Odin owner yourself.

We discovered an organic weekly market at the Kemphaan in Almere. There are stalls for vegetables, fruit, cheese, meat, fish, clothing, nuts and an Italian specialty stall. Once a week we visit bakery ‘de Tureluur’, they sell really fantastic bread and pastries. Unfortunately open only three days a week but absolutely worth buying bread from them.

From now on we had to eat 100% organic but also live 100% organic. So all products have to be organic. It was a period of discovering and figuring out where to buy what. All vegetables, fruits and herbs we bought at the Odin store during this season. The supply is sufficient and the nice thing is that with each product the card states the transportation. Was it transported by boat or by plane and from which country. The atmosphere in the store is very relaxed and the people are very friendly. With every visit they ask: bonnetje mee (receipt along)? We discovered that you can order specific vegetables that you like. Then they arrive with the next supply. You should try that at a regular supermarket. All other products that are not available at Odin we still bought at the regular supermarket in town. But even there only organic!

Less vegetables was probably because we did not have a kitchen for the first two weeks. So in the remaining weeks of the season, we ate all of the 6 kilogram potatoes.

We made a start of eating seasonal fruit. It was a long time ago that we had apples in our yoghurt in the morning. But a nice surprise of good memories.

The offer of herbs at Odin supermarket is modest. Most of them come in a small plastic bag. So we started to buy herb plants with a slightly more herb volume.

We expected organic to be very expensive but actually the difference is not that much. Of course, an Odin membership card helps with this. Anyone can become a co-owner of Odin. By now Odin is owned by more than ten thousand members and their number is growing rapidly. But now, looking back, it’s all not too bad. Just look at the price difference of vegetables, fruits and herbs and compare them to last year. It’s a few tens of euros difference, not something to worry about.

The first impression of price for going fully organic. The difference is not that much.

Same situation with fruit. Just a few euros more expensive.

We used a lot less herbs this first season in Almere Oosterwold. A difference of about thirty euros. Perhaps because of the hard work to put the house in order, we cooked simpler meals.

From this point on, we were even more concerned with the origin of all the produce we bought. Sometimes at Odin you can buy vegetables grown by the farmer of biodynamic farm Vliervelden. So actually in front of our nose because partly we look out on their fields and their farm. Sometimes you suddenly get a bag of big carrots they had left over. There is something very charming about the idea of looking forward to what will be on your plate at a later date. That’s really how it should be, knowing where your food comes from. The participation is also very nice. You can consult with Odin to add a product to their assortment, for example. They look into it and if the supplier fits the bill, it is added. That also seems like a difficult road to get that done at a regular supermarket.

Main suppliers are from Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

A very similar amount of fruit over two years. All products are organic even if they come from Argentina.

This season we still have a long list of suppliers form various countries. Soon we hope to grow all herbs ourselves.

Spain took over from the Netherlands as the largest supplier.

The idea of our move to Almere Oosterwold is to grow vegetables, fruits and herbs ourselves so we know what we eat and where it comes from. Within the Oosterwold concept you are required to devote 50% of your plot to urban agriculture. Because we had little knowledge of this area we had a plan made for a forestgarden approach by Plantschap from Zeewolde. The illustration above shows you the plan designed by Evelyn Derksen. This plan included water storage, helophyte filter, driveway and a public walking trail. When setting up a food forest, it is important to use many different trees and plants in the design. Biodiversity keeps your forestgarden healthy. A forestgarden works with different layers. There is a layer for large trees, a layer for mediumsized trees. A layer for shrubs, one for herbs, one for ground covers and even a layer for roots and tubers. The list below shows all the trees and plants chosen for our food forest.

Canopy layer

Acer palmatum

Albizia julibrissin

Amelanchier lamarckii

Aralia elata

Asiminia triloba

Betula pendula ‘Laciniata’

Cercis siliquastrum

Cydonia oblonga Diospyros virginiana

Ficus carica ‘Brown Turkey’ Malus domestica Prunus avium

Prunus dulcis ‘Robijn’ Prunus persica Prunus salicina Pyrus communis Pyrus pyrifolia Salix ‘Chermesina’ Tilia Henryana Toona sinensis

Low tree layer

Aronia prunifolia ‘Viking’ Calycanthus floridus Chaenomeles cathayensis

Corylus avellana ‘Rode Zellernoot’ Hippophae rhamnoides ‘Askola’ Leycesteria formosa

Nothofagus antarctica

Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’ Ribes Josta

Ribes rubra, nigrum, divaricatum

Sambucus ‘cultivar’

Sambucus nigra

Sassafras albidum Zanthoxylum simulans

Hedge

Carpinus betulus

Chaenomeles japonica

Crataegus pinnatifada ‘cultivar’

Hedera x helix ‘Arborecens’ Nandina domestica

Prunus spinosa

Pyracatha Rosa canina Rosa rugosa Tilia cordata

Schrub layer

Ajuga reptans ‘Rosea’ Alchemilla alpina Angelica gigas Apios americana Astrantia Carex siderosticha ‘Variegata’ Ceratostigma plumbaginoides Epimedium pubigerum ‘Orangekönigin’

Liriope muscari ‘Gold Banded’ Pulmonaria sp Sedum ‘Matrona’ Sedum spectabile ‘Septemberglut’ Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Adoration of Fascination’ Vinca minor

Soil surface layer

Ajuga reptans ‘Rosea’ Alchemilla alpina Asareum europaeum Lamium maculatum Liriope muscari ‘Gold Banded’ Sagina subulata Sedum spurium Waldsteinia ternata

The ideal picture, of course, is vegetables grown on the biodynamic farm Vliervelden, across the street here. Via the Odin store directly onto our plates. But who can say that here in the Netherlands. In the meantime, we are happy with our Odin membership. It is not an extensive store, as people are used to, but they have almost everything you need. And that selection also makes you think. Why would you need so much choice when there is one good choice? With each vegetable on the shelf a plate tells you where it comes from and even how it is transported. By boat or by plane so you as a consumer can decide if you want to accept the impact of the product on the climate, yes or no. They know all their suppliers and know how and where the products are grown.

Dutch supermarkets Lidl, will stop importing fruits and vegetables by plane. By no longer flying, the supermarket chain hopes to reduce CO2 emissions. This automatically raises the question of whether eating fruits and vegetables from the Dutch greenhouse is then so sustainable. A greenhouse does indeed use a lot of energy, but less space, water and chemicals than much that comes from abroad, writes Babette Porcelijn. Although local, in-season and from the cold ground is the most sustainable choice.

Source Hetkanwel

They also take into account the conditions in which the staff have to do their work. The bananas, for example, come from cooperative Appbosa.

Four hundred sixty farmers from Peru are members of this cooperative. This cooperative is one of the first Fairtrade jobs projects in Peru. Appbosa packages the bananas immediately after harvesting, after which they are shipped to the port of Rotterdam. Despite this beautiful picture, we still need to buy foreign products such as oranges, bananas and kiwis. This is especially true for the autumn and winter seasons. A big advantage is that you learn where everything comes from. It makes you aware of all the transportation around the world. It is always annoying to find out that parsley comes from Israel!

Happy to see 0.000 kilometers for 77 purchases from the Netherlands. Total mileage, by the way, dropped by more than two-third.

We bought more products resulting in less transportation of fruit.

We bought less herbs this season and as a consequence we see less kilometers of transport here.

Farming

The land on which we had our house built was previously used by ERF*. They temporarily grew organic vegetables on it until the land was sold by the Municipality of Almere. If we start setting up our piece of urban agriculture, at least we know it is healthy and good soil. ERF last sowed the land with a transitional crop, to prepare the land for the new residents. But even now they still grow vegetables on small plots like on the ‘Stichtse Lijn’ here in Almere Oosterwold.

This is the first season we’ve lived in Almere Oosterwold and you can see that immediately at the organic purchases, especially all the vegetables we bought. We now oblige ourselves to buy everything from the organic supermarket Odin or from Organic Farmers Market de Kemphaan. We try to be strict about this and stick to it but still we see two small exceptions for beans and spring onion. Probably they were temporarily unavailable organically. Both suppliers, Odin and Kemphaan market, also sell an assortment of herbs and fruits. Odin has its own regulations for the origin of the products. They first see if the product is available in the Netherlands. If that is not the case they buy from somewhere in Europe or in the worst case from far away countries. On the weekly market is the Warmonderhof with all the products they grow in the Flevopolder. If there really is no other way, the last option is an Albert Heijn supermarket.

* ERF, Exploitatie Reservegronden, Flevoland

Almost no non-organic purchases this autumn. What a big step forward.

What to say... fully organic. We went from 12.465 kilogram to 107.726 kilogram of organic fruit. And from 92.146 of non organic fruit all the way to zero!

We remember about the mint and chili pepper. It was all gone and we just had to buy the non-organic version unfortunately.

Environmental score

It would be nice if we could leave out the Environmental score graphs altogether. Because everything we eat should either come from the Netherlands or from Europe. But experience tells us that there will always be outliers. We can only try to avoid the outliers. Or keep the number as small as possible. Another point is that we still haven’t succeeded in getting products into the A, B or C category. So maybe we should focus more on that.

Environmental score explanation

We have again interpreted the fruit and vegetable calendar as accurately as possible.

Comes from the Netherlands, is in season, from a field (organic) and has a quality mark.

Comes from the Netherlands or Europe, is in season, from a field or a greenhouse (organic) and has a quality mark.

Comes from the Netherlands or Europe, is in season, from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark.

Comes from countries such as Israel, Egypt, Morocco (about three thousand kilometres), is out of season, comes from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark.

Comes from Africa, South America, Asia or New Zealand (about ten thousand kilometres), outside or within the season (it doesn’t matter), comes from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark.

Environmental score chart

On the left side of the chart we listed the countries where the products come from. Products themselves are listed in the second column from the left. In addition, there are five columns with A, B, C, D and E. In those columns you find white small squares. The number of squares indicates how often we bought a product in spring with that particular classification. At the bottom of the graph, the total is again shown per column.

Most vegetables in the A category that is great, Not one in E and just one in D.

Even when all products are organic, they can still end up in categories D or E.

We see a better score here with the herbs. Four purchases in E and just the one in D.

When we started this project in 2018, our expectation was that it would become very expensive if we started buying only organic products. And in 2018 that was still true but things have improved in recent years. There is less of a difference in price because organic food is becoming more common. We have Covid to thank for that after all. Because of Covid, adults started eating healthier and chose organic food. Young people, on the other hand, started eating more unhealthy food. This is the outcome of a study by WUR, Wageningen University & Research commissioned by the Ministry of LNV, Landbouw (Agriculture), Natuur (Nature) and Voedselkwalteit (Food Quality).

But there is something else going on. We hardly spend any money on meat. Where we used to buy an expensive steak, now it is at most a chicken breast or a slice of pancetta. That affects your dietary spending considerably because meat is expensive. By the way, organic meat is even more expensive.

Going fully organic this first season in Almere Oosterwold and we have spent only about 30 Euros extra.

This graph makes us really smile. A drop in expenses of 432.37 Euro for non-organic products. That is only one-fifth of the amount from 2020.

We are very happy to see such an increase of organic purchases. Nearly three times s much then 2020.

At this time we have a garden of roughly six hundred square meters. In 2021, we sowed winter rye that worked as a green manure crop. We also had a small embankment made around the garden on which we planted different kinds of hedge plants. So we had no yield from the forest garden yet. In 2021 we still relied heavily on supermarkets and markets to buy vegetables, fruits and herbs.

By now it has become clear to us what grocery shopping will entail. It involves adjusting your complete buying behaviour. That starts with selecting recipes that fit the season. That’s a guiding constraint. Based on that, you make a weekly shopping list. And that determines your buying behaviour. We now (2022) have a fairly set pattern of where we get our products from: Odin and the Organic Farmers Market de Kemphaan are the main outlets. And that has its advantages.

If you choose simple recipes, you also need less stuff to make them. For example, for Vietnamese spring rolls, you need at least twenty different products. Besides, you’ll be stuck with Koh Thai fish sauce, yeast-free BioToday broth powder and leftover frozen spring roll sheets for months. So we removed this kind of complicated recipe. And that, too, has its advantages. You buy fewer products that you don’t need in the short term. A simple recipe saves time in making. And you buy less stuff. And that is also cheaper.

Making a clear choice also results in not having to find out where something is for sale and at what price. What a relief. Where we used to be crazy enough to get hoisin sauce, rice wine, fish sauce and oyster sauce at the toko far from home, we now simply omit those ingredients or we look for another recipe. Sometimes this makes whole recipes disappear that we no longer want to make but that’s the consequence and actually that’s not a bad thing at all. Better to have fewer recipes. Which also means you make them more often. And making them better too. Compare that with 365 different recipes a year of which you don’t know day after day if they will work out.

Three of our suppliers sell organic products and just one regular supermarket with a limited offer of organic products.

Quality labels

Now that we live in Almere Oosterwold, things have changed with the labels. The vegetables, fruits and herbs we buy at Odin are all organic and sometimes biodynamic. Because most products are sold separately, sometimes the label is missing. But you can usually find that on Odin’s website. Only the packaged products still have a label. Most labels are the EU or EKO Quality label or Demeter.

Biodynamic agriculture has existed since 1924. And Demeter is the quality mark for biodynamic agriculture. All products with the Demeter label meet the standards for organic farming as defined within European legislation.

City farm Vliervelden does not have its own quality label. We see labels like Fairtrade only on avocados from Peru, Chile or South Africa, for example. We’ll watch it for a while before we decide whether to omit these labels.

Demeter

Demeter is the quality seal for biodynamic agriculture and nutrition. Biodynamic since 1924.

EKO

Organic products

EU Organic label

Makes it easier for us to recognize organic products. That logo may only be used for products that contain at least ninety-five percent organic ingredients and that those ingredients meet additional strict requirements for the remaining five percent.

Fairtrade

Fair prices for producers

114 Vegetable purchases and only three had no quality label.

All Fruit purchases had a quality label! Very remarkable.

45 Purchases of herbs of which four had no quality label.

* Global Food Loss and Food Waste. UN Food and Agricultural Organization. Accessed June 9, 2016.

** Food Waste: Half Of All Food Ends Up Thrown Away. The Huffington Post (January 10, 2013). Consulted February 5, 2013.

Worldwide, a third * to half ** of all food produced is wasted. In low-income countries, most of the loss happens. In developed countries, about one hundred kilograms per person per year is wasted. But there is another way of waste. Of an orange, you eat a little more than half. The rest you throw away. Mint leaves to make tea you throw away completely. Of a cauliflower, you throw away about half the weight.

Most residents of Almere Oosterwold have their own compost pile which they use for their vegetable, fruit and garden waste. They process that compost on their own land for urban agriculture. However, we have no idea what to do with compost. A food forest does not require compost. Hence, we just use Almere’s waste collection service. And we try to eat as much of a product as possible. We are also happy with the single product sale at Odin so that the amount of plastic packaging waste can be significantly reduced. On the other hand, you have to weigh and transport all the items in a paper bag. We use these paper bags for all kinds of purposes but in the end we do have a lot of paper waste.

Although the products became organic, the amount of waste didn’t change that much.

We ate less fruit this autumn, 72.239 kilogram but strange this resulted in more waste 35.487 kilogram compared to last year.

A somewhat skewed view on waste of basil. The long black line is caused mostly by soil and a pot.

Forestgarden groundwork © October 7, 2021, Jeanne de Bont, Almere Oosterwold.

Resources

Demeter, Quality label for biodynamic agriculture and nutrition, Driebergen, Netherlands

EKO organisation for pioneers in organic food, Ede, Netherlands

ERF, Exploitation Reserve Land, Flevoland, Lelystad, Netherlands

EU Bio label, mandatory label for all organic packaged products, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium

Fairtrade is both a quality label and a global movement, Utrecht, Netherlands

Farmers market at City Farm Kemphaan, Almere, Netherlands

HetkanWEL, Live greener, fairer and more enjoyable lives, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Milieucentraal, practical guide to sustainable tips and advice, Utrecht, Netherlands

Odin, wholesale of 100% organic and biodynamic products, Geldermalsen, Netherlands

Wikipedia, free online encyclopedia, San Francisco, USA

© 2022 Jeanne de Bont & Henk Lamers, VFH Project