Chapter 1: Intro

0:09Hi my name is Daniel, I live near Bern, and the name of the market garden and

0:15the vegetable operation is Legummes. It's a word play of cume and legume the

0:22French word for vegetable. And the size of the garden is 3/4 of an acre.

Chapter 2: About the farm

0:35I work on farms since 2008 and my wife and I looked at several places to find a

0:43farm, but here in Switzerland it's not easy to get access to land. I found the

0:49people of this farm here and they were really open to my ideas, and so I

0:56started four years ago with the Market Garden. We have some cattle we have a

1:02vineyard, we have an orchard with apples, some land for corn, and wheat, and rye and then we have a market garden.

Chapter 3: The bed length

1:18The bed length is 8 meters, for my market its a good length because often it is one unit per week.

1:27The width is one meter and 10 centimeters the pathway included.

1:34We grow a large variety of different vegetables; tomatoes, cucumbers,

1:40melons, peppers, eggplants. From root vegetables to salad greens and cooking

1:47greens. A little bit of all because we are going to the farmers market and it's important to have a big variety.

Chapter 4: The challenges

1:56Farming on a slope has a lot of challenges.

2:00You have to bring all the weight up and all the weight down, and it's difficult to maneuver with it with the cart.

2:08For me a big problem is with heavy rains that the soil is washed down,

2:14We thought about it and last season we seeded the pathways with white clover, and I'm really happy about it because the soil is covered, it helps to reduce this problem.

2:28We can even get something from the from the pathways, material for composting, nitrogen material

2:38I really like to cultivate and to see the vegetables and I can think about what to change, what to improve, and that's what I enjoy.

2:52In the summer I have one to two part-time workers and sometimes some customers that help.

3:05We are selling year-round to a farmers market where we go on Tuesday and

3:10Saturday, then we have a CSA program with 50 shares from May to November, then we

3:18have a little grocery store and sometimes restaurants that order things.

3:24In spring we harvest twenty to thirty kilos of greens per week I always look for solutions to do something quicker.

Chapter 5: Harvesting

3:34Tools like the green harvester and you buy them and you have immediately better performance.

3:42I think a fifth of the time or even less.

3:47My personal opinion is that small farms are the future I think small farms are a lot more productive than big farms.

3:59We don't throw away anything, and we get a lot of yield on a small acreage.

Chapter 6: Conclusion

4:10I think it's important to produce healthy foods, to have a small distance to the customers, to have fresh products.

4:21I like to be in contact with customers, to get feedback, to see what they want, and what they do not want.

4:32I always come back with more energy than I came!

4:39It's also important with regard to the climate change that we produce locally, consumed locally, and

4:47for this we have to have a lot of small farms.

4:57I really like growing vegetables and feeding people with healthy food,

5:05that's the motivation, that's still the motivation.