A cultivation. A family of four. A whole year's vegetables.
Outside Skärstad lies Höglidens greenery, which aims to make self-sufficiency concrete by building both a demonstration garden and a digital tool. Join the cultivation PT who wants to get you to grow your own food!
There has been diligent work on the farm outside Skärstad. Neat planting beds have taken shape and a greenhouse has been put in place. Cabbage, onions, beans, and a lot of other green and good things thrive in their places. Irrigation is done with the help of the farm's pond, natural fertilizer gives the cultivation a boost, and pesticides are completely skipped.
Gardener Josefin Axelsson has established the cultivation that will provide a family of two adults and two children with the vegetables they need for a whole year. Here it will be clear what is required – both in terms of growing area and crops.
– I weigh everything after harvest so that I can calculate what the cultivation has yielded, she explains.
Of course again
Growing your own food is no longer something we see as self-evident, and the step from starting to becoming self-sufficient is long. For Josefin, the very concept of self-sufficiency was also difficult to grasp. What is actually required more concretely, and what does self-sufficiency look like in practice?
The new demonstration garden is a model that can make it easier to understand. And for those who are new to cultivation and want to grow on a very small scale, it can provide answers on which crops yield the most and showcase how a cultivation can function.
– I would like us to reclaim the obviousness of growing our own food. Maybe not everything, maybe not all the time, but at least part of it, says Josefin.
She calls herself a cultivation PT, a concept that means that those who need help getting started or want to develop their cultivation can receive assistance at home. Customers receive concrete suggestions based on their conditions and locations.
– I will also invite to courses and cultivation evenings here in the demonstration garden.
Digital tool
The project, which has become a reality through Leader support, is also about spreading knowledge in another way.
– I will develop a digital tool that can help calculate self-sufficiency.
Exactly how the tool will look remains to be worked out, but the idea is that one should be able to input information about their conditions and wishes and get answers to various questions regarding self-sufficiency.
With the project as a whole, Josefin hopes to inspire more people to grow food.
– We need to reclaim the knowledge that has been lost from just a couple of generations back.
Read more about Höglidens greenery on the project page here!