The farm with an onion field and a meadow in the foreground
In spring 2021, I got a message from Biologisk dynamisk forening that bio-dynamic farms in Norway needed seasonal workers because of Covid-19 restrictions. Since Fokhol farm was the only farm with domestic animals, I decided to go there in the last week of August.
I was met by the farmer Rune, who showed me around the house where all the volunteers were living. All of them got separate rooms and there was a kitchen where we could prepare mostly dry food with delicious yogurt from the farm’s cows.
My room had a view towards a garden with some deciduous trees where various very chatty birds could be heard, especially early in the morning.
Fokhol farm is owned by a foundation called Stiftelsen Fokhol Gård, which is an ideal and non-profit foundation. The foundation has the following objectives:
– Versatile biological-dynamic agriculture.
– Development by means of cooperation with competent partners.
– Educational activities.
The farm has about 34 cows and some heifers. During my stay, I could see some male calves in a pen where they were quite often play-fighting. Another pen had a group of female calves, which were much more quiet.
Fokhol is a biodynamic farm producing grain, potatoes, vegetables, milk, meat and fodder. They also have a small greenhouse where they are growing tomatoes and they have some bushes of redcurrant and blackcurrant, some fruit trees and some rows of flowers.
My tasks during my stay included picking redcurrants, weeding a gravel path and picking onions. I joined two workers, one from Romania and one from Poland, to pick onions in three shifts, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. While the workers apparently never got tired and always picked all the onions, I got tired, especially in the back and I never managed to pick all of the onions. Anyway, I picked a lot of of them.
Each of us had a basket, which we should fill with onions and bring them back to a trailer where we emptied the contents of the basket. When the trailer was full, one of the workers drove the tractor with the trailer to a barn. Having emptied the trailer and returned to the onion field, we did the same work again.
During my stay it was common to hear trumpet-like sounds, which were caused by cranes. The farmer Rune, who told me he had been interested in birds since he was a teenager, said that they had a nest near the farm, but he didn’t know where. Besides cranes, he had also seen common buzzard and red kite during my stay, while barn swallows were flying over the field where we were picking onions, always looking for insects. In addition, he told me that a pair of common swifts had raised a second litter of chickens and they were getting ready to migrate southwards. The birds kept the number of flies low even though the cows continually spread manure on the meadows at the farm.
There was a lot of spare time in the evenings and I went for walks in the area around the farm. First, I had to pass various meadows, many of which were covered with a wide variety of plants. Rune told me that they seeded the meadows with a mixture of 10 seeds, amongst them vetches and clover.
I also passed a pen with Ardenner workhorses . Rune said that they were only used for work when he could teach someone to use them, but there were too few volunteers this year.
The area around Fokhol was lovely, especially in the evenings just before sunset. The lake of Mjøsa could be seen in the distance and there were lots of deciduous trees between the meadows. It was beautiful and serene and I really felt like home in this area. A local an told me that it’s called the Nordic Tuscany.
When we were picking onions, the cows were let out in the morning. Then, they walked very slowly and some even slower than the other ones to a nearby meadow where they could go grazing. Some time later they came back to be milked. Some volunteers worked with the cows, letting them enter the barn and go to their separate places, giving them hay and water, cleaning the barn, harvesting milk by means of milking machines and letting them outside again.
The last days during my stay at the farm, a farm shop was opened where the public could buy the onions we had picked. Depending on the time of year, they also sell potatoes from the farm.
I would recommend to work as a volunteer at Fokhol. Some of the volunteers stayed only a week or two, but some stayed for months. One volunteer was a student at an agricultural school and she would stay several months to get practice.
A summary of a climate report in Norwegian on Fokhol farm follows below.
House-holding with plant nutrients
Norwegian agriculture is constructed to produce livestock products for domestic consumption with self-sufficiency regarding hay and fodder plants and a large part of imported fodder in terms of concentrated feeds.
Climate impact of agriculture
The climate impact of the operation at Fokhol farm is nearly 40 % lower per area unit compared to Norwegian agriculture overall. This also applies when the climate impact is related to the amount of produced nutrients in the form of energy and protein.
Organic farms, like Fokhol farm, are based on circular production with a versatile crop rotation, self sufficiency if fodder and a major area of fields set aside for growing vegetables for human consumption.
The reduced climate impact is, as with reduced loss of plant nutrients, a direct consequence of the high degree of self-sufficiency with a small supply of external resources and a limited number of livestock adapted to the amount of fodder produced at the farm.
The soil as a carbon storage
Growing meadows and adding manure, plant residues and roots to the soil after harvesting leads to binding of carbon in the organic matter.
Production at Fokhol farm
Production of foods at Fokhol farm are at a high level when expressed as energy and protein in plant and animal products. To a certain degree, it can be ascribed to the good growing conditions at the farm, but it’s also a result of an operation combining growing plants and raising livestock and a crop rotation where nourishing and consuming plants replace each other. Such cycles, where composting of manure according to bio-dynamic principles also enter into the operation, take care of plant nutrients and increases the feritility of the soil.
Growing of vegetables, root vegetables and potatoes also contribute to the productivity of the farm.
Concluding remarks
By letting other farms follow the operation at Fokhol farm and others with similar activities, threats against soil and our common future will be reduced. This applies in particular to depletion of biological diversity and the weakening of the soil’s fertility in long-term perspective. Problems with manure runoff to watercourses and the sea will be reduced, likewise the consumption of non-renewable natural resources.
