A Farm Like A Hero interview (recorded June 4, 2020) in which Richard Perkins speaks with Gert Blanchaert about his Molenkouter microfarm near Ghent, Belgium. The half-hectare site centers on a renovated 2,000 m² commercial greenhouse (previously for flowers, abandoned ~20 years) with a house built inside it, plus 2,000 m² of outdoor market garden, a small flock of laying hens, and cooperative projects with neighbors on food forests, ponds, and hedgerows. Produce is sold via CSA and to restaurants from April to Christmas.
Chapters
All right. Welcome to another episode of Farm Like a Hero, folks. I'm Richard Perkins. Today I'm here with Gert Blanchard of Mollenkutte. It's in Belgium. It's a half hectare little micro farm, super interesting operation that's built around a 2,000 square meter commercial greenhouse that was previously used for commercial flower production and then abandoned about 20 years ago, which is situated about 6 km from the centre of Ghent. Now renovated and back into production in a no dig system. Geertz even built his house inside the greenhouse. So I'm super excited to hear about that setup outdoors. There's also 2,000 square meters of market garden with a small flock of laying hens and they move through the COVID crops as well as some grass pathways in the surrounding space. And it's an exciting collaboration going on with the neighbors who are installing a half hectare food forests in the form of orchards and herb gardens, which beautifully complements the enterprise. And they've worked together on water management, installing ponds and hedgerows together. They sell produce locally via CSA baskets and direct to restaurants from April through to Christmas. So super exciting episode today. Gerd, thank you so much for taking the time out to join us today.
Thank you.
Welcome. Yeah, nice to have you on. And maybe you can just give us a bit of the backstory of how you came to farming. Like, did you grow up around production or were you doing other jobs before?
I did some jobs before, but my grandfather was a market gardener in the same village that I live now, and my two uncles were too. So I grew up around their farms and they had greenhouses too around the city of Ghent, which is like city of 250,000 people. It's really close, like 6km. So that was my background, but I really wasn't planning to become a farmer. But my job was for more than 10 years working in like a social workspace where I worked with people, we call it, with a long distance to the job market. And my job was green management. So we had to manage to workspace and we did mainly management of nature reserves and community parks and stuff like that. My background of the market gardeners in the family made me think of joining those two green management and working in that part and. And then. So why. Why wouldn't I grow things or manage things that you can eat?
And it's quite an unusual site in the sense that you've also built your home inside the greenhouse. Right. Can you tell us a bit about that?
I didn't build it myself. I bought a place three years ago. With the house already in it. And I thought it was kind of strange, but when I told my father, who is from the region, of course, and he said, well, yeah, what people did? They built an expensive greenhouse and then they don't have any money anymore, so they think, well, maybe we can build a little shed in the greenhouse and we can live there for two years and then we can go on. I don't know the people who started here, but I guess the two years became 10 years and then, and then they stopped farming or they, or they moved. And the people who bought the place after, the commercial growers, they didn't do anything with farming. I guess the only thing happened in the greenhouse that had anything to do with farming was maybe the occasional row of tomatoes every two years or so. I don't know nothing more. So it was abandoned and not used for growing for more than 20 years.
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