Sandor Leroy started a vegetable CSA and box scheme on rented land within a Dutch biodynamic farm, avoiding the high cost of buying land outright. She became interested in farming after visiting Warmonderhof biodynamic school and studied whole-farm systems before launching her enterprise supplying restaurants and a farm shop.
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Welcome to another episode of Farm Like a Hero folks. With me, Richard Perkins. My guest today is Sandor Leroy, who runs the Gruntenboren, which is an element of Hoover Beastland, which is a large mixed biodynamic farm in Holland. And the farm's located in the Polder, which is the region between the cities of Rotterdam, the Hague and Delft. And it's a much larger farm with dairy and meat cows, sheep, bakery goods, butchery, as well as a busy farm shop. And Sanda's producing and delivering vegetables there, which she distributes as vegetable boxes, as well as supplying the farm shop and restaurants. Sanda came by our farm on a trip in the past. So we meet again here. And thanks so much, Sanda, for taking the time to be with us today.
Thanks for inviting me.
Great. Yeah, it's great to have you. So your story is an interesting one because you have essentially set up an enterprise within someone else's farm. And I'd really like to get into that because I think that's a really relevant story for a lot of young people going into farming. But maybe we could go back a step and can you explain how you got interested in farming in the first place? Did you come from a farming background or.
I'm the first one in my family who started in farming. And the interesting two farms started, I think a long time ago in my younger days as a child my parents had gardens. So that was, I think that was the first step. And then I became older after different kinds of studies and different kind of jobs. I noticed I have to be more outside and the interest of food came up years ago. Just walking through the supermarket, see what, what is laying on the shelves and reading the packages and getting a little bit depressed of all the ingredients, what's inside them. It was more for me, more interesting to know where is the food really come from. And besides that, I also tried to find a new study to educate myself to learn more. And then I came up as an Internet site and it was a school, the Warmonderhof, it's a biodynamic school. And I went to an open day and actually I fell in love with farming.
I think that's quite a well known school in Holland, isn't it? With a lot of international students coming there. Is that right?
Yeah, it's the only school in Holland for biodynamic agriculture. I think German don't even have one school like that and there's one in Belgium, but it's a. It's not like a really school, I think I think they're more like big courses.
So what was that course you studied there? Was it focused on vegetable production or were you exposed to other forms of farming as well?
At that point it was focused actually on the whole system. It started with farm vegetables, but also with cows and dairy farming. Bees, chickens, ducks. Actually a whole farm, actually, like Richdale. It's like what you build up. It's like all the aspects. It's our aspects in the whole study.
And then what happened from there? Like, I imagine you're in a similar situation to most young people. I think the land prices in Holland are astronomical. Right. So was it clear that you wanted to start farming after that? And how did you take the next steps?
It depends where you live in Holland, how high the prices of land are. Quite high. But you can rent land long term. That's a possibility. But then it's not becoming yours. Probably you can rent it for 10 years or 15 years and then maybe it stops. And for me it was also. I was just. That's why I was a little bit scared to start immediately with my own land. And I got the opportunity to start on someone else's land and start learning from that. Yeah. From that perspective.
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