Un atelier en bois, pour des petits fruits sous les arbres

Project description

Hello! My name is Aisling, I’m the co-founder of our orchard : Vergers de la Ronce. I want to present our agroforestry project : we grow fruit in a small wood.

Our farm is in Abbaretz, in Loire Atlantique (close to Brittany) and we have created our farm in november 2020. We want to be a part of the ecological and agricultural transition. Our way of participating is to experiment in the field of agroforestry by planting fruit and berries in an existing wood to show the extent of the positive synergies between trees and plants. We hope to share this vision of a different future for farming by offering courses and visits to people of all ages. We also wish to offer healthy and qualitative fruit while sharing our agroforestry experimentation around us.
 

I’m talking about “us” since the beginning, but let me tell you more now! We’re actually three on the farm. Ivo created the farm in november 2020 after he took his agricultural diploma, the BPREA in arboriculture. I am also part of the farm as his partner and Alice will join in as an associate.

I am the one writing mostly on our social networks. I grew up in Ireland and was an English teacher before turning towards cultural mediation and communication. Now I get to work outdoors and watch all these amazing trees grow in our pretty little forest. I want to share our agroforestry adventure to encourage this model and I want our farm to be a place where we share and pass on what we learn here.

Ivo was born in 1973 in the North of Spain and spent his childhood in the countryside, where agriculture was being done in the old-fashioned way. After studying literature in Paris, Ivo worked in many different areas, from catering to edition, as well as video games. He always kept a strong bond with Nature and agriculture and in 2019, he started a BPREA in Arboriculture in Nantes. After that, he launched the farm “Vergers de la Ronce” straight away.

Alice grew up in the Limousin, in Brive-la-Gaillarde and took a degree in Art History in Poitiers. Then she worked as an activity leader and joined several associations whilst living in a chestnut grove in Dordogne, where she worked several seasonal jobs, making apple juice, taking care of the vegetable garden and harvesting chestnuts. In 2020, Alice took a BPREA in market gardening, keen on bringing the farm of her dreams to life.

The creation of our farm has been the result of a long though process. Ivo and I have been dreaming of creating a place where we could welcome people outdoors since a

long time. When we arrived in 2018 in a very beautiful place with over one hectare of wooden land in Abbaretz, an hour away from Nantes, the idea of an agroforestry orchard where we would grow berries and fruit started growing. Then, what started as a family project became a wider human adventure with the arrival of Alice, who took her BPREA in Nantes at the same time as Ivo.

Our orchard is a place where agriculture and nature stand alongside and where we work in concert with the living world. Our farm is also a place of sharing and transmission, where we organise trainings and visits. We are very attached to parity, equality and well-being for the people who work here.

Our orchard spreads over 9000 square meters around our house, in the midst of a wood that was already there during the 19th century. Birches, oaks, chestnut trees, aspens, wild cherries and hazel trees make up our environment. Beneath these trees, we cultivate 26 fruit species, declined in 66 varieties.

Some areas of our farm are entirely dedicated to wildlife, which thrives, well hidden in bramble bushes and old stumps. The fact that the different species that live here can coexist  with the orchard is one of our priorities. We work along with the LPO (Bird Protection League) and we have joined a network called “Paysans de nature” that aims at protecting and encouraging biodiversity by putting its protection at the heart of farmer’s concerns.

Along with this engagement, our fruit are all organic and we don’t use any fertilizer or chemical phytosanitary products. We only use preparations made with plants. We refuse to use plastic tarps on what we grow and we have chosen to use chipped wood over the ground around our trees and berry bushes. Our irrigation system, chosen carefully depending on each species, is conceived to save water and our chipped wood mulching helps us to save a lot of water too.

Our very particular agroforestry model offers many advantages : the trees protect everything that grows beneath them from many problems, such as frost, wind, drought and heat excess.They also make the ground structure better and offer organic matter. You can find more details about all this on our website :   https://www.vergersdelaronce.fr/ (FR)

Since 2020, we got started in the “Vergers de la Ronce” adventure! We went through a lot of steps to get where we are today, here’s a little preview :

The first big step was to prepare the place so we could start planting. We had to cut down the brambles and work the ground very slightly in some places. We performed some ground analysis in several places to be able to tell what was needed and to determine which species we would plant in which spot.

Then, we observed each tree to spot which ones were ill and could threaten to fall in the future. We have not fallen a single tree to “make room”, only because they were at risk of falling later. We spent our winter sawing, splitting and crushing wood.

In Spring 2021, we started planting our 26 species of fruit. Raspberries, blackcurrant, strawberries, cranberries, redcurrant, blackberries, blueberries, jostaberries, cherry silverberries, feijoas, medlars, loganberries, caviar lime, pomegranates, hardy kiwis, and these fruit found their own spot in the complex design of the orchard. We still have a few to plant!

We’re setting up our irrigation system as we keep on planting. Most areas are ready and there are three types of irrigation : sprinklers, micro-sprinklers and drip irrigation. Each fruit having different needs, they can all thrive with this tailored system.

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A quoi va servir la collecte ?

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Today we are asking for your support to help us fund the wooden workshop we need for the activity of our farm. We have the building permit and our quoted are validated to be able to build the workshop in January 2022.
 

This building of about 55 square meters will be used for storage, for working and for welcoming people. It will harbour an 18 square meters cold room to store our fruit.
 

The total budget for investments is 49 700 euros for the building and its equipments.
 

the foundations : levelling work, concrete slab, footings
the wooden building : framework, structure, cladding and openings

equipements : the 18 m² cold room

an electrical fruit dryer

We have decided to set up several funding goals for this crowdfunding campaign. Each goal we reach together will help us significantly to get our wooden workshop.

The money collected with the crowdfunding will help us fund the various expenses for building the workshop.

Arboriculture requires time and patience and our orchard will start producing fruit in 2022 but our first “real” harvest will be in 2023 only. Rather than making you wait until then to taste our fruit, we have chosen to collaborate with farmers we knowand that we want to support.

Amongst our rewards, there are Emilie’s soaps from the Pam’Plumes farm. These soaps are made with organic goat milk and naturel ingredients in a handmade soap factory in Vendée. I met her through the association “Accueil Paysan” and Emilie’s farm is close to ours.

We also collaborate with “Les Cueillettes d’Annette”. She transforms local fruit, cultivated organically in tasty products : jam, compote, jelly and syrup. She is located in Coüeron (Loire Atlantique) and Ivo met her when he visited her orchard during his BPREA diploma.

If you want to support our project without having to pay online, then you can send over a check to the address below. Please write down your name, surname, e-mail, address and the reward you want so we can send it off to you!

EARL Vergers de la Ronce

La Vallée

44170 Abbaretz
FRANCE

Thanks a lot for reading. We will keep on making you discover what we do here with our publications and we hope we will have the pleasure to bring you on a tour of our farm one day! 

If you have enjoyed discovering our project, then please spread the word you!

You can leave a comment here on Miimosa, or on social networks if you want to know more about us or if you have any questions about our crowdfuning campaign.
 

Thank you very much and see you soon!

Aisling, Ivo & Alice