Volunteering at Boskanter Farm | Farm Life, Belgian Style

Boskanter Farm, Belgium

Though we had only been travelling for two weeks, Mac and I decided we needed to slow down a bit more. We reinstated our WorkAway membership and started looking for opportunities. We found a great permaculture farm called Boskanter and decided that volunteering at Boskanter Farm would be our next adventure! To the uninitiated, permaculture is “the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.”

Boskanter Farm is a 3-hectare plot of land nestled among the hills in the Belgian countryside between the small towns of Ronse & Brakel. The family that runs the farm – Ine & Dirk, and their two girls – have created quite the community that embraces the slow & simple lifestyle in which they operate.

There is a quarterly Repair Cafe where visitors come together to fix & mend items, rather than throw away and buy something new. The onsite bakery runs twice a week and the masonry oven makes some of the best sourdough bread I’ve ever had. There’s a monthly pizza party where freshly made dough and local toppings are fired in the bakery’s wood burning oven. And Ine (& other volunteers) make a weekly trip into Ronse to work with disadvantaged members of the community in the Social Garden. There’s so much more, but these should give you an idea of the type of farm this is.

Volunteering at Boskanter Farm

Volunteering

In exchange for room & board, we committed to working 5 hours, 5 days a week. On top of these hours, there were other duties we took part in. These included feeding the chickens, bunnies, and lamb (more on them in a sec), cooking dinner from scratch, doing dishes, and so on. Some of the main projects we took on were digging a 50cm deep trench for a bunny enclosure. (Bunnies can dig, so the 50cm deep trench is necessary to prevent them from escaping).

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Clearly the fence is needed asap! This little one kept escaping from the current hatch!

I planted rows and rows of tomatoes and basil. There was constantly weeding and garden maintenance to stay on top of, and we even spent a day rotating the compost piles (that’s a fancy way of saying we shovelled poop for 2 hours). When we weren’t working, we spent our time reading, walking around the huge property, and oftentimes finding a quiet shaded spot to stretch and meditate.

Composting & Gardening

Some ways that Boskanter embraces permaculture are through compost toilets, rocket stoves, and rainwater catching. Toilets are literally buckets in a box with a toilet seat on top. After doing your business you sprinkle some saw dust on top. The buckets are then emptied into the rotating compost piles. After two years of rotating and turning, the piles create some of the best and most fertile soil around. We use the rain water for washing dishes, watering the gardens, and showering (and yes, it is a cold shower!).

Weeding in the garden is perfect for the laziest of black-thumbs. Though they may be annoying, weeds are full of nutrients that greatly benefit the soil. So instead of throwing the weeds away, they are put right back on top of the ground that they were just pulled out of. It seems counter-intuitive, but the layer of weeds on top of the soil also creates a protective mulch to fend off critters.

Cooking

To limit the use of fossil fuels and electricity, most of the cooking was done using one of the rocket stoves. A rocket stove is a wood burning stove that through a combination of chambers, vents, and chimneys creates a hot burn and is very efficient. Granted, it does take longer, but the results are quite satisfying. The food we cooked was usually a mix of local vegetables (most harvested from the many gardens on the property) and some sort of grain and/or bean. Aside from some local cheese from Holland and the uber-local eggs that some volunteers would have, everything was totally vegan.

When not using the rocket stove, we cooked on the biggest wok I’ve ever seen! The base for the wok allows a fire to be built which then heats the cooking surface. To make this biggest dish of rice & beans, I soaked the beans overnight. Before cooking, drain them and sautee celery, garlic & onion on the wok. Add the beans and a bunch of water to cover. Let it cook for ~2 hours. Meanwhile, soak some rice for faster cooking time. Add the rice (& some more water) to the wok. Cook for another ~1 hour. (All the while keeping an eye on the fire and adding more wood by removing the wok when needed). This dish reminded me SO much of the gallo pinto we ate daily in Central America!

Making Jam!

Our last few days on the farm were spent taking advantage of the ripening strawberries! We spent two full mornings picking gorgeous red berries and carting them back to the kitchen. Here we stemmed and washed them and put the majority of them into the wood-fired wok to cook down into jam. In the below picture you can see a satellite-shaped dish. This is a solar powered cooker! We used it a handful of times to heat water for cooking (or coffee, for those that drank it).

The rest we halved and quartered to be put into the freezer to make freeze dried strawberries. The idea is that over the course of a week they will dehydrate and be able to store in buckets for baking/snacking endeavours. We processed almost 35kg (~80lbs) of strawberries!!!! Obviously, we made sure to eat a fair share of the berries too.

The Animals

Boskanter Farm is filled with lots of furry friends. The two most active and friendly of the bunch are Abby and Tinke – two lovable dogs whose energy knows no bounds. The two cats are Pierre and Manon. Mac and I took a strong liking to Manon – she is the cuddliest kitty and reminded us so much of our Lucy back home.

The farm has a huge chicken coop with lots of chickens, and now even a few chicks! Right beside the coop are the newest additions to the farm – three adorable little bunnies (for whom we were digging the trench for the fence!). Ully the horse is the unofficial lawn mower at the farm.

And finally, one of the loudest members of the animal pack is Canela – a young lamb with a set of vocal chords that would impress a yodeler. Canela was abandoned by her mother, so she came to Boskanter to live with the other sheep here. Volunteering at Boskanter Farm had us bottle feeding her 2-3 times a day. She definitely made sure to let us know when she was hungry!!

Though cows weren’t present on the Boskanter Farm, we did see many of them in the neighbouring fields. It didn’t take us long to notice that Belgian cows are a bit…different than Canadian cows. These are huge-ass cows! Literally!!! Belgian Blues have been bred to have leaner meat, and the muscle definition on their rears clearly demonstrates this!

Final Thoughts

I’m glad Mac & I took the time to slow down for two weeks. Volunteering at Boskanter Farm was a nice break from the go go go we had been doing prior to this experience. We learned a lot of new things and we’re hoping this travel-break will make us all refreshed and ready to go on more new adventures in the coming weeks!

Have you ever seen or visited a permaculture farm? Tell me about your gardening endeavours!

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