The Field Guideby Moss & MarrowThe Field Guideby Moss & MarrowA curated selection of farms and food producers in the Netherlands that meet our inclusion criteria for soil, animal welfare and food quality. Every listing shows our sources and the date we checked it.
Hi, I'm Lucinda! I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner and web developer. There's nothing I love more than sourcing nutrient-dense food and ingredients from local producers who put care into soil health and animal welfare, even better that it's fresh, seasonal and healthy.
The Field Guide started because I want to help my clients and community do the same. There are no paid listings and no advertising (and it will stay this way, always!). Every farm or maker is in it because we checked the sources, and every listing shows what we found and when.
P.S. My favourite veggie is Tuscan kale and my favourite fruits are passionfruit and raspberries. :)
Three things decide how much nourishment reaches your plate: what the food is, how it was grown or raised, and how it was prepared. The Field Guide is about the middle one. Grass-fed meat and dairy, eggs from hens that actually go outside, vegetables grown in living soil and picked ripe carry more of what the body needs than the same foods produced fast and shipped far, and the way to get them is to know the producer, which is hard to do from a supermarket aisle.
It's also about where the food goes. The Netherlands has about 50,000 farms, down from 97,000 in 2000, and roughly two-thirds of what they produce leaves the country. Only about one farm in twenty is organic. The producers in The Field Guide are the ones growing for the people around them, with care for the soil they'll hand on. Buying from them keeps the money and the food in the region, and keeps those farms farming.
Underneath it is a simple idea borrowed from agroecology: feed the soil and the soil feeds everything else. Animals on the land, nutrients returned instead of bought in, diversity instead of monoculture, short distances between the farm and the table, and a fair price to the person who grew it. We'll go deeper on each of these in the guides; The Field Guide is where you act on them.
We check each farm and maker against published criteria. Each listing shows the evidence: the producer's own words, our sources and the date we checked. About one in five producers we check gets listed. Producers cannot pay to be listed, and the site has no advertising.
A farm can be listed for its beef and left out for its chicken. Each listing shows which products meet the criteria and which animals go outside. Organic claims are checked in the official register, and farms without a certificate are still listed if their practices meet the criteria.
Tick the grass-fed only filter and the map shows every farm whose cattle eat only grass. Each one comes with the line from its own website that says so.
Pick a month to see what is in Dutch season and which checked farms near you sell it. Each season window cites its source. One switch at the top of any page hides meat, fish, dairy, eggs and honey everywhere.
A farm 40 km away with a market stall near you shows up at the stall's distance. Results are sorted by distance, with a count of how many deliver. If nothing is close, you see farms that deliver.
Every producer gets a form to confirm or fix what we found, and listed producers get a badge.
The Field Guide is a one-woman show, and I can't do it alone. If you care about local producers, soil health, nutrition, animal welfare, or you just want to support the people growing food near you, I'd love to work with you. There's no pay in it yet, only good food and good company. Things I could use help with:
Write to lucinda@mossandmarrow.health and tell me what you'd like to do.