Boerderij de Oude Ruif

Boerderij de Oude Ruif is a family farm in Stoutenburg, in the municipality of Leusden, with a pick-your-own garden (oogsttuin) of fruit, vegetables and herbs and a flock of hens that lay coloured eggs.

The garden grows redcurrants, raspberries, blackberries and blackcurrants and less common berries such as tayberry, honeyberry and jostaberry, and lettuce, beetroot, carrots, cabbages, courgettes, squash and herbs, with young apple, pear and plum trees still coming into crop. It is worked no-dig, so the soil is disturbed as little as possible, without artificial fertiliser or chemical pesticides. Their website describes the growing as largely organic in method. The farm holds no organic certificate; what qualifies it here is the no-dig growing without artificial fertiliser or chemical pesticides. The hens, a mix of breeds laying blue, green, speckled and dark brown eggs, get no artificial light, so some stop laying in winter, and they are kept until they are six or seven years old.

From late May, when the honeyberries ripen first, the garden is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10:00 to 16:00; you pick what you need and pay in cash or by QR code, with no subscription. Over winter a self-service point at the car park sells eggs and the last of the harvest on the same days.

The hens forage in the garden, eating insects, slugs and larvae that would damage the crops, and their manure goes back into the soil.