de Hooge Kamp

De Hooge Kamp is a biodynamic market garden of nine hectares in the meadows of Beemte Broekland, halfway between Apeldoorn and Deventer, where three growers and about sixty volunteers grow vegetables for subscription boxes and the Arnhem farmers' market.

They grow around 65 different crops in a seven-year rotation: each field carries five years of mixed vegetables and then rests for two years under grass-clover, which is cut as feed for a dairy farmer's cattle. The soil is fed with composted deep-litter manure (potstalmest) from an organic cattle farm in Welsum, and according to their website no synthetic fertiliser or chemical pesticides are used, only the biodynamic preparations. The garden is certified organic (SKAL) and Demeter-certified (NL-173410); we found both in the registers.

There is no shop at the farm. The vegetables are sold as a weekly or fortnightly subscription box, delivered to pickup addresses at customers' homes on Thursdays in Epe, Vaassen and Heerde, on Fridays in Apeldoorn and on Saturdays around Arnhem. The same produce, plus forgotten vegetables (vergeten groenten) and cut flowers, is on their stall at the Biologische Boerenmarkt in Arnhem every Saturday from 8:00 to 17:00. Around the autumn, Christmas and spring school holidays subscribers receive a double box the week before and nothing in the holiday week itself, which gives the growers about four weeks off a year.

The manure and the grass-clover are one loop: the clover from the resting fields is cut for the cattle of the Boons family farm in Welsum, and their composted bedding comes back onto the vegetable beds.