Summary: The project – The story – The farmers – Our activities – Our ideals – The place to farm
The project
The Super Cool Plan is an adventure, a project with the goal to build a collective farm with a strong social factor. At the moment we imagine to organize it around three different themes:
– The main goal
Mixed farming activities on a agroecological way, conducted by 6 to 10 people, with at least: a goat farm.
– The complementary
An activity of reception on the farm: ecotourism, educational farm … depending on the location and motivations.
– The social bonus
Facilities to welcome on the farm friends, family, woofers and internships. And why not local meetings, organizations, courses, films-debates, micro-festivals, etc ? The life!
The story
In the master of Organic Agriculture of the Wageningen University, Netherlands, students learn agronomy, ie the sciences of agriculture. Some of them have a more practical mindset and want to act in the fields instead of doing research. Work with the brain but also with the hands, outside, in direct contact with the earth, plants, animals, humans… Work for finally see, touch and feel a concrete result.
The plan emerged there, on the student community Droevendaal, from the dreams of some motivated friends. The Super Cool Plan! It was in 2015. The group changed since then and is still changing but friendship stays important. From the first big meeting (with about 15 persons, agricultural and non-agricultural) to now, the group is reduced to 6 persons, all with an agricultural short term project but not in the same region, until only two persons.
The farmers
For now, we are only two embarked in this adventure.
Ideally, we want to be from 6 to 10. So we wait for you!
Roze – 27 years Key-words : Dutch, Waldorf school, Master agroecology, Adventure, Goats, Sun, Singing, Apiculture, Mountains |
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Key-words : French, Computer science, Big travels, Love, Nature, Freedom, Agriculture, Walking, Writing |
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Mathieu – 30 yearsOur activities
At the moment the plan contains two activities
– Goat farming
The idea (and the challenge) is to size this activity for 2 people full-time and to work at 4 people half-time! We will start with fifty goats, the little goats will be raised with their mother, the herd will pasture, we will favour natural care, we will do direct and local marketing.
- – Farm camping
- To complete for one or two persons part-time the goat farming activity, we want to start a farm camping. Other reception activities could be developed like courses, cabins to rent, school groups reception, etc.
Our ideals
To work and live well together, we think that flexibility is one of the most important quality to have. It reduces conflicts of ideas, guilt, frustrations, excessive expectations, etc. (not always easy) So we want to be an open-minded collective without to many fixed ideas and definitive ideals.
However, some ideals are important to defend:
- to be a collective farm (share, help each other, be in solidarity, build together…)
- to be an open farm (have pedagogical, social, civic, activist and welcoming dimensions, organize parties and open days, share our farm…)
- to be an organic farm
- to be locally involved
- to be a farm with friendship (not to be just co-workers)
Hum… yeah… these points are pretty vague. There are a thousand ways to develop them. Well… we will develop them slowly-gently, according to people composing the group, directly on place and not in the blah, and trying to stay modest.
The place to farm
France is large and has many attractive territories. To choose the good territory to start a farm seems a bit random, except to have good reasons (stay in your home territory, a family property to take over, develop a production specific to a terroir…)
Here are the criteria selected for our land searches:
- France
- hilly and sunny
- a region that is dynamic
- close to a city (for markets, meeting people, schools and other facilities)
- easily reachable, for our friends and family to visit
The Drôme has potentially all of this. It’s known for organic agriculture and has a project to become more organic. It’s dynamic, there are a lot of small initiatives starting. It’s near the Rhône valley where there is the TGV and a highway going north and south. Valence is a nice city, not too big, not too small. There is also Montélimars and more inland the bigger cities are: Romans-sur-isère, Crest, Nyons. There are three big rivers and it’s known as a touristic area. The mountain range in the Drôme is the Vercors and not far the Alpes begin.
In general the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is interesting, including la Drôme. Other interesting departments are the Lot, Dordogne, Aveyron, Gar…