GROW Place Poland — Deep Roots at the foot of the Sudety mountains
Noemi Nemes and her team from Deep Roots are leading the GROW place in Poland. They are a Polish-Hungarian couple and a Polish woman living on an ecological farm at the foot of the Sudety mountains. Deep Roots is a community farm where eventually 5 families will live together to attend the land organized as a land trust — of which a main goal is ecological restoration.
Among the core team, they have backgrounds in ecological economics, organic agriculture, and horticulture, respectively and have completed courses and long training sessions in applied permaculture, appropriate technologies, and holistic management.
“We aim to develop a silvopasture-based demonstration and educational farm with a strong emphasis on outreach and research,” says Noemi. “We have been running a large permaculture garden, set up a tree nursery, reforested abandoned public land with 1000 tree species with children,” Noemi added.
They are also running a forest kindergarten and school, which is one of the very few forest schools in Europe that gives ecology-oriented homeschooling education to children above seven.
The team are also part of an emerging local food growers community which has been established as a result of the first local “food sovereignty” forum organized on their farm, in early March 2019.
Noemi’s team initially became interested in GROW because of their love of soil. “From there sprouts the passion in its regeneration and the interest in scientific analysis and documentation of soil properties and how they change with time and different practices,” she said.
For the team, data on soil humidity and temperature on their land will help them get to know their soil better but more than that, getting connected to many more soil and regeneration enthusiasts around Europe helped them decide to join GROW.
For Deep Roots, being a GROW place will help them help them connect with local people in their community who are also aware of the importance of the soil and are dedicated to environmental issues enough to commit to two years of scientific research while continuing their busy lives.
“We believe in the magic of connection and we are always very happy and excited to meet people who are driven by similar things as we are. And if connecting with these people comes with helping the scientists to better understand climate change — even better!” Noemi said.
Noemi and team are looking forward to strengthening the connections between people who joined them for the project, locals and those from other places around Europe. They are also curious to monitor the changes in the graphs that the sensors will give them during the next two years.
