Garden of Freedom

Sweetheart Feta 🤍🐐

📸: Jesse

Drying calendula flowers 🧡🌼

Today, it was time for broad beans. It took about 2 hours from harvesting to peeling. From 2 square meters we harvested 2.9 kg of beans. Yummy 🫘💚

We’re back on social media after a busy month! June was all about organizing a wedding for our friends and family Sammy and David. It was a magical moment, something we'll never forget. And it made us realize once again how beautiful our place is. 🌻💛

And tonight there will be a new monthly YouTube video online!

What are you mainly harvesting at the moment? Let us know in the comments!

For us it's beans, lettuce, turnip, mustard greens, strawberries, nettle, onion stems, chard, edible flowers, dille and more herbs.

Today, Moritz stumbled upon a big patch of fresh strawberries and decided to pick them. 🍓

Today we harvested some of our radishes to be pickled! 🫙

Oh my goat, our first fresh goat milk 😍🥛

We had a lot of rain yesterday so perfect time to mulch our potato beds! We covered the soil were we planted our potatoes earlier with a straw mulch. We do this to prevent weeds from taking over and to keep the soil nice and moist!

🥔🍀🐝

It's this time of the year 🌷🌼💮

What is your favorite flower?

Weekly Wisdom ✨

Magnolia Syrop

When I was a little girl, I always had a big love for trees, and in particular for the magnolia tree. When the magnolia tree started to blossom, I knew spring had started. Unfortunately, she would not blossom for long, but when I found out that I could save her magic in a delicious bottle of sweet fragrant syrup, my heart skipped a beat.

❤️ Health benefits
In Chinese medicine, the health benefits of the magnolia tree are no secret. The tree contains two powerful substances called magnolol and honokiol. These substances reduce anxiety and stress and have a calming effect. The flowers can be used for headaches, tension, and rheumatic ailments.

🥃 What is Magnolia Syrup?
My favorite use of the magnolia tree is the syrup. Magnolia syrup is made from the flower petals of the tree. The substance is mixed with water to make it less strong. Some people find a hint of ginger in there; I find it to be a delicious flowery-tasting drink.

🧺 Picking magnolia flowers
The flowers that are almost falling down and therefore completely opened are the most tasty, but the flower petals that are on the ground and still look fresh are also usable for brewing your syrup. Always be respectful to nature when picking flowers; I always try to pick the flowers as consciously and lovingly as possible.

📜 Magnolia syrop recipe

Ingredients:
265 grams flower petals
1 liter water
250 grams sugar
1 spoonful lemon juice

Step one: Pick some flower petals.
Step two: Put the petals in a bowl or pan, boil water, and be aware to let the water cool just a little before pouring it over the petals.
Step three: Let the water with the petals in it rest for 24 hours, don't put them in the refrigerator or in a sunny spot. Stir a couple of times with a wooden spoon.
Step four: Sieve the water with a sieve into a larger pan.
Step five: Place the pan on a small fire and mix the flower water and the sugar together. Let it boil gently. Try tasting the syrup and add lemon juice to your own taste.
Step six: Let the syrup cool down and pour it into a sterilized bottle. Put a note with the date of brewing.

Don't be shy to experiment with different taste combinations. Enjoy! 💚

What a beautiful month. So many seeds are doing well this year. The first little green leaves are unfolding and this brings us a lot of happiness. Thank you mother nature 🌱🙏

Surprise!! We got 6 baby goats. Two of our pregnant goats gave birth yesterday and one gave birth today. 🐐🥹

Shall we spam you with loads of baby goat pictures and videos for the coming weeks?

Never felt so rich 🌱🫘

Thanks .biozaden .halle and all the people who donated

As you might have seen in our latest YouTube video is that we were planning to get goats. Last friday 6 goats arrived at our farm... and look at those happy faces. 🐐

We will further introduce them in our February video.

Wish you all a very good week, peace✌️

Thank you all for the donations. You are the sweetest! 🌻🙏

The seeds are on its way and we can't wait to start sowing. We will keep you updated when anything starts to grow 🌱📸

Nothing better than freshly baked sourdough bread! Khym, Amber and Moritz are baking bread daily and throughout the week we have some focaccia, bagels and pizza too! 🥖🥯🍕🧑‍🍳

UPDATE: Our seeds are running out and we need your help! 🌱🫘

The time has come... our seeds are running out and sowing season is starting soon. We are planning to buy as much seeds as we can, but surprisingly the seeds are very expensive now. Especially if you want them all to be organic.

Every 5 euro that will be donated will help us buy 1 or 2 bags of seeds. Our goal is €500 and that will keep us busy for the coming years. This year we will focus more on seed-saving from our own garden. And thanks to your previous donations we were able to plant more than 300 trees! 🙏 We believe we can make it possible together with some help from the ones who can miss a few euros.

Donate here:
www.gofundme.com/f/garden-of-freedom

Most of the seeds will be herbs because they need to develop over the years, like lavender, rosemary and thyme. Common seeds that we also want to buy are beans, tomatoes, cucumber, kale, carrots, peppers, but also special things like cucamelon, leafy goosefoot and quinoa. And of course we will update you with the results on our Facebook and Instagram.

Thank you all,
Garden of Freedom

Hard workers 🧑‍🌾

Thanks David for the extra help 💚

The GoF family product box was very successful in 2023! It was a box full of homegrown seeds, apple vinegar from our own orchard, a smudgestick from conifer and Crème au calendula 🧡

If you're also interested in a box subscription... Let us know! We explain everything here:
www.gof.earth/join

(Registration until end of January and Europe/UK only)

Slide through a snowy landscape picture of the Garden of Freedom ❄️💙

The December newsletter is out! If you haven't subscribed yet and would like to receive monthly updates. Subscribe through this link:

www.gof.earth/subscribe

In these newsletters we write about our personal stories, give updates about the house renovation, share pictures that we don't share on our social media and many more!

We are back!! The holidays were wonderful. It was nice to see friends and family again. And we have great news... Thanks to Jos from Kwekerij Vechtwijck, we temporarily have an excavator. Now we can adjust the landscape according to our permaculture design. More updates soon ✌️

Garden of Freedom wish you all very warm Christmas days and a green and healthy new year 🌱💚🎄

We will be offline until next year.

News article! 📝

1st year growing our own food, 75+ successful plants

We are nearly 11 months in and we just had the first frost of the year. You could say that the growing season has ended, a good time to look back at what we’ve learned and what we have grown.

Read the full article here:

https://gof.earth/1st-year-growing-food/

The time has come. We have continued making our design for the project. After 11 months of observing the land and its weather patterns we are more convident making decisions on water management, foodforests, grazing pastures and more.

~ Think ponds, sheep, trees, flowers and bees. Anything is possible if you believe. ~

We are renovating the barn to replace our temporary workshop into a bigger one. Last months we've been busy making a second floor and expanding the roof to create an atelier upstairs. You can see the end results in our next video post! 🛠️

Our inspiration is gone. What to do with so many eggs... Any ideas?? 🥚

When the garden comes to its end, the pantry becomes our support for the winter. It's our first year trying out different ways of canning and preserving. A perfect example of trial and error. 🫙🫛🥒