Description

What happens when an engineer swaps corporate life for a life regenerating the land? Meet Sergi Caballero of Mas Les Vinyes in Catalonia: a farmer who turned an abandoned, degraded property into a lush, biodiverse food paradise. It’s a masterclass in regenerative agriculture, where fruit trees, animals, and soil biology work together in perfect symphony.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Sergi produces food that tastes like it did generations ago, all while boosting soil health, building biodiversity, and proving that sustainable farming can be both profitable and deeply fulfilling. If you care about the future of food, you won’t want to miss this conversation.

From seed saving and pasture-raised eggs to on-farm composting and integrated fruit tree guilds, Sergi shares practical insights for anyone dreaming of farming in harmony with nature. We explore how animal integration in farming supercharges soil fertility, why microbiology is the unsung hero of agriculture, and how thoughtful water design keeps crops thriving in hot, dry summers.

Plus, discover how Mas Les Vinyes feeds local markets and retirement homes, bringing nutrient-dense food to those who need it most.

Whether you’re a grower, researcher, policymaker, or simply a curious eater, this episode is packed with real-world solutions for creating resilient, climate-positive food systems. Join us for a deep dive into the practices and the mindset that make regeneration possible.

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This podcast was produced in partnership with Soil Capital, a company that supports #regenerativeagriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve soil health & biodiversity.

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Useful links: 

• Mas Les Vinyes - https://www.maslesvinyes.com/en

• Deep Seed podcast - https://www.deepseed.eu/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Speaker #0

  I think investing in healthy food, it's the best way to be sure that we can prosper as a society with less healthy problems and also regenerating the ecosystems. Sometimes there is like ecosystem protection and the farming ecosystem. And if you are farming, it looks like you cannot protect the ecosystem. And if you protect the ecosystem, it looks like you cannot produce food. But no, you can do both things.

• Speaker #1

  Welcome back to the Deep Seed. podcast. This week I am traveling to Catalonia in Spain to meet with Sergi Caballero who is the lead farmer at Masles Vines. He takes me on a comprehensive tour of his farm and he really takes his time to explain how every different part of this beautiful complex farm ecosystem work together. I have to say that walking through this farm I felt like this is it, this is what farming should look like. this is what it should feel like. It's beautiful, it's colorful, it's vibrant, full of life, full of diversity, and it just feels good. Also, Sergi is such a fountain of regenerative knowledge, and there's so much valuable information shared in this episode. It was originally created as a video documentary format on YouTube, and if you can, I definitely recommend watching this episode on YouTube. but If that's not available to you right now, don't worry. I've adapted the episode to make sure you can follow everything and understand everything right here in audio format. This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I am your host, Rafael, and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.

• Speaker #0

  My name is Sergi Caballero, and I've been farming here at Maslas Viñas. Since 12 years ago, this is a cooperative boat farm, and we are living actually here 12 persons. For us, the climate is a really hard thing because we can move from 12 below zero to 40 degrees in the summer. And also we have a wide range of humidity season. It means that we can go from 400 liters a year to more than 1,000 some years, but the average is about 600. We are producing vegetables, also eggs, we are having lamb meat, honey, a lot of fruit, and also we grow a couple of pigs only for ourselves. Here there is a lot of pigs industry, so we wanted to create a system, a model, that could be based on biodiversity, not only relying on one product like the pigs' meat. We are actually farming like 25 hectares. that are from our property. And then we are farming also like 20, 30 hectares of forest from the neighbors that they allow us to use them for our goat, sheep or in the future, I hope some cows also.

• Speaker #1

  At the very beginning, what made you go in the direction of, you know, this nature inclusive, complex ecosystem type of farming rather than go for high production, high profit kind of systems?

• Speaker #0

  Well, in my past, I used to work with some kind of big companies. And then once I became a father, I realized that I was putting a lot of energy in the world that I didn't want for my child. So when I decided to start growing food, because also my grandfathers, two of them were farmers. One was a goat farmer and the other was a vegetable farmer. And then I realized that I wanted to continue this work, but of course I didn't want to work as a big... companies and then as engineer I realized that the importance of the ecosystem that is creating energy through the natural patterns so it means that we have to invest in different things like fruit trees with cereals with vegetable production with animal and with you

• Speaker #1

  know with different kind of things so do you do you think we need to change the global food system

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, often we are asked like, yeah, but this kind of food production, do you think that we can really feed the world with this kind of production? I'm not sure, but what I'm truly sure about is that the actual system cannot produce enough food in the future because the soils are really getting bad. They're getting lost. We have more and more pests. We have really high problems with nutritional density food. So there's a lot of problems with the actual system. So I think that at least we should try because the actual system is not gonna take so much.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, okay. Okay, now that everybody's introduced, we can start the farm tour. The first place we stop is at the nursery to talk about seed saving and plant genetics.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, as a vegetables production, we need to take care about our seeds. And we have realized that the or really harvested seeds from the farm that it's been more than 17 years, they really grow better than the ones that you can buy. We really understand that trying to get the best from your plants, it starts from the end of the previous cycle. So we have to identify the plants are growing better and then we can keep the seeds for the next year. Here in this greenhouse we can create like, where we plant about 5,000 seedlings every year and we grow them and then we can bring to the gardening zones.

• Speaker #1

  Okay so every year of the past 17 years you've been selecting the seeds from your best plants.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And then like reusing and doing the same thing over and over every year so that you end up with the seeds that are very very specifically adapted to this ecosystem here right?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah we are used to to save our own seats. to take the most from our genetics, from our plants. Yeah. And let's use our adaptation because, for example, we use really less water than most of the farmers. So it means that we need to them to be adapted on our growing conditions. And also regarding the pests, that one can survive more to the fungi or the pests, the ones that are going to work better in the future. Yeah. Okay. For me, also this connects me with all the previous generation that have done the same. Yeah. Because if we rely our vegetables production in the big companies that also are making like organic seeds for big growing producers, we are disconnected. So the future for the future generations, if they want to have their own seeds, we cannot stop doing this small but continuous work. Yeah. We need to go on with that. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Do you sell these to local farmers?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, sometimes we sell these to local farmers. Yeah. And it's impressive because we also do this soil, I'm going to show you now, with coffee and tea. Okay, we create this kind of amazing soil based on our coffee and tea that we grow them with warm compost and then we can have, also we have some studies, we bought some amazing soil that you can buy from big companies. And we grow different kinds of vegetables with our own soil and with both soils. And with our own soil, the plants grow more than the double than the others. And so we make pictures of this and we wrote this on our website to show them, the people, that we need also to create like... Yeah, everything starts from the soil, also from the seedlings.

• Speaker #1

  We walk. just around the corner to arrive at the spot where Sergi creates this amazing worm compost that he just told us about.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, this is only coffee and fruit and some straw, but you can realize how amazing this soil is. And this is full of bacteria because the worms eat the bacteria that decompose organic matter. And with this, we can get this amazing worm compost when it's done. It's amazing. It's a totally insane soil. I think that we cannot pay for the cost of this soil, but we are producing with waste. Even we harvest some... coffee from some restaurants, from local restaurants that we can bring here and to convert it to our soil.

• Speaker #1

  And so you only use your own compost?

• Speaker #0

  Yes, absolutely.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, so nothing comes from outside of the farm, right?

• Speaker #0

  We use also the wood chips from the carpenters from the region.

• Speaker #1

  But to make compost and mulch?

• Speaker #0

  No, it's more about the grey water system and also about adding more carbon onto the humanure. Okay.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, but all the nutrition then it comes from the farm and it's cycled back into the farm. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Also, I think that in the future there will be some farms that will have some problems with fertility. Yeah. Also, a lot of people are thinking about water, but I think that people should invest in adding some kind of animals in their farms so they know where the organic matter comes from, especially with animals that have... not been treated with a lot of antibiotics. And I think it's really, really important to create a good fertility into your soils.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, okay.

• Speaker #0

  Also, it's interesting because these kind of worms, they are local ones, and they start, they are working here on the soil the first years that you stop tilling, okay? And you will see there on the farm, on the field, that they are working here like that, on that direction, horizontally. But when you are like six, seven, eight years without tilling, Then you will have another kind of worm, that they are bigger and they just move up to down, up to down, and they're different. So when you also pay attention to the kind of worms that you have, you also can learn the proper steps that you have to make for the next seasons. Now I need to clean my hands.

• Speaker #1

  After this, we walk for a couple of minutes through a beautiful path full of flowers and trees and herbs. and we arrive at the bottom of the property where a... keyline orchard design was planted just a few years ago as soon as we get there sergi kneels on the ground and he digs up a piece of soil to show me all of the worms in there and he starts talking about soil health and about how he designed this ecosystem you

• Speaker #0

  see the worms yeah you see the worms everywhere yeah um just wanted to share that when we arrive here the soil is too much compacted. We couldn't even dig a hole for planting trees. It was really hard. And it was like 1.3% of organic matter. In biology terms, it means that this soil is going to the desertification and it's a process that the nature itself cannot recover. It needs like external energy. How? Through animals, through plants, through seeding plants. So in these fields, Using our sheep, we have grown up to 40% of organic matter. Just moving the sheep around here, also the pigs, also the hens and the chickens. And all of them also allow us to move from 400 grams of grass per square meter to up to 4 kilos of grass per square meter. Now you've seen this and it's quite short, but it's been pastured like two weeks ago. It's more than one meter when it's tall. Now it's going to recover. So we are creating a lot of fertility between the symbiosis through animals and the grasses, and also the trees. The trees also help a lot to infiltrate the water slowly. They create a lot of carbon and they get advantage of the excess of nitrogen to convert it into fruit. We have different kinds of fruit trees here. Here we're growing a lot of apricots, figs, cherries, plums. apples, pears, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecan nuts, almonds, well you see many. And we are based on diversifying our production because there are some years that because of the frozen times, maybe late frost or early frost, we could lose part of the production. So we can harvest some apricots in June and the others we can finally harvest them on the beginning of August, so it's a wide range of possibilities for us to harvest the same fruit apricot. Different varieties but the same tree. Here we planted like 40 different varieties the first year that we arrived here. Once we have the key line design applied we can start planting the trees. We wait like two or three years to discover which one of these trees we're growing better with less pest and with a better fruit. From those we select the ones that we prefer and then we have planted more and now it's about 400 fruit trees that we are having. We're harvesting from 20 to 25 kilos of fruit for each fruit, for each tree and also we are adding new fruit trees like every year or new plants or something like this. The good thing is that the plantation was designed in time so it means that the first trees that you find are from the the June fruit. and then you move to July's zone, then you have the August, September, October, and then on the north you have the November place. So you can find some apples from July and also pears, and then you can find them some on November. And having this like year calendar production, it just allows us to move the animals. What does it mean? That for example, we know that When the trees start growing the fruit, we need to cut the grass, especially with sheep, with big animals for us. And then we get advantage like bringing here the chickens or the hens that can break the poo and make it easier to be into the soil. And the thing is that when we have the harvesting season that the sheep also come back here and they're eating, after the sheep. Humans came and we are harvesting the fruit and then we throw it into the soil, the ones that we don't want for making jams or to sell them fresh. And also the pigs or the hens or the chickens can take advantage of this bad fruit and they eat it. So also you don't have many pests because if you let the bad fruit on the soil, maybe the next year it will be worse for you because some larvae are going to stay there. So it allows us... also to have less pests because of the symbiosis between species that you have to remember that that's really legal. And also it's true that every kind of animal, every breed of animal, has a different proportion of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into their poo, and also different kind of minerals. So for example, omnivorous animals like us, but especially with pigs or with chickens or hens, who eat insects, these throw a lot of phosphorus into the soil and it's totally essential for the fruit trees to grow really good. So only with lamb, only with sheep, only with cow, this shouldn't work as better as this because every kind of animal brings us something to the grass. So that's the idea that the sheep can convert easily these grasses into nitrogen. But then the omnivorous animals like pigs or chickens will bring another kind of nitrogen, really fast nitrogen, but especially because of the phosphorus, which is something really interesting for us. Yeah, between the fruit trees row we add a lot of biodiversity. Here you have a side, it's full of insects. Also we add nitrogen fixing shrubs that can fix a lot of nitrogen there, here.

• Speaker #1

  Where is this shrub?

• Speaker #0

  This is a caragana arborescens, which is a nitrogen fixing brush that also produces a lot of really lovely flowers, but especially is good for the nitrogen. So we allow the sheep to eat those when they are blooming, because you know that they have a really good reservoir of nitrogen in their roots. And as they are eating the path and you are feeding the sheep, we're also feeding the trees on the ground. Oh,

• Speaker #1

  okay.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. The key light design is a way to distribute the water properly so all the places in your fields get the same amount of water. It allows us to bring the water from the valleys to all the field, all the terrain, so everything is being properly watered. So it means that we have some lines that like the master ones, the ones that you can make parallel to them, that distribute the water from the ballast to the to the right and the left. When you have a lot of water it can be stored here in the soil that it's like an horizontal pond that goes around all the field to the end and goes there and it allows us that the water that is filled here can be slowly introduced into the soil. So also when you are designing your plantations you can plant on the right trees that demand more water than the ones that are on the left. Yes, this will have less water than those because once it drains and it's full, it's full. For the next weeks, the water is going to go slowly down. Also here you have a lot of humus. So it means that here also you will have more worms and more nitrogen for those plants that slowly can be going there. We have five meters on the trough. So it's another space to move the animals. I know that it's not the best for growing fruit because we cut... We could increase our incomes because of having close lines, but it allows us to add the animals easily. If not, it's really hard.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so you need those five meters at least to have enough space for the animals too.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, we started from four sheep only and now we are above 40-50, so now it's harder to manage them here.

• Speaker #1

  Since we were just talking about the integration of animals and sheep, it was only fitting that we would then walk to the other side of the property where a flock of maybe 40 or 50 sheep were grazing. And of course, Sergi takes the opportunity to give us more information about the role of sheep in his farming ecosystem. Well,

• Speaker #0

  I have to say that sheep are like the core of our project. I think that everything is related to the sheep. They bring us a lot of life here and they help us to regenerate this ecosystem. It was an old, abandoned farm, well, really badly treated. And because of them we have increased our fertility and our biodiversity. We manage them in a regenerative way. It means that we change them two times a day, twice a day. And nine months through the year they are only outside and they are going to sleep in the stable on the coldest months. So it means that they're pasturing all day, they are eating all the grass, they are fed only with that. And we discovered that we need to move them two times a day because of their sugar peak during the day. So for us, it's been an important knowledge and something that we have discovered. Actually, yeah, we started from four and we have been selecting the... been selecting the the breed so we can have the ones that we prefer the most and now actually they're eating grass here in a new field where we have introduced it also through key line pecan nuts and see apple cedar trees we are so optimistic that we have planted these trees not for us it's for the next generation you know uh you have to be really uh optimistic to to plan yeah walnuts or pecan nuts or even these kind of apples. So it's for the next generation. Also, sometimes as we have time, we really love to go and pasture with them to places where we can add these fences. So it means that we can go next to the river in a really close places where there's a lot of vegetation. Also, you will find that some things like, also we don't need to remove like the... old ones because they are not more productive. We can let them here to stay and to finish their cycle because they are only eating grass so it's not a cost for us. We grow our food for the winter, our grass. We have some fields that we manage with the tractor and then we cut the grass and save it for the winter season, which is important. You need to harvest grass for

• Speaker #1

  because at times that you have less food on into the fields okay yeah once again sergi goes to the floor and uses his knife to dig up a bit of soil to show me how healthy and full of life this soil is and he makes a really really good point about the positive impact of grazing animals on biodiversity especially that biodiversity in the soil and on the soil and everywhere around the the farm.

• Speaker #0

  The good thing about creating good soil is that you have to take care about the kind of holes that you have because these holes, these galleries, is where the worms are living through. And also when you take some sample you should find different kind of life here just working. And often we think that like cereals or legumes are like more sustainable, but that's not true. The really thing that I'm impressed about is that I take samples from any part of my farm and I can see worms. Why? Because when you have organic residues, cattle working there, just pasturing, you can have like 1.5 million worms for each hectare. And it's around three tons of worm waste under the soil. When you have a monoculture field, you can have about 50,000 worms per hectare. So it's a lot more when you're working with cattle. And when people think that We should take care of the animals, also it's taking care of the worms and the beetles and the spiders and the ants and all this life that it's creating the fertility for the future. So yeah, also, yeah. So we usually take samples from our soils like every two years to see where we are.

• Speaker #1

  Walking around this farm almost feels like a treasure hunt because there are so many different ecosystems. with different types of farming systems, different animals, different types of plants. So everywhere you go, you just discover something new. It's so much fun. So now we arrive at a different spot of the farm where the chicken house has been parked for the time being. And we talk about the role of chickens here and how they're integrated in the rotation.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, chickens and hens are a really good way to create food. and to take advantages of the grass and the thing is that we move them through the fruit tree system so every five to seven days we move their house which is made from materials that the agriculture department allow us to do that and we move this with our van and then just move some meters and then we prepare another fence and for the next seven days ten they will be here just scratching, eating. worms, slugs and everything they find. That's amazing because usually also when the government came here, they say, Oh, but the chickens really don't love the grass. They prefer the grains. And I said, OK, let's make a trust. And then at the same time that we were adding new grain, we just moved the fence. And you can imagine that all of them just ran through the grass to find new insects and things. And they forgot totally about the grain. They were not really interested. But it's also a really good way of having like healthy food because the eggs coming from pasture, pasture birds, they have like omega-3 and omega-6, which are really absolutely necessary for the human body. And you can only have this if your animals have grass. And again, we should let the animals to the animals. it seems like unbelievable, but there are many animals that don't see the light in all their life until the day they are on the track to go to the slothery, to be killed. So the animals need to have sunlight also for their body as we need. It's not healthy to eat something or some animal that eats all their life in a cage. That's not healthy. We need sun to help these animals, yeah of course. We are charging the same price for our food than a conventional, not the ecological. We're selling our eggs or the lamb or the vegetables for a conventional price because we can afford it because we don't have many expenses of this kind of production system. This is one thing. But the second thing is that a lot of our customers say that the taste of the food that we are buying from us, it looks like they're grandfather and grandmother food that they bring to the table. For example, I was really impressed, like, you know, sharing amazing cauliflowers, amazing tomatoes, and the people was absolutely in love with lettuce. They say, wow, that's a lettuce, that it tastes like a lettuce. But you have to think that growing a lettuce from a seed, it could take you like about 100 days, 120, but the most of the lettuce that you are eating on the supermarket Usually it's made in a hydroponic system that it's ready in only 30 days. So instead of growing things in 30 days you are having like about three or four months that it takes more time to grow but also more time to harvest nutrients and put it onto their leaves.

• Speaker #1

  But that's incredible you're able to sell your produce at a competitive price compared to conventional. Despite having a far superior product objectively. you know, quality, taste, nutrition, and not to even mention all of the ecosystem services that the production system brings. So that's quite incredible.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, and also, for example, we quit with expenses that are not adding value, like, I don't know, like, for example, yeah, like having an organic label, we don't need it. All the customers know our job, they can come here to our farm and they can see so we are not going to pay for a label because our customers don't believe in that so they just come here and they can see the quality of their food i think opening your doors is the biggest label that you can get also we don't give grain to our sheep so it reduces a lot our grazing costs because they are only getting grass from the free soil Yeah. That's why we can sell for a competitive price. Because otherwise here, in that region, a rural region, the people are not going to pay for this added value. They think that everything that is growing in nature is organic, you know? They can see, they realize that this plant is growing. It's not really important if it's because of chemicals or because of manure, but They just know it because of the taste and the flavor of the food.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Do you also provide for any restaurants in the region?

• Speaker #0

  In the past, we provided for two restaurants. Actually, since June, we are going to go working a lot with a house for old people. I don't know if I say this properly, but all the food that they are going to prepare is going to come from here, from Las Viñas. Well, yeah, mostly of their vegetables or food.

• Speaker #1

  But that's fantastic. It's amazing to hear stories like that where the places like that, a retirement home or hospitals or children, like the school meals and places like that where you really, really want to prioritize high-quality nutrition and healthy diets.

• Speaker #0

  And also because of creating more symbiosis also through people, we are going to invite these people. to come here to do some work. Like, I don't know, like the day that you're planting or harvesting potatoes, the day that you are harvesting fruit one week with a lot of, you know, cherries, plums and apples, we are going to invite the old people to come here because most of them, they work into the farm, into the past when they were young. So also, inviting them to work with you is going to be amazing. Also, they can trust in you. They know everything that you are eating, where does it come from? I think this is one of the biggest privileges that you can have in your life yeah knowing where your food comes from totally yeah and as a farmer knowing the people who eat your food and also also yeah you can imagine the people you can imagine the people eating your yeah the things i think yeah that's an amazing point just

• Speaker #1

  a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the deep seed podcast and that's soil capital soil capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture. by financially rewarding farmers who improve things like soil health and biodiversity. They're an amazing company. I really love what they're doing, and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the podcast. I really love the diversity of the place and the different smells and colors and everything. It's such a beautiful, living, thriving ecosystem. But since you're building everything around adding complexity, how do you manage so much complexity? Do you need more people to be working to help with that? Do you have other solutions? What do you think about that?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, that's a really, really good point. Like creating more biodiversity, it's also... to increase the maintenance. So we are all designing for our daily life, not for the energy that you need to create an ecosystem, it's because of the maintenance. So for example, we have designed our ecosystems that a lot of work can be done through the animals when they are not grown. So for example, these plants at the beginning we protect them from the animals but not now. We let them, the animals, to eat so It's a way of managing this vegetation. But also it's true that we are increasing our gardening zones or fruit tree zones in time. So that's why we introduce new species every year, new lines, new fruit lines, because the older ones are quite well established. So they don't need water, really less pruning because, you know, all the work has been done on the previous year.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  But that's really important. This point is amazing because also you can create like a super complex ecosystem. And if you do this on the first year, then you are broke because there's a lot of work. It's really hard. So permaculture says slow and small solutions. It means start from small and go to big,

• Speaker #1

  but slowly. And how do you manage? Because you've been harvesting. a lot of different types of vegetables and fruits and herbs, spices and animal products, right? So, a really wide range of products. Where do you sell those products? How do you find markets for all of them?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, different things. First, we are a work cooperative, so it means that every one of the cooperatives is in charge of different elements of systems. So, there is someone who's in charge of the ship, another from the South gardening and now from the north and east gardens, maybe another one from the fruit. So everyone has their elements and systems in their mind, but they do not work alone. So every Sunday we have a meeting with all the cooperatives and start about the tasks that we have to do these weeks. And we distribute them regarding the importance and the... urgency of each one and we all talk on monday how are we going to organize the week so we know when we have to bring the vegetables boxes to the customers we sell directly through customers also to different kind of shops small in our town shops and we sell everything around here But now, for example, we are selling too much lamb and around us people have enough lamb. So we have to take them far from the farm and we are using a cooperative distribution system which is called La Diligencia and we have to bring to one center of distribution and then they distribute it where we want it like close to Barcelona, close to Girona or different kind of towns they just bring there and we have a share cost with different kind of cost producers like pigs producers, cows producers, you know. everyone and we are all in a cooperative that we can do this this work yeah okay yeah i know a lot of farmers who have to invest a lot of their time just selling and distributing their products and i prefer to spend time here just with my plants and growing them and producing food so i can renounce of some of our incomes because just allowing the others to sell our products but in a In a small way. We don't work with big companies, we only work with social employees, with social companies.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, so for this next section, we walk around the farm and Sergi stops in a few places to speak about specific plants and their role in the ecosystem. It's a very visual section, but everything he says still makes sense in audio format and you should still be able to... get valuable information from that section. If that's not the case, don't hesitate to move a bit further in the episode, but don't skip yet, because I promise the conversation we have right at the end is really amazing and you don't want to miss it.

• Speaker #0

  you see that there are many many because there is many fruit sometimes we need to throw some here because otherwise because the people on the markets need wanted to have big fruit not small ones so it means that you need to do a little bit of that so you remove the by hand like this the smaller fruit and stuff especially when they are bigger you just move the branch and fall down like 30 percent sometimes it's good enough to okay yeah yeah so we try different kind of plants to create biomass for example this is Eleagnos Ebingei which is also a fast growing bush that also fix nitrogen and when it's in flower also this produces a really nice fruit a small one when this is in has a lot of flowers you just can cut and it will really release the nitrogen in about 40 days so If you find any fruit tree like Feijoa that can start producing like one month when you have this full of flowers, when you cut, this Feijoa will take advantage of this nitrogen.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, so you're planning the timing like that. Yeah. Your tree here is going to need a boost in nitrogen at a certain time in its growth period, and that's the perfect time to... To prune this one because then the nitrogen in the roots will be released.

• Speaker #0

  And also, I think also it's nice to go here. In the new tree plantations we are used to add a lot of wood chips that are from our forest and we put it here because usually trees love a funky soil and grasses prefer a bacterium. So it means that helping them to have enough fungi that can be associated to the roots, where these kind of wood chips, so it's a more stable structure in time than those. Now this manure, like this manure from the sheep is going to be added fast into the soil, but we here are working with long-term plants. So here, we add this kind of wood chips to help them. Also, another plant like comfrey. Everybody loves comfrey. And you just, comfrey helps you to get minerals from the bottom of your soil. And yeah, it can handle a lot of different kind of minerals, especially when it's in flower. Now I'm doing this too fast, but it adds all the minerals here. And then when you put it here, you are not only adding a mulch, also adding minerals into the surface. So in one season this will be edible for the plant. Here's a place, it's really close to the house, and we have different kind of cultivars that we can learn from, but also we included some animals. Now there are no more, but we have we had some ducks here to take care of the slugs and the snails. they go there to eat them. Actually we have to add some more because the fox decided that they didn't like them. But yeah, also we added here different kind of plants so we can learn from example this is Hippopairramnoides which is a shrub but you can see it's like four meters tall. It has a lot of C-vitamin. One of these fruits is about six orange fruits which is amazing. Also, we can invest in learning, like for example, from pau pau, which is a really old fruit tree. Pau pau is a kind of fruit that eats like a mix of mango and banana. And it prefers like acidic soils, but here it's quite good. And it's a tree that is older than the bees. So what does it mean? That it's pollinated because of flies. Their fruit smells really bad, like bad meat. And the flies came here and make like the cross-pillination because you need more than one variety. So you can have a good production. And also that's an amazing fruit that we can harvest here, but only can stand like 24 hours. So why is it not really well recognized in all the world? Because you cannot really make a lot of money from that because you need to harvest it fresh from the tree and just eat it. Yeah. Here close to the house we try to study a lot of the relations between the plants and it allows us to learn a lot. For example, we are using this kind of sage, which is a Roman sage, which can grow like more than one meter with big leaves and it can be chopped a lot to put it onto the ground, but also it attracts a lot of pollinators, so it's really interesting. And also we add this kind of bushes, but they are nitrogen fixing bushes. But they don't work with rhizobium, they work with franquia, which is another genera of bacteria that allows us to fix nitrogen, when you have less oxygen into the soil. Also, adding flowers like everybody loves that plant, or comfrey. Also, we have a lot of sambucus because they are fast-growing plants that we can chop and put it as a mulch. Also, we add perennial leeks everywhere because they help a lot with rosacea. plants like many apple trees or apricot you know and they move the pests away because of their flavor and it's amazing because also they reproduce really fast and you can get a lot of food just walking there and just picking. Yeah we harvest a lot like you only have to leave one and then you can just harvest as many as you want. Every day you can harvest many many of these. It's not like an amazing lick but it's a one that doesn't cost me anything. and especially if you are making sauces to sell you can add this lick instead of the bigger one and the bigger one you can sell it to the people and this is for making like really good sauces this next part is quite visual as well so i'll try to paint a picture for you we're

• Speaker #1

  standing in front of a structure that apparently dates from the second century it sort of looks like a pond that maybe two three people could fit in that's made of rock or concrete maybe And they use it to take baths in the summer when it's really hot. And it's also very useful for a lot of biodiversity to come and drink water. The very interesting thing is that water is being pumped up from this pond into a system with different layers. And on each of these layers are different plants so that they all filter the water in a different way. And then the water ends back into the pond and goes back on that loop. over and over and eventually the water becomes completely clean and pure.

• Speaker #0

  Water is important for the plants, for the animals and also for us, for human people. So we found this old construction, they told us it's from the second century and we just cleaned it because it was full of clay and a dead tree and we added these pieces of rock here to protect it, so no more dust or soil is going there and we have a closer... water cycle where the water goes to the first tank and it's being cleaned through the plants. We have like five water tanks and in each tank you can find a different kind of plant that creates any ecosystem process and clean the water so we can have bath times, especially on the summer. Because, you know, it's very hot here, it's very warm and we need to have at least a daily bath unit.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, okay.

• Speaker #0

  Also, these points are really interesting because you can see here that a lot of animals can come here to drink or to hunt or something. Because you can realize how many small animals or insects come here to drink. Also birds, you know, flying insects came here. And having water, clean water, also allows biodiversity to also be...

• Speaker #1

  yeah yeah

• Speaker #0

  able to drink this water.

• Speaker #1

  This next part is about how Sergi makes his own compost tea, and he uses that tea to spray it onto his trees and the leaves of his plants to feed them and to protect them from pests and disease.

• Speaker #0

  We used to, well, at least three kinds of microbiology because we use trichoderma fungi to help the trees to spread their roots and take more water. But then we have this. microbiology seed that is based on rice shelf with molasses and with part of microbiology from the forest and we use this to make compost also we add this on the autumn in the gardens so they help us with spreading the life and also today I'm going to use that for the fruit trees. It's a mix of organic cow's manure with ashes, with dashed rock, with many things, also molasses, and we spread this to the fruit trees so they can all have more microbiology and to be more able to... fight against the pest. It's all about adding microbiology on their leaves, on the trench, also onto the soil. So this really accelerates the composition of the organic matter into the soil and also helps the trees to be more healthy.

• Speaker #1

  Awesome. How did you come up with that recipe? How did you find out that this was the most efficient one for your trees?

• Speaker #0

  Well, the thing is that we have worked with Jairo Rastrepo for many years ago and we learned from him. And then we have tried this several times and we realized that the trees really get advantage of that. So we are really comfortable using that. I think it's a good point just to use at least three times during the spring. So yes, we're gonna do this now. Okay. Blas Vista, Rachel? Do you want to smell it? Ariadne can stand that. But it's mellasus. It's like a cake. You see? It's like this is... You know that man that I told you that he produces organic rice? Yeah. It's the shelf of the rice. You can get it for free. We're applying this kind of microbiology but also it's mixed with dashed rock and also ashes. And this is because when the The trees make the... the creation of their protein, like their leaves and the fruit, sometimes they are unbalanced. Why? Because usually these micro minerals, like I don't know, magnesium or zinc or this kind of copper, they are inside the clay. And when you till, you break the clay and this is available for the plants. But what happens when you stop tilling? That not always you have this kind of minerals available for them. So just putting it through the leaves, it allows you to... yeah to be them more healthy i i don't want to say like to fight against pest but it's because it will be a more balanced tree and it grows better with uh with less damages so using this is gonna help us this also we are using instead of pruning this young tree we use like this kind of wire, you know, with this kind of... yeah, of this, and you realize that... if i just let this outside this will grow like this and i want like the the branches to be open so now on a spring i just do this and i put here the wire and the tree is gonna grow uh wider and with less energy it's gonna put less energy here so we're gonna have less growth less growth about the leaf and the but more fruit and that's amazing because i realized that now there are a lot of lovely techniques especially in Spain regarding syntropic agriculture and this thing that I think that's amazing but I often see that there are a lot of producers who grow a lot of biomass and a lot of leaves and also wood but not fruit and I'm sorry but we are mainly consumers of the fruit. I don't want that the nature is the main consumer, so... it allows me just to grow more food when I do these tricky movements, just a few, just on that time of the year, you just move a little bit the wires, and you will have more fruit for the next year. So, because the fruit of the year is already done, but for the next year, the tree will see that this branch is going under 45 degrees, and it will create more food.

• Speaker #1

  So we're used to talking about microbiology in the soil, so it makes sense to incubate. microbiology in your sword because it will boost this whole microbial ecosystem that works in some symbiosis with the roots of your plants and all of that but not so much about the foliage like the microbiology microbes on the foliage how does how do they help your tree grow healthy well

• Speaker #0

  they they the the microbiology in their leaves is is totally essential it's like our body we have like 10 more cells from outside things than our own cells, that human cells. And the thing is that especially with the fungi, if there is enough microbiology here, they can help the plant to avoid fungi. And on these years, like this time that it's a rainy year with a lot of rain and a warm temperature during the day, you can have many fungi so using this allows you to avoid fungi because the microbiology will try to protect the leaf because they are eating one to the others you know it's like a chain of of fighting and life because it's all full of microbiology here

• Speaker #1

  Congratulations, my friend, you've made it to the very last section of this episode. And yeah, if you've made it this far and you enjoyed this episode and you enjoyed the Deep Seat podcast in general, don't hesitate to show me some love by clicking on the Deep Seat page and hitting the follow or subscribe button. You can also leave me a five star review that really, really helps. So thank you so much in advance. I really, really appreciate that. OK, for the very last part of this episode. we sat down inside with Sergi and we had a bit more of a deep personal conversation. It's really interesting and it's really beautiful. So stick around until the end and thank you again so much for listening and take care. What part of this lifestyle and of being a farmer do you love the most?

• Speaker #0

  I think that for me it's like a super high privilege, like having time to observe nature. For me it's a mind-blowing thing to have time to just to sit down and see what the sheep are eating, which is their behavior, how a seedling is growing and which is the shape and the movement of that plant, what happens when it has direct sun or no sun. I think that having time to do this is the thing that I really appreciate the most. Also my daily meat. My daily meal, sorry. It's like eating so good every day. I think I couldn't pay for that if I work in an office, you know, as a computer scientist, like working. I think I couldn't pay for that quality of food. And also it's something that it reminds me a lot about that healthy things are so important and also they're so... I don't know, like so easy to get. Like we spend a lot of time just watching movies, listening to music, like reading a lot of things or just scrolling instead of just growing a couple of lettuce and carrots and these things. Also, another thing that I really enjoy the most is like the ability of a person who's farming to imagine the future. Like having the vision, not to see what is now, it's what is going to be. And then you can find an abandoned place or really a tough region or something, and then you can imagine there, okay, which tree could help me? Which kind of grasses are we going to work? What kind of animal could live here better than... And imagine this also, I think that's a super ability that farmers have and that we should take care more about that, like putting the vision on the table. Yeah, yeah, daily.

• Speaker #1

  daily task yeah yeah it's that regenerative mindset also that must be amazing it feels like you have a place and you're constantly improving it yeah there's more biodiversity more ecological health you know you can you can just observe it and see it yeah and so knowing that you spend your time regenerating and improving life in your part of the world it must must feel quite amazing no it is

• Speaker #0

  Also, you know, the responsibility of taking care of your farm. Because, yeah, we have arrived here now and we don't know how much time are we going to spend on this land, but this land is not really ours. It's from the world, it's from the nature. So we have to take care and leave it at least better than we found it. And that's something that it connects me with something bigger, like the importance of being part. of nature and the things that you're seeing, like doing your best in the world. I believe that there's only one life here and I want that many things live because I've lived. And that's a difference because I remember just watching one time when a man says, through many years the ecological movement has been based on having less footprint on Earth, like having less damage. And for me it's, no, no, I don't want to have the less footprint. No, no, I want the biggest I can, but in a positive way. You know, there's always time to graft a new tree, to plant a seed, to put something there, a new life. And for me it's just an impressive thing that I don't know if there are any other occupations that could give you a similar feeling. I don't know. At least I don't know them.

• Speaker #1

  What's one really big mistake that you made somewhere along the way, where something you tried that didn't work out?

• Speaker #0

  Well, I think I've made many, many mistakes. But That's a little bit insane, but maybe for me one of my biggest mistakes is our kitchen's location. Because we decided to build it on the north face of the main building, and I really love to cook and to work with food. So I spent many hours there. And having the kitchen north-oriented, it doesn't allow you to have many direct sun, and also you don't see the people who's coming to your house. And I really enjoy that people come to our house and start to have a conversation while cooking with good light in a big space. And I think that's something behind the people who designs buildings or that they should put the food into the center of the designer. You know, now I also hear that there are some flats in London that are the ones that even they don't have any kitchen because you can buy everything already cooked. And for me, that's insane. We need to put like the life in the center. That's one of these. Other thought that comes to my mind is also understanding that these projects attracts a lot of people. and everyone is going to leave their footprint, but this life is also, it's like a long-term race. So it means that you have to really be in love with the things that you are doing. If you feel that farming is like eight or ten hours daily work, it's not going to work. This is your life and there's no difference between the hours related of working and the hours related to the cares of the people and yourself. Like, could be Sunday, Saturday, I don't know, any day, I have to manage the cattle, we need to prune a tree if something happen at night and there is one branch broken. So you have to be really involved because if you have the feeling that it's only a work, it's not gonna work. No, no, it's a lifestyle, totally, yeah. And I think that's a problem for some new generations who expect to work as a pharmacist only with a closed timetable, you know, and it's hard. You can have some schedule and hours, but also it depends a lot. We work really less during winter and we work more on spring. So also, people say, when are you starting work? Depending on the winter, I could start at 10 or at 11 in the morning because... Before it's all frozen and now in the summer at six in the morning we are already in the garden. Yeah, so yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And you are part of the EARA. Yeah. How has that experience been so far?

• Speaker #0

  Wow, I'm super excited. I have goosebumps now when you were asking about EARA. Because I feel quite alone doing these things, you know. Also it's hard to share but when you are doing this kind of agriculture, now yeah you can see many documentaries and many farmers around the world and on YouTube and Instagram and now it's a lot of people doing but 12 years ago I didn't find nobody around me and also I saw that there are many like famous farmers who's amazing but I need the feeling of being part of a community and sharing with people that have the same problems and the same solutions or they want to find the same solutions as we are doing. So it's not like the famous agriculture. It's people like us, like you and me, that we can have a coffee or a tea just talking about our problems. And I think it's so important to be part of something bigger. And also when you start talking to the other people and realize that They are having quite similar problems. It's the way that we can all join and ask for changes in a bigger scale. Because we all love our work, but we also need to invest in time to change things. I don't know if people really can imagine how hard it is to go against some non-natural rules. You know, there are some natural patterns which are not allowed. And it doesn't have any sense. Like we need to mix, to feel with other people, to start talking and then try to change things in a bigger scale.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. OK, so the two really key important points you mentioned, one is the sense of being part of a community, just knowing that you have all of these other farmers all around Europe who are facing similar challenges to yourself, being able to exchange ideas and experiences. That's a big part. And the other part is trying to lobby. for legislation changes. Yeah. Right? Yeah. If you could pick one or two key points in the laws that you would really change tomorrow and you think it would make the world a better place, your life better for sure, but like a better place, what would you pick?

• Speaker #0

  I think to let the people to be able easily to have animals integrated in their vegetables production. I think that there's not anything more powerful than animals mixing plants. Because plants don't work without animals and animals don't exist without plants. Even human beings, we don't exist with these things. So I think we must make this really affordable and easy for the people to add animals. Here, for example, when you ask for adding some animals into your farm you have to check the distance about at least two kilometers from other farms that have animals. But for me, it doesn't have any sense. Like, yeah, I know that there are some amount of animals that the farm can have, and we cannot, maybe in some points we cannot increase more than that because of sustainability or whatever. But every farm should have at least one kind of animal to help to manage the ecosystem. And I think this is one of the key points that I try, I realize that it's quite... quite difficult. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Amazing. Thank you so much.

• Speaker #0

  You're welcome.