After a long break, we are happy to be back with Brîndușa Bîrhala on her homestead in the west of Romania, where she has been busy growing and nurturing farm and family. Yet she remains as keen as ever to share agroecological experiences and opportunities. Letter by Brîndușa Bîrhala.

This is the story of how the journey into professionalizing my food production took an unexpected turn through motherhood and is coming back with possibilities for new peasants to use and experience together the fertile homestead we have managed to create in the 12 years since we settled in the pretty village of Stanciova, Romania.

I’ve been diligently building up knowledge and courage to be a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) producer, and finally in the spring of 2021 I took the plunge, with a pilot of 12 weekly shares for 34 weeks of the season. The eaters were eager and engaged, I was super motivated, it was going to be epic!

However the learning curve proved to be quite steep, as I was farming alone with ad hoc paid help, mostly for harvesting and delivering the veggies to the city of Timisoara.

A few weeks into the season, I had the revelation that the greenhouse infrastructure was actually insufficient for the planning made and all of the seedlings produced that year, so I borrowed family funds to set up a more professional 130 m2 greenhouse. Come June, it was full of fast-growing seedlings: the largest variety of tomatoes I had ever managed to produce. It was a monumental effort and pleasure, but soon, slumber set in.

Brîndușa wearing her new baby

Growing a little human

I was home alone that month, when I realized we were pregnant and that explains my increased tiredness and incapacity to stay long hours in the garden or in the greenhouse. CSA was cool, but all of a sudden the possibility of growing a little human being was even more fascinating – and also another level of tiring.

After the first term, autumn brought more energy, but I was not able to organize the plant succession in time to be able to fulfill the entire 34-week production plan, and had to inform my consumers that our season would be finishing a month early.

We were to give birth in early March. I thought: ”Great, that leaves time to start seeding right after.” But I was cautious about promising consumers another season.

Agroecological farmer in training

A luminous objective

Growing food for people while growing a little human in parallel – in my context of no family support – hasn’t been attainable so far. But it’s a luminous objective.

Once the baby arrived, I came to get used to tiredness, and fragmenting my time to farm. I valued it as my quality time.

As a baby, my kid was never the kind to wear while working. The fussiness turned extreme. She was not keen to sit on the ground without mommy for more than a few minutes at a time, and took her sweet time to start walking (18 months).

But once she tasted garden veggies, she was hooked. I managed to lure her into the greenhouse with sweetpeas. She started harvesting alone at two and a bit. We played hide and seek in trellised tomatoes. I planted a row of everbearing strawberries in the greenhouse for her to pick while I could tend to urgent work like pruning or harvesting.

Now that she is three, the greenhouse is one of the homestead highlights, where she nibbles on green onion leaves and eagerly waits for the sweetpeas to flower and give her their juicy pods.

To keep her playing independently longer, we invested in kid-sized garden tools, we made a sandbox, and together we planted a bulb flower patch. It’s starting to work. The little one stays busy by herself much longer as I make trays of soil blocks or wheelbarrow compost.

Now three, Brîndușa’s daughter is able to harvest alone

Collaborative food production

In the meantime, we managed to increase our living space: we turned a barn building project into a semi-residential one, and this year we moved! Just a few meters away from the little strawbale home we built, in what seems now like a past life.

This has made space for the potential of collaborative food production. The strawbale house became too small for the needs of our family, but is still in top shape for a person or a couple who might want to experience a rural lifestyle centered around growing food (and a little human).

We are eager to share our knowledge, experience and infrastructure with new peasants motivated to join forces here in Stanciova. If you think your dream matches ours, and you want to know more, just get in touch, time is precious!

The strawbale house – with potential for collaborative food production

Teaser photo credit: Feeding the chickens. Author supplied.