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Growing up in the Kaunas district, Edmundas and Aistė would occasionally look at the farm road, because, as they both say with a smile, they always knew they would live on the road.
“We are both foresters, we are people of nature and we have always said that we will go to the city to have fun and live somewhere in the village,” Aistė smiles.
PHOTO GALLERY. Happy vegetables grow on Aistė and Edmund’s farm
The stroke suffered led to searches
It took about three years to find the house. And the story is really unusual, because in 2014, suddenly Edmund, when he was 35 years old, had a stroke, which required rehabilitation.
“I had just arrived in Palanga, for rehabilitation, I came to the room, I took out the phone, I thought about what to do here while waiting for the doctor, so I began to see the advertisements,” the story began.
“He saw the advertisement, called, came at night, inspected and said: everything is here for us, because such a good aura, such a good feeling visited,” continued the interlocutor.
The stroke was one of the reasons why the search for a house became more intensive, and before that, there were considerations to build a small house on the grandparents’ land in the Kaunas district. However, in 2016, the couple had already opened the doors of their family home. True, until this spring they came here only on weekends, in rare cases more often, but they always wanted to grow fresh, high-quality vegetables.
“We like to eat good and delicious food, homegrown vegetables and only in the first year we grow too many, we try to share with friends because we did not have the conditions to maintain the surplus, so the idea was born to offer people baskets of vegetables and put the harvest of that week, ”said Leonaičiai, complementing each other.
Thus was born the “Happy Vegetable Farm”, whose name shot A. Leonaitiene in the head one night:
“We considered many options, then one night we thought that we are happy people living on a farm and happy people are growing happy vegetables.”
The vegetables are grown without chemicals.
And there is a lot of happiness for vegetables here: they grow without chemicals or fertilizers, here sustainability and ecology prevail.
“In many places, people are going back to the old varieties, eventually to old crafts and sustainable agriculture, not to just pour tons of fertilizer, not to spray the fields every week. What is in the soil is also reflected in the products grown. If the soil is completely depleted, it is likely that it will not grow whole vegetables, ”said E. Leonaitis.
As they say, they were not “green” when they began to develop economic activities, but Aistė smiles because he learned more from his mistakes. Here again, you made a few mistakes trying to grow oilseed pumpkins, but will be offering fresh pumpkin seed oil next year.
And now a variety of products grows on the 30-acre area, including not only traditional potatoes or carrots, which are well known to Lithuanians, but also more exotic plants, such as strawberry bulbs, which differ from Peruvians who they are seen on store shelves. .
“In the first year, the main and usual vegetables grew: potatoes, onions, winter garlic, a lot of tomatoes.
Spring, of course, begins with all vegetables: onion leaves, herbs, lettuce, then onions, winter garlic, leeks, carrots, beets, potatoes, zucchini, squash, squash, eggplant, chili peppers – names, cucumbers, cucumbers , p husbands and joked that she probably forgot something else.
Abandoned hybrid varieties
It is true that Aistė and Edmundas did not choose the easy way, but they decided to grow not the already popular and well-known hybrid varieties, but the real and ancient ones. This is one of the reasons that customers keep coming back, due to the good taste of the vegetables, and some say with a smile that it looks like the vegetables that are grown in Grandma’s garden.
“10-20 years ago, people took the easy road and started hybridization, new varieties to grow as many kilograms of a plant as possible, as quickly as possible and in the most profitable way possible. The problem here is not only in Lithuania, Europe, but also around the world.
We have never grown a single hybrid tomato, that is, growing tomatoes, cucumbers. All vegetables are varietal, with them it is really more difficult, especially with tomatoes, they are more capricious, but all this is redeemed with the flavor.
I once started browsing a website that sells old varieties. Those varieties have been collected from all over the world, from Japan and China to those long cultivated by North American Indians. We also grow the oldest surviving beet variety in the world, whose variety dates back at least a thousand years, ”said E. Leonaitis.
Here not only grow varieties of pure vegetables known for hundreds of years, but also a variety of colors: white, yellow, purple carrots, potatoes of various colors, various pumpkins.
Everyone is happy to accept
Spouses who rotate the “Happy Vegetable Farm” say their main goal is to help people consume more vegetables, so they offer vegetable baskets that give the harvest that week:
“Every week we write on our page the assortment of the basket we have. The old customers themselves write that they want vegetables, they ask what we have (smiling).
We are going to sell what we have, unless someone eats or doesn’t like something, we replace it with something else.
We try to help people consume and consume more vegetables, at least during the season, while there is a great selection of fresh vegetables. “
For those who live in Kaunas and Vilnius and ask for a basket, the goods are delivered, and others are free to visit the farm, for many it becomes entertainment or even a kind of education.
“The children are very interested in how to find a pumpkin under the potatoes under the straw or how the tomatoes grow. The same potatoes, carrots, often even an adult has not seen purple. Now, of course, everything is happening in supermarkets. Everyone knows orange carrots, but there are both white and yellow, blue and it is definitely not a kind of hybrid variety, they are old enough ”, said the interlocutor.
People can come here not only to see the farm, but also to stay in nature, because the whole area is surrounded by forest, and those who want to try agricultural work, to help the farm, but Aistė laughs that such cases almost do not. occur.
“We invite those who want to come a lot, but not many want to help, especially to work. But we are really waiting for everyone, they can come, surrounded by a wonderful nature, the forest, where you can simply walk, stay in nature, communicate ”, warmly invites Leonaičiai.
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