Here at the Freedom Farm Permaculture Homestead in Northern Spain we have 100 olive trees and 100 almond trees. The olives and the almonds that we produce are 100% organic but even better than that, they’re 100% SUSTAINABLE! What does that mean? Well, firstly it means that we do not irrigate our farm using water stolen from natural sources like rivers and lakes. Secondly, we do not plough up the ground, we chop and drop. This helps to enrich the soil, it’s great for biodiversity and the mulch helps keep moisture in the ground. Lastly, but not least, we are making our own fertilizer from human poop which we turn into compost using the Humanure method. Every year at the end of summer we go out with our nets and long sticks to beat the almonds off the trees. We’re doing as much as possible by hand to reduce our reliance on gasoline. In this video I show you how we harvest the almonds without machines and how we process them by hand.
