The Courage to Start Over: Lessons from Farm and Life

In 2020, we transformed our farming practices by implementing crop rotations of legumes, cereals, and hay. The goal was simple: increase and preserve soil fertility and produce better crops. When the first chickpeas and lentils started to sprout, we were excited. Our first harvest was modest, but we were hopeful. The products tasted amazing, and successfully growing new types of crops was already a huge step forward.

However, for the past five years, we have been constantly battling an increasingly dry climate, and even worse, an unprecedented invasion of wild boars. Their growing numbers and voracious appetite lead them to dig up seeds before they can even have a chance to sprout. So here we are, looking at our devastated field of chickpeas that we carefully planted less than a month ago (you can see it yourself in the picture above).

It's hard to accept that all our hard work will yield yet again a poor harvest, especially when thinking back to our initial optimism and good intentions when embarking on this adventure. What do we do now? We don't know yet. We've got some time to think about it before the next seeding season comes around, and we're already excited about some new experiments we want to run.

Sometimes the most valuable lesson in farming, as in life, is knowing when to let go and adapt – even if that means starting over.

[Related: Learn more about our crop rotation system here]