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Good morning and welcome to Natuurlijk Tomaat in Dongen. We are here at my shop, connected to our organic vegetable farm. We grow everything biologically, without pesticides and without artificial fertilizers. I would like to show you our company. We are in the shop—a beautiful shop. What are the best-selling products? Well, our own products, of course. We have peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce. We have everything in the store. And, of course, we also make our own products. Look, a delicious base sauce made from our tomatoes. Yes, look at these tomatoes—delicious. What is being sold at the wholesale level? We also deliver to Udāra, for example. That’s a large market for the whole of the Netherlands, which also supplies organic produce. We buy products from there as well. But we work a lot with all kinds of farm shops in the region and across the Netherlands. We collaborate a lot with other fellow growers, exchanging and selling our products. Very nice, thank you. And now we get the tour. Yes, I’ll show you everything. In addition to your work as a grower, running a whole company and a shop, you also have time for something delicious. You even have a cookbook. Yes indeed, I wrote a cookbook with all kinds of delicious recipes in it. It also tells something about our own company—what it looks like. It explains what kinds of tomatoes we have, and includes delicious recipes for how you can prepare everything. The employees are featured in it, so it's full of all kinds of delightful things. I also have different products here: tomato ketchup, chutney, jam, tomato sauce, tomatoes... all tomatoes. Fantastic. Very nice. Welcome to my greenhouse. Come take a look. So, you have been growers for three generations? Yes. And since 2000? We switched to organic in 2015. And this is the first part? Yes, we have a soil improvement area. These plants will make sure that the soil becomes healthier. On that side, we have the vegetable garden. There we grow all kinds of vegetables that we also sell in the store. It is very diverse. What are we going to say about the tea plantation now? That was the vegetable garden where everything is sold in the store. And now we come to the next surprise: this is our tea plantation. Yes, the first in the Netherlands—an organic tea plantation. If this plant is not in it, it may not be called tea. So, this plant is needed to produce tea in the Netherlands. In addition to the soil area, we also have tea plantations. We walk further up towards the warehouse where the production facility for the organic vegetables is located. That’s right. We also have all kinds of vegetables there. So now we are in the production warehouse. That’s right. Our company has three hectares of greenhouse. So we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, papayas, aubergines, point papayas, peppers, and all kinds of leafy vegetables in our greenhouse. Here we are in the papaya section. We have papayas in two colors: red and yellow. We do everything with biological controls. You can see these here—from these bags we hang in the plant. There's a small hole in it, so there is actually a cycle of six weeks in it, from baby to adult insect, that hangs in the plant. This protects it against all kinds of pests for six weeks. Peppers—see, we always wait until they have a nice color. They look so nice, fresh peppers, so we can make delicious food. Smells good. On this side, we have the cucumbers. The cucumber grows upwards, hanging from a rope, and we turn the plants every week so that we can also shift them, allowing us to grow a very long plant. What were the challenges in the beginning? Yes, indeed, we had quite a lot of diseases and pests. Our employees also had to learn how to manage this. So, pay attention: we have numbered all the rows. On the phone, they have a disease and pest app. There they take a picture of the insect. It also comes into the app. The biologist also sees it, and then he goes to see where the insect is and determines how many beneficial insects we have to introduce or not. That’s how we work together with the biologist. The ducks that walk around here eat the slugs, because we have trouble with that as well. And of course, there is also more: the food forest. Yes, we can walk there for a while. Yes, that is still four and a half hectares of food forest. Hardworking people, perseverance. Yes, my husband started here in the business with his father in 1988. In 1996, we got married and started working here together. At that time, it was only tomatoes—a common crop, kilos, mass production indeed. But because it was no longer profitable, a lot of product was thrown away. Overproduction, so to speak. So then we chose the niche market. And this is a niche market. So we actually have all kinds of products that we sell and that we also grow now. It gives a lot more challenge. There is really a lot more passion in it. Yes, and it’s really good and tastier. That’s really the path we’ve taken. Those hard, long days? Yes, well, first we also worked long days. Only then, we didn’t earn anything with it. We had nothing to show for it. But now it’s mainly that we have a good feeling about it, too. So that is nice. Yes, it’s just much nicer. Before, it was just plastic. Everything was very sterile, very clean. And now we just have it; it just grows in the ground. We live with nature. We are much more sustainable. Nature can do a lot. So, if a plant is sick, then it can make itself better. Nature makes it better because we do everything naturally. Nature also comes in. You have... flies everywhere, birds. It is really outside, yes, outside. Then we got the food forest that we designed this year, 2021. It is still very small, but it develops very quickly. Very big, yes, so very nice. Yes, no, I don’t feel that it's work anymore. It’s just much nicer because you’re doing something good. We have a good feeling about it. It’s not that other people don’t do it well, but for us, this feels very nice. So that’s why it is much more important than money: a good feeling, nice to be busy with your passion, so to speak. It’s very nice. A healthy entrepreneur. Yes, yes. All the water that falls on the roof of our greenhouse—on the three hectares of glass—is all caught in this large tank. Then we have a pipeline leading to the plants so that all the plants can get water from here. So we don’t need any other water than rainwater. All our plants are fed with rainwater, yes. And further on, we see the food forest. Yes, now we go to the food forest. Now, in the food forest. This is a four-and-a-half-hectare food forest with all kinds of fruit-bearing trees, plants, and shrubs. The first part, this part here, is all a vegetable garden. There are all kinds of vegetables planted in. So from the summer, this is completely filled with all kinds of fine vegetables that we can also sell in the store. This is the permaculture tree garden. There are all kinds of apples, pears, cherries, apricots, beets—all kinds of fruit trees, planted through each other at a nice distance from each other so that they cannot make each other sick. That is a piece of permaculture that comes with it. But there are also nitrogen-fixing plants. They make sure that there is enough nutrition in the ground to make the trees stronger and that there is enough food, so to speak. Then, all the way back, we have the nut garden. There are ten different kinds of nuts, because we know that we have to eat as little meat as possible. Nuts are a very good meat substitute, and we hope to be able to serve people with them. It will take ten years before we can harvest nuts. So, it is planting the tree now, and in ten years, the first harvest. The future. That is for the future, so that will take a while. Well, on this side we have a nice pond, a cozy path to walk around, and a bee hotel where the wild bees can also spend the night. Here? Yes, that’s here. Here? Yes, okay. We want to thank you very much for this very nice tour. A beautiful place where we are, with a bee hotel and actually a place for the future of the world. Thank you very much. It is our paradise on earth. We are very happy here, and we are glad that we made it possible—that we got this for each other, so we enjoy every day here. You can see that. You can taste that. Nice food, nice environment. With a bee hotel, insects, beautiful chickens (the chickens in the background), flowers... such a small piece of land, so much. Yes, very much.