ESC: Join the Family organic farm! - the opportunity for the land

Hospodářství pod Strážným vrchem (www.podstraznym.cz) is a family-run organic farm est. in 2008. We mange 6 hectares of partly forested pastures in highland, having 20 goats and 2 cows for milking, plus some hans, ducks and one pulling horse. We have a cheesery and make cheese for sale on farmer's markets, we grow fruit and vegetable, either for sale and for ourselves. Our farm lays in the historical village Merboltice (around 200 citiziens, set in cca 1300 a.d.), nearby Děčín (25kms far). It is situated in the middle of Natural area České Středohoří. The settlement itself is 250yrs old mainly log beam house, which used to belong to the major of the village and it is (including the barns etc.) a cultural monument. All of our goals and wishes could be covered within two main parts, still going together.That is: 1)To create and run a self-sufficient permaculture farm with the great respect to the history and the traditions of the place and spread the ideas of sustainable living and carefull maintaining of the land. The tradition of small farms in our country was broken by communists and now most of the land is badly treated by the huge owners. We want to show people the difference and tell them about other aspects of those two different ways of agriculture (such as agrochemistery and its impact on the ekosystem and eko diversibility, living conditions of the animmals, concretion of the ground etc.). In that way we do programmes for the school excursions (they can, through the game, participate the whole process from the milking, to the cheese, learn the "way of grain", cook farm product at the open fire etc. Through the games we also let them feel the "daily history of the place" . We cooperate with boyscout groups and students of agriculture or history. It is also our enthusiasm for the history of the place, which leads us to fix the settlement using the traditional materials and methods (we have made the workshops for making clay wallcover and for beam cutting) As mentioned above, the target groups for these activities are young students, scouts and children in general and also the adults, who are interested in what they eat and how it influences the living conditions. We also do some talks and disscussions about the topic in the district towns (regulary at Litoměřice on the event "The Everybody's Garden", which is the meeting of local producers and public). 2) To support the cultural and social life of the village and surroundings, as this has been deeply demaged by the postwar and communistic periods, which included the complete relocation of the German inhabitants (that happened in the whole borderland - Sudetenland). At our farm we run annual public festival "Short movie in the long village" (for 15 yrs already), the theatre evenig "The Goat takes off" at the end of the pasture season (also for 15yrs) and we organize Child's Day every year. We make exhibitions, workshops etc. As there were more young couples who moved from the city over to our village and also a lot of nice people already living in here, we helped to set a non-profit. organization "Neighbours group of Merboltice" (www.spolekmerboltice.cz). It consists of people of all different age, professions and live experiences, and it is focused on traditional, cultural and social activities (such as fixing the demaged crossmonuments in the village, setting new fruit trees avenues, organisation of concerts, voluntery work, creating of marked historical track etc.) and now we provide a hinterland for meetings of the group members. The Neighbours group NGO has been awarded with the first prize of the National Historical Monument Institute (NPÚ) for "Keeping and widespreading of the historical values". These activities are targeted to the local community, basicaly the village inhabitants/weekend house owners and their friends, but there is more and more people from the nearby villages or towns, who keep on visiting them regulary. The activities are based on many and many voluntary hours of a lot of people and we all consantly teach ourselves how to manage new or greater tasks. The variety of the activites is really wide, the same with the presented musical, movie or theatre styles, and therefore it is allways not just about the programme itself, but also about the reciprocial respect and tolerance among the people of different age and life experiences. We think, this is the most important element of all of those meetings. The amount of regular activities differs to the part of the year. The most comes with the season from spring to autumn and that is also the assumed volunteering period (March-November). Daily it is feeding the animmals and milking (plus cheese making every second day), but meanwhile there is a lot of time to do many different activities.