Who´s growing your food?

Hey and welcome to our very first blog post from the farm.

In this platform we hope to keep you our followers informed on what’s happening on the farm, different techniques and experiments we are playing with and any other bits and pieces we find interesting. After a extremally busy year this year we finally like we have the time to keep the updates coming on a regular basis.

To start we would like to introduce ourselves and give you a little more of an idea of who we are.

So lets get started.

William Perch-Nielsen. (Farm owner)

William was born and raised on Klippingegård and purchased the family farm from his father in 1993 at the tender age of 23.

Previously the farm had grown onions, potatoes and strawberries and upon taking over William continued in this line of growing. On to of that he also produced wheat, barley and grass seed crop rotation. Shortly after he expanded the strawberry fields, ventured into asparagus and even opened up the small farm shop that is still on the serving the local community today.

After a meeting with a neighboring farmer in 1999 gave him the opportunity to hand off the Barley, Wheat and seed production he decided to focus solely on vegetable production. This reduction in size enabled him to concentrate on growing a much more diverse variety of kale, cabbages, salads , Sweet corn and many other crops that keep the farm shop full year round.

Another big focus of Williams throughout the years has been to reduce the pressure that is put on the land through farming. He has focused on adding more wild areas to the farm and in doing so created a more biodiverse space for all those who live on the farm. this took shape in hedge rows being planted planted to make more micro climates on the farm, Bees for a honey production found a home in the forest and the increasing number of areas planted cover crops became home to a variety of Insects, birds and other wild life.

With his many years experience and knowledge that the soil here at Stevns is great for vegetables, William has begun a journey into The soil food web. With the aim to further understand what really makes the soil on the farm here grow such amazing vegetables and how he can sustain and improve its quality into the future.

Albina (Head Gardner)

Originally coming from Transylvania in Romania, Albina came to Denmark initially to harvest fruit on Fyn for a season or two. Needing a change in career from being a robotic technician in larger companies to the fresh open air of farming. That was until a family member brought her up to Klippingegård in 2011 and after working one season she was officially offered a place to live with her family on farm and help William run the farm.

Day to day Albina manages the production and harvesting of vegetables year round while also maintaining the farm shop where quality is always her top priority.

In the season she is the head of the strawberry team and is the reason the strawberries are always in the best possible condition when the come in from the field.

Oh and no body harvests as fast as Albina.

Scott ( Farmer/chef and content creator)

And a little about myself, Coming from Australia and originally training as a chef before moving to Denmark in 2011. I had wanted to see and experience the Scandinavian kitchen, which led to me working in renowned kitchens such as A.O.C, Amass and Restaurant Relae.

Along the way discovering a passion for sustainability and desire to get closer to where the food we worked with came from, something that was a core focus of the latter two restaurants. Finally after many years in Copenhagen I found myself moving to Stevns with my wife Fanny to work in a small bnb called The Norrmans with the main desire being to grow vegetables and highlight the best producers I could find.

This is where Klippingegård and William entered the picture and after two years working together during 2020/21 (and a lot of vegetable talk) it was time for a change, and so after 17 years cooking the farming adventure began.

Day to day on the farm you can find me working with the small plants and experimenting with new types of vegetable. Also always trying to bring the farm closer to the chefs and private customers we work with through our different social media and content platforms.

Well that’s a little bit about us and we hope that next time we meet at the farm shop, a market or even through a email you might just feel a little bit more connected to where your food is coming from. We are always striving to produce the best vegetables we can with the utmost respect to the land on which we farm.

Thankyou for reading and we look forward to sharing more of our thoughts with you here in the future.

Scott, William and Albina