Les Jardins de Macabou in Le Vauclin: an organic farm producing fruits, vegetables, honey, herbal teas, eggs, raising animals, and offering a guest dining experience.
Tommaso Sposito and Céline Al Zoubi chose to settle on the arid lands of Grand Macabou in Le Vauclin to launch a project promoting agricultural self-sufficiency and encourage people to grow their own food. «Simen Dimen» patiently tries to show the way to self-sufficiency. They have created an orchard with a thousand trees, comprising fifty varieties of fruit trees adapted to arid conditions. It is beneath this orchard that they plant their vegetable crops: giromons, camaniocs, legumes, and cucurbits, whose foliage, buried after harvest, will serve as organic matter for the orchard and future plantings. Tommaso talks about green manure, natural interactions, and the soil: «Growing vegetables in the orchard is what allows us to fertilize the soil with what are called green manures. For example, the roots of green beans are full of fungi that enrich the soil, and tilling legumes into the soil provides nitrogen, among other things.».
Their goal is to show that anyone, on any kind of land, can grow the staples of their diet and process what nature provides. To that end, they founded the «Simen Dimen» association and offer introductory workshops, as well as—more recently—a very popular guest dining experience featuring exclusively their own processed products.
Nathalie Laulé
