Hi, I am Uwe Wencker, 35 years old. I live on our farm with my wife Stefanie and our 2 year old triplets. Since my childhood, I have been firmly rooted in agriculture. I grew up on the farm with my two sisters and, as soon as we could walk, we worked on everything with our parents. We could spend the entire day outdoors in nature and had a huge adventure playground on the farm. It is so nice to see that our three children can have exactly the same experience on the farm today! Together with our Bernese racing dog Paula they explore the farm every day. After finishing school, I initially completed an apprenticeship as a bank clerk. I thought it was sensible for me to also be familiar with the commercial side of things before naively entering the family business. OK then, I knew a little bit about numbers. But I still lacked expertise on plants, nature and cultivation. So I studied Horticultural Production at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. After graduating, I wanted to understand marketing in practice, not just the theory, and experience it first hand. So in 2011 I completed a long internship with our current marketing agent Frutania in the Ahr Valley. There I got to know the exact processes of marketing as well as the various processes of quality management. In 2019, I studied for a fruit trader qualification at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 2012, I felt prepared to join the company and have been running the farm together with my father Josef ever since. While my father is mainly responsible for marketing, I can be found in the fields and in the production hall (labelling, scheduling, etc.). Together, we try every year to improve our company, to learn from past experience and to implement new ideas. As the environment and nature are very important to us, it was in retrospect one of my most important and best decisions to convert our entire farm to organic crop production in 2018. I had been thinking about the switch for a long time. Growing up and having my own family showed me the importance of a healthy environment and sustainable management. And in the end, I was able to convince my father of this! As a family, we are fortunate enough to eat all varieties of fresh, high-quality blueberries every day during the summer. We also want to make this possible for other people! Therefore, we would like to send berries to YOU via CrowdFarming.

Our family business can be found in Voltlage, a village where hares and hedgehogs sleep well. Together with my father, I have been managing our asparagus and blueberry fields since 2012. We have also been a partner of the Frutania Group for a long time, which has always supported our development. My grandfather built up the business and planted cauliflower and kohlrabi. About 40 years ago, my father started looking at asparagus and blueberries and slowly started rolling them out. So I grew up right next to berries and asparagus. In 2018, I convinced my father to go organic. In the meantime, our triplets are shaking up the business and are so pleased they can nibble on blueberries direct from the bush in summer! In these moments, I realise how important and natural organic crop production is: freshly picked from the shrub into a toddler's mouth - something you can do with no hesitation on an organic farm. But there's not only the three of them on the farm, my wife Steffi and my aunt are also involved. Our Bioland family business is in the district of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, just a few kilometres from the state border with North Rhine-Westphalia. Here, there are forests to explore, meadows to play football and lots of animals to watch. And what happens in the blueberry fields? Most of our blueberry bushes grow on nearby moorland, which we were fortunate enough to lease. Here, they find peat, their favourite soil, and thrive particularly well. They are therefore already quite well supplied nutritionally, but they are still thirsty in warm weather. We water our blueberries, if necessary, using drip irrigation. The water comes from our well and the amount of water drawn is monitored by the local authority. The plants get their water as needed via hoses that lie directly on the plant on the ground. Therefore, the fruit itself does not come into contact with the water. This irrigation method is therefore the gentlest, both for the plant and for the environment, since the amount of water required is very small. We must remove weeds by hand because, as an organic farm, we don't spray them. Organic farming preserves local biodiversity and avoids the introduction of synthetic toxins into the environment. We want as many wild animals as possible to feel comfortable with us so we have set up insect hotels, installed perches for birds and planted flower strips. Some bee colonies live on the edge of our blueberry crop. These help us to pollinate our fruit and the bees enjoy a wonderful, natural habitat. Renewable energies are an important issue if you want to prepare for the future: We have a photovoltaic system on our production hall, so that we can cover at least part of our electricity needs ourselves. We produce almost no waste, as only ripe fruit and vegetables are harvested and are therefore hardly ever sorted. The little we reject is composted. Direct marketing is very important to us, which is why we employ 12 permanent employees throughout the year, plus six to seven other employees in the high season, who look after our farm shop and market stalls in the area. Asparagus and blueberries are very labour-intensive crops. You won't get very far with just a tractor, like in a cereal field. Asparagus and blueberries require a lot of manual work. That is why we are glad that we can count on the help of our seasonal workers. Many of them return every year and, in some cases, several generations have been working with us. They live with us on the farm, and a nearby pub provides us with a warm meal every lunchtime. After all, most of our workers leave their homes in Poland or Romania for several weeks, which is why we attach great importance to making everyone feel comfortable. Bicycles are available for short country rides or visits to the local village. At least once in the season we all barbecue together and when it is particularly hot, there's always ice cream! 😊