The innovation journey

Ms. Hudská is the founder of the community garden. She originally operated an organic farm on a small piece of the Bohemian Paradise in the Jizera river valley, ensuring a balanced ratio of fields, meadows and pastures. She grew vegetables and fruit along with breeding goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, rabbits and keeping bees. The farm was shut down due to drought.

After the farm closure, Ms. Hudská founded the Zázemí Association. This operates under the “Community Supported Agriculture”. The project includes a community garden, community chicken farming, planting high-stemmed fruit trees, composting services, and an open forest. Community life is an integral part of these activities.

The association farms on 16 ha of forest and 1 ha of orchards. Its members plant trees on both public and private land. The community garden serves to grow vegetables for its own members and to develop community life. Ms. Hudská is the national coordinator of community chicken farming and her task is to expand and share knowledge about this type of work. The work involves 5 female workers and around 300 occasional helpers. Three families with disabled children also work in the community. In one of the housing estates of the small town of Turnov, the community members have organized three composters that process organic waste. They plan to expand this activity to schools and gradually to the regional metropolis of Liberec. They also organize lectures and workshops for the public, and record podcasts.

They are supported by the Liberec Region. They cooperate with associations, especially with volunteer fire brigades, but also with ecologically focused NGOs: the Center for Ecological Education in Sedmihorky and the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Cooperation with municipalities is rather sporadic as well as with most farmers, who tend to not support such environmentally sustainable activities in the countryside.