Discover fresh and local with a twist: Bogota farms are getting back to basics

by Bruce

How do you find the freshest produce in Colombia?  Google didn’t even know.  So we took a trip to one of our favorite restaurants and asked the chef where he got his veggies from.  Luckily for us the owner Benjamin of La Bodega Abasto hadn’t yet left for the holidays. Even luckier, one of his favorite suppliers was scheduled to drop by for lunch that same day. He told us “Just hang out and I’ll introduce you.  She’s a goood friend doing some amazing things.”  Shortly thereafter, she did arrive.  That friend was Constanza Gonzalez Correa of 4 Vientos farm.  Things couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.  She was at once, polite and wonderful.  She smiled the entire time and I felt at ease as I gave my descrīption of how we were investigating food and local cuisine.  She appeared more excited than we were and told us she’d love to have us over the following day for a tour of her huerta with lunch to follow.

4 Vientos lies an hour outside of Bogota between the towns of Tenjo and Tabio.  Both quaint and charming and surrounded by lush hillsides.  Its perfect farmland complemented by an equally favorable climate with the exception of this season’s flooding due to La Niña.  4 Vientos is not an average farm.  Its not merely an organic farm.  What Constanza has cultivated over the last 16 years is a staggeringly robust garden, unique in most regards i.e. (layout & design) based on the notion of allelopathy.  It was hard enough pronouncing this word in Spanish much less deciphering the English equivalent.  It turns out the word in English is essentially the same except its spelled with two ‘l’s instead of one.  I’d just never heard of it.

Allelopathy is the notion that plants can have beneficial or harmful effects on one another.  Many vegetables for example, thrive in the presence of certain flowers and herbs.  Conversely, planting certain flowers suppresses the growth of many weeds. Certain other plants act as natural pesticides and creative a favorable environment.  While the science behind allellopathy can get quite involved, Constanza stressed the simplicity of the system.  Her garden was in fact the result of years of constant experimentation i.e. pairing herbs with certain veggies, devising natural ‘barriers’ comprised of bamboo and existing fauna, even planting artichokes along the perimeters of her walking paths to encourage certain herbs. As she puts it “We aren’t inventing anything new.  We’re just observing and paying closer attention.  This equilibrium already exists in nature.”

Fascinating to say the least.  To top things off, Constanza gathered fresh veggies from the garden and we whipped up a hearty salad.  Harry even got a chance to improvise a tasty citrus vinagrette and a refreshing fruit salad.  All in all, an unforgettable day.  I can’t wait to go back.

Besides supplying some of the best produce in the area, Constanza also conducts workshops to educate other farmers.  Sad to say that Colombia’s agricultural production has seen a decline since 2000.  Inadequate government funding coupled with outdated machinery have only exacerbated the situation. For the small farmer trying to make a living, its worse, because even though more than 75 percent of farms are owned by individual farmers, more than 60 percent are too small to support a living.  But therein lies the beauty of the allelopathic method.  Dependence on technology and fertilizers and pesticides is virtually eliminated, the soil – less stressed.  The word is spreading and the results are quite evident. I can only share Constanza’s hope that this trend catches on.  I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.

To learn more about allelopathy, here’s a great article.

For a great site with links to organic gardening blogs click here.

For more info on Colombia’s argiculture click here.

To contact 4Vientos, you can send an email to Constanza.