Karine, seed multiplier in Creuse

As you wind your way through the mossy forests and massive stone houses with slate roofs of south-east Creuse, you'll be lucky enough to discover, at the end of a path overlooking grazing fields, a small felt yurt built with local materials. This is where Karine decided to settle, buying one of her family's plots of land at an altitude of 800m to create her garden. The 9,000m2 garden is a succession of shades of green and flowery colors; squash and zucchini lined with marigolds and cosmos, "Edamame" soybeans hidden beneath a jungle of beans, peas and poppies stealing the limelight and tomatoes by the thousands, well sheltered in four greenhouses.

The daughter of livestock farmers, Karine has been steeped in the story of the sacrifices involved in farming from an early age, yet she has always kept the idea of taking over the farm in mind. After taking a STAE (Sciences et Technologies de l'Agronomie et de l'Environnement) baccalaureate, Karine was keen to raise public and professional awareness of environmentally-friendly practices, and decided to take a BTS in Nature Management and Protection, with a specialization in Animation. But the idea of taking a direct part in preserving biodiversity then led her down a different road for seven years, to market garden production and free, reproducible seeds.

Her first introduction was with market gardener Lionel Soulier in Lapleau, Corrèze, who has remained her benchmark for soil and crop management, and at GAEC Champs Libres with Jean-Michel Peulier, a producer for Kokopelli. She then worked with Catherine Persuy and Maurice Picco, President of Nature et Progrès in the Pyrénées Orientales, where she tested a small seed production operation, and at the GAEC maraîcher Les Jardins du Temple near Voiron in Isère. "I returned to my native village in 2015, and was lucky enough to be able to buy a piece of farmland that belonged to my mother, who was a chemical veteran.served from chemicals, on rich sandy soil, regularly watered thanks to the borehole and protected by a mixture of manure and local sawdust. "

This welcoming soil, typical of this corner of Creuse, is rarely worked at this altitude, due to the climate. "Fortunately", since the installation of field crops in 2016, the climate has mellowed and the seasons are getting longer, enabling the majority of seeds to reach maturity before frost. To ensure perfect harvest management during early winters, the large barn that currently houses the tractors, the tarare and the electric motteuse is being refurbished and will soon house a heated room to ensure optimum ripening of the fruit before seed extraction. There will also be an office, a drying room, a kitchen for extraction and a cold room for which she is already thinking about autonomous operation.

She has already succeeded in creating triangular attachments for the tractor and a tool carrier with lifting blade, with the help of Clément, a friend who has come to live in Creuse to support her throughout the launch period. The design techniques were passed on to her by the self-build cooperative L'Atelier Paysan in Rhône Alpes, which designs and builds machinery and buildings adapted to a peasant agro-ecology. She has often thought about self-sufficiency with her best friend Anne-Sophie Pellet, whom she met at Les Jardins du Temple, and who has helped her from the start. "Anne-Soupe" will be working on the plot above the cultivated beds to test "permaculture" management techniques such as making our own potting soil, purins and designing soups with the vegetables from which the seed has been Karine explains, as we taste the delicious Early Siberian gazpacho fresh from her latest Christmas present, a tomato press which, in a matter of seconds, provides seeds ready to macerate and a lovely coulis to make on market days. "I'm hoping to save time for myself and, why not, for starting up awareness-raising projects. "For the past eight years, some twenty journeymen from the REPAS network (Réseau d'Echanges et de Pratiques Alternatives et Solidaires ) have been coming to work on large-scale projects for a week in November. Since last year, they have been discovering the joys of discussions and nights of dancing to the sound of sieves and Karine's accordion in Nénette's house, between the mountains of crates waiting to be sorted.

"I like to make people want to do their own gardening, their own seeds... It's also sometimes a whole lot of explaining, for which I'd need teaching aids and documents on the farm, or even at the market, where my courgettes are sold.even at the market, where my zucchinis are sometimes shunned because they arrive a month after the hybrids, for the simple reason that they respect the seasons and take the time to gorge themselves with flavour. I really think it's important not to go against nature. It may sound crazy to the local people with whom I took the Certiphyto exam for the possible use of pest control products in AB, but last year, when I saw that I was going to have to use a new pest control product, I decided to go for it.But last year, when I saw that my beans were the delight of an army of aphids, I let them feast rather than spraying gallons and gallons. "

Crouching between the "Moonshine" and "Original" ocas, two new tubers in place since this year, Karine observes this life growing before her eyes and smiles: "By carrying the vegetable from A to Z, I live to the rhythms of nature. I'm discovering all the specificities of each variety, and I'm delighted because I'm also in this business out of curiosity," she laughs. What's more, I'm going to reduce the market gardening part of my business, which currently accounts for almost half, and concentrate on seeds. "Not far from her, the big dogs Chaussette and Iris are still cheering her on, and sometimes one of the two white cats drops by to check for rodents. Nénette has come to harvest the first peas, which she will then sort. The whole team watches over the varieties in the Kokopelli catalog, come rain or shine.

Video: Meet Karine!