Per Pressure
How one man proved that biodynamics – and a new direction in life – can pay off
By James Aufenast
I call Per but he doesn’t pick up.
“Give me five minutes” – he drops via a WhatsApp message.
Ten minutes later and after a few rings we’re connected. He’s driving to a meeting, his phone on loudspeaker.
“It’s crunch time, We’re sowing and transplanting, but also harvesting and lambing. Plus my wife is about to give birth to our third child. I have someone arriving on Easter Sunday to help but next year we’ll start them on the 1st. It’s our fourth year here, and finally I’ve learnt my lesson!”
There are local shops and restaurants, plus wholesalers all waiting for his produce. Per Svensk’s farm is on the island of Gotland, 200 km from the Swedish mainland. It covers 220 hectares, most of it exposed bedrock and marshland but with 41 ha given over to arable and permanent grassland and 30 ha of silvopasture. He’s also carved out a quarter of a hectare of market garden, with two polytunnels at 300 m2 each and 64 beds at 70 cm x 10 m. The farm is called ‘Tibblesgården’ – which translates as ‘Table Farm’ or a farm for the table.
Per isn’t alone. His wife Saskia also farms full time and livestock expert Matt looks after the sheep. Nonetheless, he can “feel the stress rising” when he contemplates the season ahead.
Finding a new way in farming
Per comes from a family of artists and sculptors and focused on ceramics at school in Sweden. But in 2011 he moved to the UK to try something different, landing restaurant jobs – until he realised that he actually wanted to become a farmer. “So I started researching courses. I saw one for market gardening in Sweden that looked promising.” However, Saskia was studying herbal medicine, and had come across Rudolf Steiner in her research. “She told me he seemed very switched on and open-minded – and he worked with agriculture.
“I had an understanding of basic ecology and the poor taste of most conventional food, but I hadn’t heard of biodynamics. I liked the fact that it was the first certified form of farming. We’ve lost a lot of intelligence in the past 100 years.”
Next Per found our ‘Work-based Learning’ course and knew it was right for him. I loved the amount of practical experience on offer. “Studying full-time with a bit of experimentation in one planting bed is not my thing.”
“Everything then moved very quickly. I was going to Plaw Hatch Farm for the two-year placement but their barn had just burned down. So I visited Tablehurst nearby, had a look around and we immediately agreed I could work there instead.”
“I like the fact that biodynamics was the first form of farming. We’ve lost a lot of intelligence in the past 100 years”
That was spring 2018. Per got married in August and then two months later moved into the farm in East Sussex. “Another crazy time! I was living on the farm for five days a week, then heading back to London every Friday. But a whole world had opened up for me.”
After a year, Per moved to Waltham Place Farm, a 220 acre operation in Berkshire because he was keen to learn about animals. “I used to be a vegetarian but working in agriculture changed my mind. You can’t work biodynamically without livestock.”
A new life in an old landscape
Then he found a farm for sale in Sweden. It had a house and a smaller property next door. Within weeks of starting at Tablehurst he’d struck up a friendship with Matt Lister, a South African who was assigned to the animals there. “So we offered him the other house for free along with a small salary and no bills.” They all moved over in October 2021, accompanied by a 10-month-old boy, to start a new life.
Tibblesgården is based in the north of the island, “located amongst the most ancient geology. The rock hasn’t been scraped by the glaciers. It’s thin soil straight onto limestone.” In this environment ‘skogsbete’, the local word for silvopasture, is the best approach. It’s been traditional practice on Gotland for over 1,000 years and allows the sheep to wander between trees and shrubs in a loose woodland with some open pasture areas. The sheep are Gute, a breed native to Gotland.
“We’re following a cultural blueprint,” says Per. “But it’s not easy. The land has been mismanaged for the past 60 years. They put in arable fields and horses and just destroyed everything” Luckily, although the conversion is challenging, he’s being helped in the process by EU grants. “We ride their system where it overlaps with ours.”
In other parts the topsoil is almost non-existent, with succulent herbs such as creeping thyme, as well as wildflowers and low-growing pine trees. This is known as ‘alvarbete’ – a place for rewilding where “biodiversity is booming”, says Per. Grants aren’t so forthcoming for this type of approach. “We want to make this a viable enterprise. At the moment the maths don’t add up, but we want to change that.”
“Ram horns are controversial, but Steiner did refer to domestic animals, so we figured he would be ok with it”
Per is rebuilding the landscape through biodynamics as well as local ways. He stirs BD500 and 501 into vortexes in old wooden barrels on site but doesn’t make them from scratch – the preparations themselves are sent from the Swedish Biodynamic Association. He plans to start using the plentiful oak, dandelions and yarrow that’s available on Gotland, however for properly homemade concoctions. Only nettle is lacking from the landscape, “which is probably strange for you to imagine in the UK!” The horns for #500 will come from his rams rather than cows. “It’s a little controversial, but Steiner did refer to domestic animals, so we figured he would be ok with it. And the horns are pretty huge.” The animals will have to be slaughtered onsite to obtain the horns as Swedish regulations don’t permit the abattoir to hand them over once the animal has been killed.
A controversial approach
Even more controversial, however, is Per’s adoption of a growing method that is currently highly fashionable, but shunned by many growers and with a degree of uncertainty about whether it fits in with the biodynamic approach. “Yes, we’re no dig,” he admits.
David Junghans, farm manager at Tablehurst at the time, pointed Per in the direction of Richard Perkins, the British grower who’s also based in Sweden. He’s made a name for himself through visually striking Instagram videos with stripes of black soil and light-coloured wood chip paths – indicating the no-dig approach. It’s a visual contrast that sticks in the mind. Per has the same patterns at Tibblesgården too and cites Charles Dowding, the Somerset-based grower, as another factor in his approach. “Charles has one of the best voices, very relaxed, very open. My pet peeve in agriculture, and particularly horticulture is that you have a lot of guys who say: ‘this is the way you do it and it’s only this way’. Nothing is set in stone. I like that Charles has come to it with a blank slate rather than sticking to all the old techniques.”
Next Per wants to incorporate a mobile chicken coop on the farm, which he admits is also very Richard Perkins. “But we’ll be using old breeds rather than hybrids. Richard wants to ride the current system. We just after a nice farm!”
Then there’s a ready supply of compost required as part of the no-dig approach. This is proving difficult as they’re surrounded by fir trees, which is not ideal for wood chip. “I might give the garden a year off so we can catch up. But we want to prove you can do no-till on a large scale. Larger wood pieces get into the planting beds, but the seeds seem able to navigate them. It doesn’t harm growing. Seeds are not like eggs, where you have to be so careful in how you handle them. When it’s the right tine, they’ll germinate.”
It’s all about timing – and by combining biodynamics with no-dig and some rewilding, the moment for Per seems to have arrived.
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