People, who have met her, know how much she loves her plants. This is why gardening is a matter for the boss at Echo Valley Ranch. Nan personally takes care of the vegetables, herbs and fruits, that grow on the ranch – with much support of the Thai crew, of course.

At Echo Valley Ranch sustainability is not only an empty phrase. On the contrary. We live and breathe sustainability and rely on the natural circle of life to do so. Almost everything green we serve is from our own ranch gardens. The meat comes from our own cattle and pigs. Our ranch chickens are in charge of the breakfast eggs.
But what entails sustainability? At Echo Valley Ranch, we recycle almost everything or we use our own resources. The horses and cows eat ranch grass. We then use the manure to fertilise our plants. For the irrigation of our fields, we use the water from our streams. And the pigs are fed with leftovers from the kitchen.  All this ensures that we produce as little waste as possible. All our vegetables are a product of organic farming. Naturally, we do not use any additional fertiliser.

It’s all a matter of planning
Every year in March, Nan starts to plan which vegetables, herbs and fruits are going to be planted in what amount and where. Most of the vegetables start out in the green house in spring. Later in summer, mostly in June, the seedlings are moved to the outdoor gardens.
It is a lot of fun to do your own gardening but it is also a lot of work. This is why, Nan counts on the support of the entire house keeping crew. In spring, the brothers Numchoke and Numchai help to fertilise the gardens with our horse manure. Mihoko and Frank are then responsible for most of the work around the garden. Frank waters the plants twice a day. Mihoko basically knows all the vegetables personally and is in charge of picking the vegetables for the day, so that the kitchen has something to work with. Everybody of the team helps with seeding and weeding: Mihoko, Frank, Tum, Jaranya, Wanna, Yalaporn, Numchoke and Numchai. And, of course, Nan herself.

As mentioned before, we also produce our own meat – beef and pork that is. All the way up to the end, our animals lead a very good life. The pigs have their private garden with their own spring for fresh water supply. The cows roam the forests and fields around Echo Valley Ranch – before finally landing on our plates.
Adequate culinary preparation and presentation of our ranch foods is up to our chef Jason. In the name of sustainability, we wish you Bon Appétit from Echo Valley Ranch.

Busy garden specialists at work: Members of the garden crew Mihoko and Frank take good care of our Echo Valley vegetables.

Echo Valley‘s green house.

Mihoko inside the green house: herbs are picked fresh daily at Echo Valley Ranch.

Echo Valley cattle: The cows lead a good life growing up in the midst of nature.

They got lucky: The turkeys at Echo Valley Ranch are not food but guest entertainment.

Related posts:

1. Thanksgiving Weekend at Echo Valley Ranch
2. Spotlighting Echo Valley Ranch and Spa
3. Growing organic food
4. Falcon babies at Echo Valley Ranch
5. Echo Valley Ranch takes a break

Tags: Beef, Eggs, Gardening, Vegetables

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2011 at 8:15 am and is filed under Dining, Nature, The Ranch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.