Zahour Kitchen

nutrition from farm to kitchen 

DAR ZAHOUR farm PHILOSOPHY

Dar Zahour farm works on permaculture principles to produce abundance and fertility. It reflects what would naturally be found in a healthy ecosystem - plant and animal life coexisting together, enhancing one another. Cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese and bees all play an important role in sustaining and enriching the crops grown on Dar Zahour farm. There is no monoculture here: each patch of earth is covered by aromatic herbs (which the bees love too), nitrogen rich crops for the soil and for animal feed, wild flowers and grasses, fruit trees, vegetables, olives and of course, saffron.

 At Dar Zahour no toxic pesticides or inorganic fertilizers are used, it’s simply not necessary. We work to regenerate and enrich the soil all year, we recycle all our garden waste by chipping it and making thermal compost using the dung from our cows, sheep, chickens and ducks. Compost made this aerobic way is full of beneficial diverse bacteria and fungi. A portion of this compost is then made into compost tea which is fed through the farm’s drip-feed irrigation system. This tea is full of microbes and yeasts that are an important component of the soil-food web on our farm, essential for regenerating the soil and sustaining our environmental diversity.

When we farm like this, working with nature and not against it, there is an abundance of micro-organisms in the soil (similar to the ones found in a healthy human gut) and these help plants take up more nutrients than crops grown with fossil-based inorganic fertilizers.

Mindfulness at all levels of the process of producing and consuming food is fundamental to good health, not just for us but for the planet and all its creatures.