In 1972, Dean and Dudley Evenson were called to Stockholm, Sweden to videotape the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. It was the first ever international gathering focusing on the ecological impact of humans on the planet. After a week of learning and videotaping, the conference and gatherings wound down and Dean and Dudley decided to travel to northwestern Sweden to visit a community they had heard about that grew organic food.
They packed up their video gear and hitchhiked north, landing among a gentle group of young people who had formed a commune and were working with an old Finnish farmer named Andres Bjornson, who practiced a technique called ‘friendly farming.’ With camera turned on and the tape rolling, they learned about his simple, but very effective means of working with nature, of putting the weeds which he called ‘helpful cultures’ right back next to the growing plants for fertilizer, and generally of producing abundant crops of food without artificial fertilizers or pesticides by keeping the soil gently cultivated with a fork-like tool.
Welcomed by these people who lived communally in the land of the midnight sun and practiced Bjornsen’s farming techniques, the Evensons spent a meaningful Midsummer’s Eve, watching the sun roll like a ball across the distant hills, and never quite set. This podcast is a synopsis of what they learned.
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