Hub in the Spotlight – Meet Cathrine – Nourish Life

Cathrine measures the water quality of the Yuvarlakçay river in Turkey four times a year at three different locations. Cathrine lives on a farm with her husband and their three sons. She runs Nourish Life, an initiative that includes a functional forest and a marketplace. A functional forest is a forest based on human design, which can meet the real needs of all living things and produce their own resources in a vital, ecological, social and economic context. Their purpose is to nourish life so that all life can be nourished.

At Nourish Life, Cathrine and her husband enrich the soil by creating as much on-site organic material as possible, rather than bringing in material from outside. They also apply syntropic farming, a method that consists of high-density planting of annual and perennial plants with the consideration of their light needs and life cycles. In terms of climate, Southern Turkey is ideal for agriculture. There is a wide variety of crops that grow throughout the year. In winter, small floods occur due to the high rainfall intensity. And in summer, between June and October, there is no rain at all. With the experience Cathrine gained, the structure of the farm has been adapted to prevent flooding and water scarcity.

When Cathrine does the measurements, she also clears the area of litter. To new hubs, Cathrine would like to pass along the message that it is a good idea to take the first few measurements on your own, before involving a group, to get to know how to use the content of the measurement kit.