01
Building
A windrow one and a half metres high by two metres wide, built in alternating twenty-centimetre layers, wetted layer by layer to the moisture of a wrung-out sponge.
Organic farming
The farm makes its own inputs
We buy neither fertiliser nor pesticide. Everything that feeds the grove and the orchard comes out of the farm itself: the compost from the pigs and rabbits, the treatments from the rabbitry. Here is the method, in detail, with the rates.
The principle
A waste is an input in the wrong place
A conventional farm buys fertiliser in foreign currency, hauls it in from far away and lives with supply breaks. Input costs end up eating the margin, and quality depends on a supplier the grower has no hold over.
At Kokounou we took the problem from the other end: put the livestock next to the crops and keep the material moving between the two. Pigs and rabbits produce, every day, what the trees need; the trees produce, every day, grading offcuts that feed the animals. This is not an environmental posture — it is an economic decision that happens to be environmental.
What never comes onto the farm
- Synthetic mineral fertiliser (NPK, urea)
- Synthetic chemical insecticides and fungicides
- Herbicides — weeding is manual and mulch does the rest
- Growth regulators and ripening dyes
- Sulphites on the dried fruit
Process no. 1
The compost, sixteen weeks
This is our only fertiliser. A badly built windrow heats poorly, fails to kill weed seed and smells; a well-built one reaches sixty-five degrees in four days and yields black, crumbly, odourless compost.
The windrow recipe
We aim for a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of roughly thirty to one. By volume that means:
40%
30%
20%
10%
02
Heat-up
The core reaches 60 to 70 °C within three to five days. This thermophilic phase destroys weed seed and pathogens. It is probed every other day.
03
Turning
Five turns with a fork over the first eight weeks: at day 7, 14, 28, 42 and 56. Each time the cool outside goes into the hot centre.
04
Maturation
Eight weeks cooling under cover from driving rain. The heap stops heating and earthworms move in: the sign that maturation is under way.
05
Screening
Screened at ten millimetres. Oversize goes back into the next windrow. The finished product is black and crumbly, smells of forest floor, and shows no trace of any ingredient.
Three checks before spreading
- The heap no longer heats up after a turn.
- It smells of humus, never of ammonia.
- Cress seed sown in it germinates normally — immature compost scorches it.
Process no. 2
Rabbit urine, our foliar treatment
This is the part of the method that surprises visitors most. Rabbit urine is highly concentrated in nitrogen and carries sulphur compounds that many pests avoid. Diluted correctly it feeds the leaf and keeps insects off; diluted badly it scorches the plant in a single morning.
01
Collection
Hutches sit on slatted floors above sloping metal sheets. The urine runs to a gutter and drops into a closed two-hundred-litre drum kept in the shade.
02
Fermentation
Fifteen to twenty-one days in the closed drum, stirred every three days. Fermentation stabilises the liquid and takes the edge off the free ammonia.
03
Filtering and dilution
Filtered through fine cloth so the nozzles do not clog, then diluted with clean water according to use: one part in ten for routine foliar work, one in twenty on young plants, one in five as a soil drench.
04
Application
Sprayed at the end of the day, never in full sun, on both leaf surfaces. Every three weeks through the vegetative phase, stopping completely twenty-one days before harvest.
The dilutions we use
| Use | Dilution | Frequency | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foliar, mature plant | 1 : 10 | Every 3 weeks | The routine rate during growth |
| Foliar, young plant | 1 : 20 | Every 3 weeks | Tender foliage: any stronger and it scorches |
| Soil drench | 1 : 5 | Every 2 months | Alongside compost, never instead of it |
| Mealybug repellent | 1 : 10 + savon | On sighting | With a little soft soap as a wetting agent |
The three rules we never break
- Never spray in full sun: the leaf burns within an hour.
- Never put fresh, unfermented urine on a plant.
- Stop twenty-one days before the plot’s first harvest.
The soil
Cover it, never leave the soil bare
In a climate that takes its rain in a few violent weeks, bare soil leaves with the first storm. Between the papaya rows we keep a permanent thick mulch of chopped stems, prunings and cut grass.
Mulch holds moisture between waterings, stops weeds coming through, cushions the impact of the drops and slowly breaks down feeding the earthworms. The soil stays loose, dark and alive — the best indicator we have.
Permanent mulch
Ten centimetres between rows, never touching the plants’ collars.
Living cover
Legumes sown between young rows: they fix nitrogen and hold the soil.
Diversified orchard
Mango, avocado, plum and lemon break the monoculture and confuse pests.
Flower strips
Left along the edges for pollinators and the natural predators of aphids.
What it changes
The loop, in figures
0 kg
Synthetic fertiliser bought
Fertilisation comes entirely from the farm’s own compost.
16
Weeks of compost maturation
Eight of them active, with five turns.
1 : 10
Routine foliar dilution
Fermented rabbit urine, applied at the end of the day.
21 j
Pre-harvest interval
No treatment at all, natural or otherwise, in the three weeks before.
What next
A question, a volume, a visit?
Households, wholesalers, processors, schools and hospitals: tell us what you need. We reply within 48 hours.