- By the year 2000, Duñano Mikel Kormenzana decided to give continuity to the family dwelling, once the university studies were completed. “Previously there were cows of milk in our house, but when I entered I decided to recover some family adventures,” he explains. What was that family adventure? Well, resume fruit trees. The grandmother once worked a lot in fruit making, and one of the keys to the relief was to get back to work on this road. In the following years they gradually abandoned milk production and began producing juice and jam in Tologorri. Meat cows have also been kept.
“In these areas before, there were many trees, and just in those years when I started there were some orchards in Orduña with many fruit trees, but there they had to make housing and we took out varieties to keep them,” Kormenzana says. Most of the fruit used in the elaboration of juices and jams is of domestic origin: cherry, plum, apple, pear, citrus, red fruit… They do not grow large areas, but they have a wide variety. “Our strategy has never been to do much, but to offer a wide variety,” he added.
Most fruit trees are found in the farmhouse itself, but in the case of citrus fruits and tropical fruits, their production is in Ea, in lands provided by some friends. “Most of the raw materials we use are ours, domestic, but in the case of trees that don’t give here, such as blueberry or kiwi, we take them to other producers in the Basque Country,” he explains. They do all the production in an ecological model.
Collective transformation space
At the time when Kormenzana started the project, there were not many people dedicated to organic production, and in the beginning he started a small worker of product transformation. In 2010, however, they joined four other baserritarras from the area dedicated to ecology and created an association in the worker: The project is called Ekotarro. In addition to this network created in the municipality itself with other producers, Tologorri participates in others such as Nekasarean, EHNE, EHKOlibo and Bizilur. “It is important for us to be in movements linked to agriculture,” he says.
He makes a direct sale and sells almost everything at fairs. In addition to production and sales, Tologorri also offers other initiatives. In the farmhouse frequent visits are organized with schools in the area or with the colonies, and it says that at the time COVID-19, agroecological breakfasts were made. “Before talking about ecological people looked weird at us, but now you notice that in some places awareness is being created. Much remains to be done, but well, I see the situation better than when we started.”