“The uncle found in the store the way to sell vegetables at a decent price”
- The sisters Miriam and Igone Saldias have chosen to keep the house and the family project. In the Soronea Caserío de Bernez, vegetables are produced in ecological model and sold directly in the Soronea de Tolosa store.
“The grandparents had milk cows, but about 30 years ago the uncle took over from the farmhouse and started in the garden, eco-friendly,” Miriam explains. With the intention of selling vegetables at a decent price and his conviction in the ecological model, his uncle Iñaki Uranga decided to open the store with his sisters Izaskun and Maribi. Today, the two nephews have joined the family project. In addition to homemade vegetables, the shop offers a wide range of local organic products.
Combining the tasks of the garden and the store
At first, Soronea members sold vegetables in nearby markets, but since they opened the store doors, that's where they made most of the sale. “In the store we have prepared vegetables the day before, we can’t get cooler!” says Saldias. “This year, moreover, we have launched the chicken mill, we are already selling our eggs,” he added. Products from the Soronea farmhouse are also sold to other shops and restaurants. Sales via the web will be launched soon.
Three years ago, the Saldias sisters joined the family project: “Our relationship with nature has changed radically since we started in the garden. It has been very nice to recover that relationship that young people have quite lost”. Both believe they have found the right way to preserve biodiversity and the environment. At first, both in the garden and in the store, they worked in both places, but now they have slightly more distributed jobs: Miriam works mostly in the garden with another worker and Igone with his mother, aunt and a fourth worker in the store.
With organic proximity products
All the products they sell in the Soronea store are organic production and have everything: cosmetics, bread, cereals, granules, detergents… “This is a super small,” says Igon. All products also have a colour label that facilitates identification: 0Km, 200Km or 1000Km. “We wanted to put things in such a way that people could easily identify the origin.”
Over these years, Saldias believes that things are gradually improving: “Today, the ecological product, the local product, is more important to know who and how it has been produced.”
