Growing Something More Than Food
At Ranch Kuulas, most people notice the horses first, the quiet strength of the Finnhorses, the surrounding forest, and the feeling of being far away from anything rushed or artificial.
But behind the scenes, alongside everything that guests can see and experience, we have been working on something much slower, more invisible, and in many ways just as important.
Something that grows.
Where It All Began
This project didn’t start from an idea of creating something beautiful or marketable.
It started from a very practical question that we couldn’t ignore anymore.
How do we handle all the horse manure and organic waste that naturally comes from running a place like this — in a way that actually makes sense for us, for the land, and for the future?
When you live and work with animals, especially horses, you don’t produce small amounts of waste. You produce something constant, something real, something that has to be dealt with every single day.
At the same time, in our restaurant, we were bringing in ingredients from outside, even though we were surrounded by land that could potentially give something back.
And at some point, those two realities started to feel disconnected.
Turning a Problem Into a Direction
Instead of treating manure and bio waste as something that simply needs to be removed, transported, or minimized, we began to ask a different question:
What if this is not waste at all, but the beginning of something else?
That shift in thinking is where this project truly started.
We didn’t set out to build a perfect system or to suddenly become self-sufficient, but rather to explore how we could close a small part of the cycle ourselves — in a way that fits our scale, our values, and the way we already live and work.
From that, the idea of designing a garden for our experience restaurant slowly began to take shape.
Designing With the Land
As the idea became more concrete, we realized that this was not something we wanted to approach randomly or based on guesswork, but something that required understanding, planning, and respect for the conditions we are working in.
For that reason, we created a permaculture-based design together with agrologist Noora Ollinaho, combining practical knowledge with a long-term way of thinking about how the land, the animals, and our daily operations can support each other.
The work was supported by Leader Peräpohjola, whose development funding made it possible for us to invest time and expertise into building something that is not only practical, but also sustainable in the long run.
This phase of the project gave us a structure — not a rigid plan, but more like a direction that allows space for learning, observing, and adapting over time.
During the coming summer, we will begin to put this plan into practice and gradually start building the garden on our farm, step by step, following the same slow and intentional rhythm that guides everything else we do here.
More Than Just Growing Ingredients
This is not a project about maximizing yield or efficiency, and it is definitely not about trying to produce everything we use.
It is about creating a connection that feels real.
A connection between the horses and the land.
Between the land and the food.
And ultimately, between the food and the people who come here to experience this place.
When something grows from the same ground where you sit, eat, and spend your time, it changes the experience in a way that is difficult to explain — and that is exactly why we are not trying to explain everything.
Some things are better understood slowly.
Built Around Our Way of Life
Everything at Ranch Kuulas is built around a certain rhythm — small groups, real interactions, and a pace that allows both people and animals to stay balanced.
This project follows that same rhythm.
It is not designed as a separate system, but as something that grows naturally alongside everything else: the horses, the seasons, the work, and the daily life of the ranch.
There are no shortcuts in that process, and no guarantees that everything will work perfectly every year.
But that uncertainty is also part of what makes it meaningful.
Still in Progress
This is not a finished project, and it probably never will be in the traditional sense.
It changes with the seasons, with the weather, with what works and what doesn’t, and with what we continue to learn along the way.
Some parts will succeed.
Some parts will fail.
And both are equally important.
Because in the end, this was never about building something perfect.
It was about finding a way to take responsibility for what we already have — and turning it into something that adds depth, meaning, and honesty to everything we do here.