Several farms in and around the village of Host t n already have the certificate. One is an apple juice production plant. The area has an astonishing 250 naturally occurring fruit varieties. In planting new orchards, cultivators have found that researching the history of tree culture in the Carpathians leads to the right solutions. Our tree-mapping process is truly a voyage of discovery.
People there live mainly off the land.
But Host t n is rather special, too, for there is a new prosperity developing, based on organic farming methods and also energy conservation. The village is proving a model for the rest of the Carpathian region, with visitors from as far away as Romania arriving to learn from the success of its micro-projects. Until recently, like many across the region, Host t n villagers burned brown coal. However, a joint Czech and Dutch government project, which installed a biomass district heating system, has cut down radically on CO-2 emissions and saves the villagers around 600MWh per year in electricity costs. The village buys wood chips leftover from local sawmills and burns them in a hi-tech boiler, from which hot water is circulated to 80 percent of the houses.