SHORT DESCRIPTION : Gut Königsmühle is a charitable farm owned by the association PSZD (Pedagogic Social Centre Dortmund). This social farm started in 2006 on a former commercial farm enterprise. The major purpose is to offer housing and employment for disabled people and education for school and kindergarten kids. Gut Königsmühle is situated about six kilometres northwest of the city centre of Dortmund between a large commercial area (central depot and logistic hub of Swedish furniture wholesaler IKEA) on the one side and the river "Emscher" on the other side. The area belongs to the Northern part of “Metropolis Ruhr”, a cluster of eleven metropolitan cities and four partly urban and partly rural counties with in total some 5.2 million people. The Northern part of Ruhr Metropolis, including Gut Königsmühle, is part of Emscher landscape park, a regional park combining former mining and steel production sites together with nature and open landscape for living and leisure. The location is urban, but includes quite a lot of open space along “Emscher”
KEY ACTIVITIES: Gut Königsmühle cultivates organically certified (Demeter) crops on nine hectares, whereof five hectares are defined by the municipality of Dortmund as compensation areas, which are cultivated in an officially prescribed environmental way to “compensate” the intervention (e. g. for traffic roads, residential areas, industries, energy infrastructure) into nature and landscape at another place. Plastic film greenhouses cover some 800 m². In and outdoor horticulture produces vegetables and herbs, e. g. different cabbages, tomatoes, paprika, cucumbers, rhubarb and more. Furthermore, the farm keeps bees and 33 ewes of an old German landrace, called “Rhönschafe”. This race is robust, but threatened by extinction. The main services of the social farm are: Housing and living community for 14 disabled people; Jobs and work for 20 disabled people in horticulture, green keeping and landscape architecture services; After school social education for kids dealing with problematic social circumstances; Kindergarten for 25 kids based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (“Waldorf philosophy”); On-farm coffee house/community centre
RELEVANT DIMENSION: Social and certified organic farm, horticulture, services: housing/living for disabled people, after school education for disadvantaged kids, Kindergarden, peri-urban location, marketing of products and public funding
BUSINESS MODELS: Enterprise diversification (multifunctional agriculture)
COMPLETE ADDRESS: Ellinghauser Str. 309, 44359 Dortmund, Germany
Ellinghauser Str. 309, 44359 Dortmund, DE
