The Lighthouse
A Living Lab for Horse-Powered Farming
A living lab for fossil-fuel-free regenerative agriculture.
An operating farm in Overijssel that is also a long-term research site.
The farm is deliberately small as a controlled starting point —
but the aim is to test whether a fundamentally different farming system can be scaled to any size operations.
Studies are made to run on the farmland itself -its soil, its plants, and its animals- designed and run collaboratively by researchers, students, and the farmer over an extended period. The subjects of study are the farm's regenerative system: how the soil builds, how the animals (horses, sheep, chickens) perform and interact with it, how the rotations, cover crops, silvopasture, and hedgerows work together, and how the whole operates without fossil fuels or synthetic inputs.
Every field, animal, and rotation is a measured unit within a permanent research framework: a demonstration farm and an observational platform for comparative, long-term science.
What the Lighthouse is designed to do
Fill the evidence gap. Institutions that must act on soil health — banks, insurers, regulators, and food buyers — base their decisions on evidence. These institutions are under pressure to change — regulators tightening rules, banks and insurers accounting for environmental risk, buyers sourcing sustainably. They are the gatekeepers that farmers must satisfy to make a transition. These institutions generally lack the evidence from working farms to do so with confidence. Yet for farming free of fossil fuels and synthetic inputs and run by animals, the evidence base is thin: few working farms operate this way, and fewer still measure themselves systematically over years. The Lighthouse produces that record, documented from day one, compared against established conventional baselines.
Redesign the farming, not just the power source.
Swapping a tractor for a horse on the same methods would lose -tractors are stronger, faster, and work longer. Removing the tractor forces the farming itself to be redesigned, and that redesign is regenerative agriculture: tillage reduced or eliminated, cover crops used, rotations diversified, soil kept covered and building. The horse is not a handicap to work around; it is the reason the farm adopts practices that build soil instead of degrading it.
Test the system, not a single method.
The specific methods are not fixed in advance — they are chosen and tested on the farm, and their outcomes measured. The comparison is not horse against tractor on identical methods, but a soil-building system against a soil-degrading one. A farmer of any scale should be able to look at the record and see whether these methods transfer to their land.
Why now?
The Common Agricultural Policy is moving toward low-input, biodiversity-positive farming. Interest in fossil-fuel-free, horse-powered systems is growing among young farmers, with few established sites for training or testing. The Lighthouse provides one.
The question is how to scale regenerative systems; scaling requires permanent research infrastructure.The Lighthouse exists to answer that question: can this way of farming work beyond the small farm?
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Why Twente? Why Horses?
Twente offers a strong fit for this project. The region has a long agricultural heritage and an active network of farmers, educators, and institutions interested in sustainable land use.
Its proximity to Enschede — a city with a university and vocational schools — means the farm can sit close enough to students and researchers to be genuinely useful, while still being rural enough to function as a working farm. This combination of countryside and educational infrastructure is hard to find elsewhere.
Horses are the natural choice for the farm's draft power. Modern farming depends heavily on fossil fuels, and as a society we need to move away from that dependency — not simply because fuel is expensive, but because we must find alternative methods that can sustain agriculture into the future.
Working with horses also carries a clear educational value: it connects people directly to the physical work of farming and to the animals themselves, while demonstrating a practical, working example of agriculture without fossil fuels.
The Paddock Paradise track system supports this by keeping the horses healthy and naturally active, so they remain strong and willing partners in the farm's work
About the Founder
Noa brings together community-based work, education, and years of tending to land and animals. She studied natural horsemanship, equine behavior and psychology, and has spent time independently learning about regenerative agriculture and ecology.
Her role at The Lighthouse is initiator, host, and facilitator — creating space where people can engage directly with the land and where those with practical expertise can share knowledge in accessible, applicable ways. The project is collaborative: it depends on scientists, agronomists, and experienced farmers to design the research, interpret findings, and make the results credible and useful.
The Lighthouse grows out of a fascination with how land, learning, nature, and community shape one another.
Who this is for
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Students in agricultural education, who can gain hands-on experience with regenerative and animal-powered methods.
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Farmers and land managers, who can learn practices they might apply to their own land.
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Local residents, who can rent a community garden plot, attend workshops, or simply connect to where their food comes from.
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Researchers and educators, who can use the site as a working laboratory where ideas are tested in practice.
Learning together, in community, helps turn environmental concern into practical action
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Get in touch
If you’re interested in collaborating, sharing knowledge, or learning together, please reach out. I look forward to hearing from you!
Contact Founder and Land Manager, Noa,
via email at theLighthouseNL@gmail.com
or by WhatsApp 0628120767
