From Tech Systems to Living Systems

Amelie Salameh did not enter farming through inheritance or an agricultural school. Her path emerged from a series of experiments exploring how humans might live, work, and organize themselves differently. Before co-founding Himmel & Humus in northern Germany alongside Sophie and Laura, Amelie worked as a tech project manager and organizational developer at a self-organised cooperative supporting over 100 mission-driven organizations. There, she spent years helping teams sort complexity, prioritize needs, and build systems that functioned more sustainably.

While she optimized digital systems by day, Amelie became increasingly immersed in ecological ones in her free time. “I really love spending time with the plants, sticking my hands into the soil,” she reflects. In the middle of Berlin, Amelie and a group of friends began building a fully self-sustainable tiny house on wheels, experimenting with hydroponics, recycling systems, energy management, and cyclical design. At the same time, she immersed herself in permaculture gardens, cradle-to-cradle thinking, and regenerative communities. Slowly, her focus shifted from optimizing digital systems to understanding living ones. Eventually, she left remote tech work behind her in the city.

Today, Amelie applies that same systems-thinking mindset to farming itself. At Himmel & Humus, regeneration is not only about restoring soil, but redesigning how farmers work within natural rhythms. “My vision is to integrate farmers into our daily work,” she explains. “Not only doing regenerative work for the soil and the plant, but also our bodies and our minds.”

Reviving an Abandoned Field

The land that would become Himmel & Humus was once part of an ambitious ecological vision. After the fall of the German borders in the 1990s, a botanist transformed the area into a 10-hectare botanical garden. But after the project went bankrupt, the site stood abandoned for years, slowly becoming what Amelie describes as a “lost place.”

In 2016, the cooperative Wir Bauen Zukunft revived the area into a regenerative eco-village filled with workshops, festivals, conferences, and ecological businesses. When Amelie and her co-founder Laura discovered a small overgrown field near the old industrial hall, they saw the opportunity to build something new. The soil was sandy, biologically poor, and low in biodiversity. “We turned it into a regenerative market garden with a lot of work and love,” Amelie explains.

Today, Himmel & Humus integrates regenerative practices such as composting, mulching, cover cropping, and agroforestry elements across the farm. What was once depleted land now supports vegetables, herbs, flowers, pollinators, frogs, and snakes, becoming part of the wider living ecosystem surrounding the eco-village.

Rooted in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, Himmel & Humus combines food production with workshops, consultations, farm-to-table dinners, and direct sales to restaurants and local communities. Alongside vegetables and herbs, the team is developing medicinal and microbiome-focused products while continuing to experiment with the farm’s cyclical working model.

Rather than relying on a single income stream, the project is intentionally designed more like an ecosystem where different activities support one another. “I believe small-scale farms can create resilient local systems,” Amelie explains. At Himmel & Humus, regeneration is not treated only as an agricultural method, but as a framework for building economically and socially resilient farms that other CSA projects can eventually learn from and adapt.

Designing a Cyclical Working Model

At Himmel & Humus, Amelie is applying regenerative thinking beyond the soil itself. Drawing from her background in organizational development and systems thinking, she is experimenting with what she calls a cyclical working model, exploring how farms can function more sustainably when natural rhythms are integrated into the structure of work itself.

Inspired by ecological cycles, the model considers energy levels, recovery, seasonality, and biological rhythms as part of daily farm operations. “We tend to forget our bodies and what they are capable of,” Amelie explains. “So we are incorporating the menstrual cycle into our working method.” For her, long-term resilience depends not only on healthy ecosystems, but on healthier ways for farmers to live and work within them.

This thinking shapes the entire farm ecosystem. Regenerative growing methods such as composting, mulching, agroforestry integration, and microbiome-focused cultivation support soil and plant health, which Amelie believes directly contributes to healthier gut systems for the surrounding community as well. At the same time, AI integrations and automated systems help reduce repetitive labor and operational strain. Rather than viewing technology and ecology as opposing forces, Himmel & Humus combines both to create more adaptive farming systems.

Beyond the farm itself, Amelie sees Himmel & Humus as a testing ground for the future of community-supported agriculture. Through regenerative networks including Climate Farmers, agroforestry communities, CSA initiatives, and feminist farming collectives, she openly shares experiments, workshops, and educational gatherings while continuing to refine the model. Long-term, she hopes to study the effects of cyclical working through scientific research and develop a framework that other farms can adapt in search of more resilient ways of farming.

The Vision

Ultimately, Amelie envisions Himmel & Humus not just as a farm, but as a thriving blueprint for cyclical living where soil, people, and systems heal together. The future of this model is already in motion; the market garden is set to expand, paving the way for agroforestry, a diverse, outdoor school, and a playground for children. From a partnership with a local organic kindergarten to future scientific studies on their unique work culture, she is prototyping a new rural reality. "Our goal is to inspire a mindset shift," Amelie reflects, "seeing regeneration as a practice that connects inner development, community well-being, and ecological healing."

Written by Top 50 Farmers and Migle Labeikyte