The story of Terra 

We are a young family who, in search of a deeper purpose beyond building careers in our previous city lives, decided to leave the Netherlands and settle in the Hungarian countryside. Our shared vision was born from a strong desire to take action: to apply the knowledge we had gained in our academic fields—climate politics, education science, and rural sociology—while also creating a home where we could put down roots, raise a family, and make a living.

In the spring of 2022, we set out to find a home and fell in love with an old peasant house in the village of Szanda, Hungary. After purchasing it, we immediately began renovations. That first summer spent there allowed our ideas to take shape, and slowly, we started envisioning how we could build a life around this place we now call home. Two years of hard work—restoring the house, cultivating the garden, and developing our vision—led to the birth of Terra.

From the early days of our relationship, food has been a shared passion. Beyond our academic pursuits and our need to put down roots, food became the spark that set everything in motion. Though we are neither chefs nor farmers, we discovered that we love hosting—and that we’re good at it. (Our years of working in restaurants during our student days likely played a role in that.) More than just a passion, food became our way of reconnecting with place, people, and the more-than-human world.

Terra is where all our ambitions come together. It’s a space where we can experiment with food, collaborate with chefs and creatives from diverse backgrounds, enjoy incredible meals, and share our knowledge through seasonal workshops year-round. It is our response to today’s world—a way of exploring new possibilities and shaping different futures.

We invite you to join our journey—or, more importantly, to embark on your own. We believe that many of you will find something familiar in our story, and we hope it inspires you in your own search for meaning, connection, and purpose.

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Photo: Anna Gajewszky