Farm history

Nybys is an old Crown's riding facility from the 17th century. During the Thirty Years' War, farmer Matts Tomasson himself went to war for ten years after his brother fell in the war.  At the end of the 17th century, they managed to add the neighbouring Smets to Nybys. At the time of the Great Hate (Russian occupation of Finland from 1713 to 1721) in the 18th century, the estate was deserted like other farms in the area, but tax rights were restored after peace arrived. For centuries, Nyby has been owned by the same family, with only a small exception due to the evacuation of Porkkala after the last war.

About 1800 they took the family name Malmström at Nybys. In the middle of the century there were three daughters on the farm. In the 1860s, Mauritz Selenius, the great-grandfather of Magnus, coming from Helsingin maalaispitäjä, currently Vantaa, first became a tenant farmer and later married the farm's daughter, Matilda.

The cattle on the farm were abandoned in the early 1960s. Sture, the father of the current farmer Magnus, wanted to switch to cereal-only farming. The barn, built for 60 cows and 16 horses, was converted to a grain dryer with silos, and where the first harvest was dried in 1963.

The building burned down in a fire 1992, but was later re-built.

Organic farming on the farm began to be experimented with by Magnus in 1990, first concealing it from his father. By the late 1980s, gulls had diminished in the fields during spring. The conclusion was that they could no longer find food for them from the fields, including earthworms, and that changes had to be made. Nowadays, gulls fly in large herds behind the tractor.

A total of 106 hectares are cultivated, some of which are leased fields. In 2018, 1/6 of the area under cultivation was spelt (or other cereals), oilseeds, broad beans and rapeseeds, 2/6 of clover hay. The fields in the village of Röylä are part of the cultural landscape of northern Espoo and will hopefully remain so for future generations.

The organic farmer is kind of on a journey of discovery; In addition to new land-saving cultivation methods, new crops, in particular old cereals and other hardy crops, have emerged.

Experiments have not always gone according to plan, which neighbours too have noticed. Swidden rye was the first landrace grain on the farm, and also where the current breeding work on the farm began. The 2½ m long straw was more than the small trials combine harvester was prepared to swallow. Other experimental activities include experiments on carbon cultivation, Carbon Action, and nutrient leaching experiments on farm parcels.