KTIMΔ
LEMONIES

This spring at Ktima Lemonies, chef Sofia Argyropoulou is hosting The Farm Kitchen. A hands-on, immersive culinary retreat, rooted in market gardening, organic small-scale agriculture, and season-led, skill-based farmhouse cooking. Come to Andros ready to cook, grow, and stretch your capabilities.

The Farm Kitchen is a hands-on culinary education program set at Ktima Lemonies - a 200-year-old farmhouse on one of the most agriculturally vibrant islands in the Cyclades. Andros, with its terraced landscapes, citrus groves, olive farms, and relative abundance of water, has long sustained a culture of cultivation distinct within the region. At Ktima Lemonies, where a small working garden remains active on the land, soil, stove, and table belong to the same living system.

Over six nights and five full instructional days, participants work through more than 20 core recipes across four structured culinary workshops and four demonstrations. One full day is dedicated entirely to organic small-scale farming practice: vegetables, cut flowers, perennial vines, citrus, and olive trees. The week also includes a visit to an organic citrus farm, guided conversations with professional market gardeners, and a natural wine tasting that connects fermentation, terroir, and agricultural decision-making. You propagate. You discuss seed selection. You examine compost systems. You begin to understand what it takes to build and sustain a productive garden, whether you are in the Mediterranean belt or working through a deep winter climate, and how to adapt these systems to your own conditions.

Mornings unfold in an agricultural context: terrace systems, citrus micro-seasons, soil stewardship, and small-scale production. Afternoons return to the farmhouse kitchen, where each participant works at their own cookery station. You bake, preserve, ferment, cook, and repeat. Flour on your hands. A sauce adjusted. A fish chosen well and cooked properly. Vegetables selected according to their micro-season. Structure builds confidence, and confidence makes space for play, discovery, and the simple fun of making something delicious with your own hands.

This program is for people who are curious about the kitchen.
For those who want to preserve family recipes properly.
For those who want to understand how to choose fish confidently, cook vegetables according to season, build a balanced Mediterranean table, and master foundational techniques like choux pastry and mother sauces - and know why they work.
For those who want real technique, tested recipes, and the confidence to repeat them at home.

The week is immersive by design.
Systems replace guesswork.
Skill replaces abstraction.
Participants leave not only inspired, but also capable.

Sofia Argyropoulou, your teacher, is a chef, market gardener, and culinary educator whose work bridges soil and kitchen. She first studied organic small-scale agriculture and nutritional sciences at Wageningen University, grounding her understanding of food in systems of cultivation and land stewardship. She then spent seven years working as a market gardener, growing more than 150 varieties of vegetables and developing hands-on experience in seed selection, propagation, season extension, and diversified production. She later trained at Ballymaloe Cookery School under the attentive mentorship of Darina Allen, Rory O’Connell, and Rachel Allen - an experience that refined her understanding of farmhouse cooking as a living agricultural practice rather than a performance.

Over the years, she has built and continuously refined a working archive of more than 1,500 recipes - tested, adapted, shared, and reworked through seasons of growing and cooking. Participants in The Farm Kitchen gain access to this evolving collection as part of their learning.

Her work is always farm-style: shared tables, generous platters, techniques kept alive, abundance without excess.

In addition to the full Farmhouse Education program, Sofia offers curated culinary experiences for guests of the estate:
– seasonal cooking classes
– ingredient-led farmhouse dinners
– celebratory gatherings and birthday feasts
– bespoke garden-to-table evenings shaped by the agricultural calendar

If you want to increase your capability in the kitchen, understand your ingredients from the ground up, and cook with both confidence and joy - this week is for you.

Come ready to work with your hands.
Come ready to grow.
Come ready to cook beautifully.