Learn about syntropic farming and agroforestry, and grow food and community in NE Alentejo, Portugal

Detalhes

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  Descrição

  Hi! We are currently a small group of people, who are living on land in inland southern Portugal, by Estremoz (which is due east of Lisbon not far from the Spanish border).
  
  The land is large and diverse, with traditional Alentejo "montado" - cork oak woodlands that are often used for animal grazing - and 3 hectares of planted land around a 19th century Alentejo farmhouse.
  
  We are involved with different interests and foci of activities, but also working together to create a journey of collective living, regenerating the land, and producing for more of our needs from the land - our little "bubble" and sanctuary amid the craziness of these times :-) ....moving towards a village home in abundance.
  
  Currently, the three main people here are Francisco, whose family passed the land on to him (after his great grandfather first arrived here) and who has been living here since 2016. He has done much over these years to experiment with collective living, lots of planting, building infrastructure, and regenerating the ecologies here. Then, there is Sónia, who moved here at the start of 2024, but has interacted with the land here for several years and is currently focussing on running a yurt on the land for events, and Helen, who lived here in 2022, and then moved back here in 2024.
  
  Right now, this is Helen writing this. I am the guardian of the three agroforestry areas on the land, and I focus on syntropic farming here (while I also have a very broad range of interests). I am just now transitioning gradually into hosting people here on the land, and will start to offer more structured volunteering/interning where I will teach and mentor people interested specifically in syntropic farming. I do this work also in Portugal at other syntropic farming areas and would like to see our area here increasingly used in a pedagogical way. This is still in the very early stages as I figure out the best ways to do this and find more time to dedicate to it. For now, it is in a hybrid more traditional volunteering-mentoring form.
  
  The syntropic area is very carefully designed and managed. It was planted in Oct 2020 and Oct 2021, 9 lines of 20 m of much diversity - a real growing ecosystem of a diverse forest garden - with many birds (and their nests), insects, mushrooms...! It offers a real model of syntropic farming in the Mediterranean. We also have 18 lines (longer) of diverse food forest planted in 2018, with many of the trees already very large and producing well! And an area of walnut orchard, which produces many kilos of walnuts in the autumn.

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  Tipos de ajuda e oportunidades de aprendizado

  Ajuda em projetos ambientais

  Jardinagem

  Construção/faça você mesmo

  Ajuda em fazenda

  Criar/cozinhar refeições caseiras

  Ajuda a cuidar da casa

  Manutenção geral
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  Objetivos de sustentabilidade da ONU que este anfitrião quer atingir

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  O que é isso?
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  Oportunidades de intercâmbio cultural e aprendizado

  I like to share about syntropic farming, agroforestry, land regeneration, ecology, plants, landscape and the history of land. I will teach more specifically about syntropic farming and successional agroforestry as part of our sharing and the exchange together as I open up the agroforests gradually as a pedagogical space. Also, I like to talk about food, nutrition and health. I am also interested in our ancestral past, back to when we were hunter-gatherers and our trajectory to where we are now...and musing about that and our magical mysterious crazy world of being here and alive! I am interested in so many topics and love to discuss about the world, life, the universe...and I've kicked around the world a lot for a few decades and can share stories. We all speak good English, but also often use Portuguese with one another so it can be a chance to improve your Portuguese.

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  Ajuda

  Work to be done, with a focus on learning about syntropic farming, includes generally maintaining and "favouring density, succession and production" in these areas - weeding, pruning (including specific fruit trees, and also occasionally chainsaw work), chop-and-drop pruning, and planting. There is always plenty to do in the agroforests, especially from February through May, and September through November. August is almond harvest and November is walnut harvest. I try to really teach about syntropic farming and successional agroforestry and see this as part of the sharing and exchange together.
  
  If you have other interests, there might also be the option to work on other projects more generally in the garden areas and land management, and also construction as we maintain the existing house and build infrastructure for our little village (we have a full carpentry workshop here for people with skills and experience). Also useful, would be people who would like to film/document and post about the work we are doing, perhaps even help set up a website for us. We are open to your proposals of what you would like to do and have to offer here as work exchange!

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  Idiomas

  Alemão: Fluente
  Inglês: Fluente
  Espanhol: Fluente
  Português: Fluente
  Francês: Intermediário

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  Acomodação

  In a comfortable room in a shared house in the main farmhouse. The house can be cold in winter (this is normal in Portugal!), but there is a woodburning stove to sit close to and heat the main living room and a very good hot shower, and if the sun is shining it is often nice to sit outside for meals, even in January. We also have lots of blankets for the beds. The house is nice and cool in the heat of the summer.
  
  We will provide food (the main basics for all meals, which you might like to supplement with some of your favourite more luxury foods), which you will mainly prepare for yourself, but we can sometimes prepare together. In-season produce is available from the garden, but it is quite seasonal and there are times when there is not very much available and the Saturday market is the main source. We are ominvores, but you are of course free to follow your own choice of diet in the house. Helen lives higher up on the land, Sónia is next door in an apartment, and Franciso is also living on another part of the land, but there are usually other people also staying in the house (which is large and has several bedrooms, although just one bathroom and kitchen).

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  Algo mais...

  The farm is located 2 km from the village of Arcos and 10 km from Estremoz. There are buses to Estremoz from Lisbon and other cities and I can pick you up from the bus stop, and you can catch rides with me into town sometimes.
  
  Estremoz is a cool small historical town, an interesting mix of eclectic and traditional Alentejo, with a unique-looking castle on the hill. It's wealth came from marble quarrying and the streets are paved with marble. Borba and Vila Viçosa are other nearby attractive marble towns. The Roman historical and university town of Évora is about 45 minutes away. This area is also the Iberian Peninsula's richest area for neolithic archeological sites and has a number of megaliths. It's dominated by agriculture (primarily cattle, olives and vineyards) so there aren't a lot of wild natural places around to explore, except perhaps for parts of the Serra de Ossa, nearby. The Serra de São Mamede is less than an hour away and really beautiful and good for hiking. The marble quarry pits offer a really special private swimming pool in summer!

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  Mais alguns detalhes

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    Acesso à internet

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    Acesso à internet limitado

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    Temos mascotes

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    Somos fumantes

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    Pode hospedar famílias

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  Espaço para estacionar campervans

  Currently, the access down to the main area has a few deeper ruts in the road, but this should be fine with most campervans, and there is also the option to stay parked higher up on the land. We are still in the stages of setting up outdoor bathrooms, toilets and kitchen - contact us and we will give more details on where we are at with this and what the options are for using the house facilities in the meantime.

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  Quantos Workawayers pode acomodar?

  2

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