During the early years here we began by clearing the huge brambles and recovering many of the old fruit trees in the valley and planted some more with the aim of creating a perennial food forest. We also created a
small vegetable garden. At this point we did not have any intention to grow food commercially.

Then in 2022 we began a big project to create several food forest areas. This included earthworks to transform a dry eucalyptus monoculture, the creation of terraces, ponds and swales and the planting of thousands of fruit and nut trees and support species in these newly made terraces and in the main valley zone.

We draw upon the principles of permaculture, Syntropic agriculture, and other forms of forest farming, as well as from observation over the years of what works in our particular local conditions. Sharing knowledge with local farmers and regenerative projects in South Portugal is another valuable input. We are now moving our focus towards optimising the health of soil and plants using the Soil Food Web system of Elaine Ingham. We intend to certify as Regenerative Organic within the next few years.

Working with the cycles of the moon and being aware of the invisible energies that inform the material world are also part of our way of working with the land.

Unlearning the mechanistic and dominant tendencies of the modern human, and the resulting efforts to attempt to control ‘weeds and pests’ by eliminating them as quickly as possible is a journey we are exploring. This is often humbling, with the recognition that we really do not always have the answers. This is not to say that we invalidade the usefulness of our human minds and their amazing capacity for solving problems and creating technologies. As a dominant species we can use these capacities to help regenerate and create more life in the ecosystem, rather than degenerate.

The farm is focused on tree crops, but we also have plenty of perennial edible support species such as artichokes and asparagus. We also grow some annual vegetables for our own use, sometimes selling surplus in the local market or offering to neighbours. 

One of the biggest challenges we face with the farm, particularly as we start moving into commercial production, is the terrain. Much of the planting is on steep slopes and small terraces. This means we have to do practically everything by hand which makes the farm quite labour-intensive. In the spring the vegetation growth can go crazy, and hand clearing around the young trees is quite a job. This should get easier over time as we focus on planting low ground covers which will take over from the tall grasses and tough pioneer species.

We are in an area with long dry summers, and sometimes multi-year droughts.

We have been increasing the water retention capacity of the land, in order to help in its regeneration, to safeguard against drought and fire, reduce erosion and run-off in the winter, and to create micro-climates for more diverse growing opportunities. We have been creating a water retention landscape, which now has two lakes, and a total of 65m2 of storage tanks at the top of the hill, and a pumping system. We are now able to capture a large amount of rain during the winter and pump it to the top tank for a gravity fed irrigation and fire hose system. We also collect rainwater off our rooves into a 20,000 litres storage buried in the ground that is also pumped to the hilltop tanks.

We also have many swales on the slopes to collect water during rainy times and allow it to slowly penetrate into the ground.

Big swales in 2022 and 2024

After some experiences with water shortages in earlier years, we now feel quite resilient. (Read more here)

Much of the farm is irrigated with a drip system, but we have also been experimenting with flood irrigation on some of the terraces which uses more water initially but seems to work well and starts creating a whole wetter zone, rather than just focused points of moisture. A big bonus is the reduction in the use of plastic tubing.

We have more pomegranates than we can eat, from an old variety which produces juicy and sweet arils (the fleshy seed), with small seeds.

We now have dehydrated pomegranate arils for sale.

• Pomegranate page

We have some more exciting tree products in development over the coming year, including teas from fruit tree leaves, and more dried fruits. All our products are focused on nutrient-density, minimal processing to preserve as much of the life-force and nutrient content and taste of the fresh produce as we can.