Permaculturing in Portugal

Quinta do Vale

Quinta do Vale is half way up a hillside in the Serra do Açor in the municipality of Arganil, which is 20km (12 miles) away, and about 80km (50 miles) inland from the university city of Coimbra, Portugal's 12th century capital. Its 2 hectares (5 acres) lie between 380-460m (1,250-1,500 feet) above sea level – at least if Google Earth is to be believed – and are split between cultivation terraces and forest, which is mostly pine with the odd chestnut and eucalyptus.

The quinta ('farm' in Portuguese; Quinta do Vale means 'Valley Farm') overlooks the village of Benfeita (pron. Benf-āy-ta, and meaning "well made"), one of the designated aldeias do xisto (schist villages) of the Serra do Açor. The nearest town, Côja, is 8km north. We're within walking distance of the waterfalls of Fraga da Pena and the indigenous forest reserve of Mata da Margaraça.

The quinta is also less than 20km southeast of the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela (Mountains of the Star), Portugal's largest natural park and highest mountain range. Piódão, one of the "Historical Villages of Portugal" with all its buildings restored in their original schist and slate and now a major tourist destination, is around 10km away, though nearer 30km by road.

The quinta's two buildings were constructed as agricultural storehouses with animal shelters below. Both are set into the mountainside, cut into the solid rock which forms the rear walls of the ground floors, and built from thick dry-stone walls of schist, the bedrock of this area. In contrast to so many in the area, the walls are sound and the roofs still intact, even if not fully watertight, and won't take too much work to restore.

The steep terraces are also built from dry-stone walls of schist with steps leading up and down from every level. The amount and quality of stonework in this region is stunning. It goes far beyond the utilitarian, expressing a centuries-old bond between people and land in its artistry, reflected in constructions like the beautiful hand-built raised schist paths which snake their way along the valley floors. The 5km Caminho do Xisto between Benfeita and Sardal is a fine example.

Quinta do Vale's terraces have olives, chestnuts, almonds, and all kinds of fruit (lemons, oranges, tangerines, loquat, kiwi fruit, persimmons, apples, pears, quinces, peaches, plums, damsons, strawberries). Grapes line every terrace and there's a little vineyard as well.

A small mountain stream which apparently has never run dry flows through the middle of the property, filling water pools on each terrace, while a slate-built levada (irrigation channel) with steps down its entire length runs all the way down the valley carrying water to the fruit tree terraces. Many streams in the area run dry in summer, so we're very fortunate to have year-round surface water. The sound of a little waterfall below the main house is constantly audible and the smell of mint fills the air where it grows wild in the damper parts of the terraces. Where the stream runs through, the terraces are wide and deep and there's room for our 5.8m Mongolian yurt.

The land has been somewhat neglected and overgrown for the last couple of years. Much of it is covered in the dreaded silvas – the brambles that quickly overtake any neglected land in Portugal – and bracken, but the extent of overgrowth has been kept in check by reasonably regular cleaning and is very minor in comparison to the state of wholly neglected land. The terrace walls are sound and the soil good, fertile, deep and comparatively stone-free: a perfect site for our permaculture project.

With the resources onsite we hope to be self-sufficient in power (hydro + solar) and heat (solar hot water + enough forest to produce sustainable supplies of firewood while still being able to restore native deciduous species) as well as food and water. We're not planning to connect to the grid. Portugal is a world-leader in telecomms innovation and we have excellent wireless internet on site so we can stay in contact with the rest of the world and continue our online work and activities as well as farming our land.

The villagers of Benfeita and neighbouring Pardieiros are warm and friendly and we've already felt very welcome here. We've also rapidly discovered a substantial community of estrangeiros locally. After decades of depopulation (the Portuguese call it 'desertification'), people are moving into the area again. Since 2001, EU funding under the Aldeias do Xisto Program has helped with the installation of basic infrastructure like sanitation, water and electricity, street-lighting, restoration of public and private buldings, and preservation and promotion of the unique heritage of the area.

Beyond the immediate locale, there is a vigorous and growing community of people of all nationalities in Central Portugal pursuing the principles of permaculture on their own quintas and organising themselves into a mutual support network, sharing labour and ideas (see Ecoblogosphere - Portugal section in blog for more links). The potential here for the cross-fertilisation of ideas gathered from the cultural traditions, experimentation and experience of people from all over the world with the local environmental knowledge and still-strong traditions of the Portuguese, is one of the things that's most compelling about this growing collaboration. It has many of the qualities of spontaneous grass-roots human self-organisation at its best (and as many challenges to be worked out as well), and promises to become an inspiring model for the necessary transition in society as we face up to the consequences of our unsustainable lifestyle and degradation of the Earth's natural resources. We're hugely excited to be part of this.

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Espero para fornecer uma versão Português deste site, quando ele é mais completo, e quando eu puder escrever melhor Português. Por agora, o link acima irá dar-lhe uma traduçâo do Google.