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Grow With Us
Alo Land Strategy Summary
Alo Land is a regenerative initiative by us – Petru and Inês. We are former tech professionals who moved to Portugal with our two children. We currently manage a 1-hectare plot with a food forest and own an additional 2.5-hectare undeveloped plot nearby.
Vision and Goals
- Land restoration using regenerative practices
- Supporting holistic well-being (physical, emotional, spiritual)
- Cultivating eight forms of capital (financial, material, living, social, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, cultural)
- Building community resilience
Current Challenges
- Overwhelming workload maintaining the food forest
- Potential for more social connections, particularly for the adults
- Gaps in food production despite potential
- Restrictions on travel due to land care responsibilities
Strategic Approach
The family has shifted to an incremental growth strategy that focuses on:
- Leveraging existing resources and activities
- Attracting people to the land (as participants or volunteers)
- Creating a volunteer pipeline
- Thoughtful development of their 2.5-hectare plot
What's with the name?
From Wiktionary: alō (present infinitive alere, perfect active aluī, supine altum or alitum); third conjugation
-
- I foster, I nourish
- I raise (as a child, an animal, etc.)
- I feed, I maintain, I develop
From our visual diary...
The two Muscovy mommas are now inside this cage for a while, each with its own half.
The two Muscovy mommas are now inside this cage for a while, each with its own half.The ducklings kept wandering off and getting lost since they are small enough to pass through the electric fence without any issues. The mommas can't follow and they'd get stressed....
Flowering dog rose (rosa mosqueta).
Flowering dog rose (rosa mosqueta).We planted several of these as replacements last autumn, this is the first one to flower.
One duckling is gone 😔
One duckling is gone 😔It's not clear what happened. We noticed he was missing when putting the momma ducks inside for the evening, and found him by himself on the grazing strip. He was alive but not moving, with a full crop and barely managing to squeak.Once in the...