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Grow With Us

Where Regeneration Meets Community: Experience sustainable living in a family-led food forest on Portugal’s Silver Coast, where your participation directly contributes to building a resilient multi-generational ecosystem.

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:

  1. Leveraging existing resources and activities
  2. Attracting people to the land (as participants or volunteers)
  3. Creating a volunteer pipeline 
  4. Thoughtful development of their 2.5-hectare plot

What's with the name?

From Wiktionary: alō (present infinitive alereperfect active aluīsupine 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...

Weeding the tree cabbage (couve galega) patch.

Weeding the tree cabbage (couve galega) patch.

Weeding the tree cabbage (couve galega) patch.24 out of 30 planted are still there. Not sure if it was the snails or something else. Oh well, this should be plenty for the ducks anyway.

Weeded and filled in the comfrey patch.

Weeded and filled in the comfrey patch.

Weeded and filled in the comfrey patch.Some of the root cuttings planted last year didn't take. Those empty spots were now planted by dividing the strongest looking crowns.As a side effect, we now have a bunch of root cuttings to plant in other places.

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