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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
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- I foster, I nourish
- I raise (as a child, an animal, etc.)
- I feed, I maintain, I develop
From our visual diary...
Pruned the shoots from this plane tree that we cut a year ago.
Pruned the shoots from this plane tree that we cut a year ago.It'll keep coming back but we'll keep cutting it until it stops: it was one of its roots that punctured the water pipe a couple weeks ago.
Mowed the playground and part of the east swale berm.
Mowed the playground and part of the east swale berm.Bonus: this spring's first irrigation line cutting incident 🤦♂️ (hi David!)
Planted willow, poplar, and plane tree cuttings around the duck pond bank.
Planted willow, poplar, and plane tree cuttings around the duck pond bank.The hope is that they'll root and stabilize the banks, but let's see whether they'll survive being eaten. The geese already nibbled them a bit 😅