Blog
A visual diary...
Cleaning the playground.
Cleaning the playground.
Adding compost and mulch to the grapevines along the north and west walls.
Adding compost and mulch to the grapevines along the north and west walls.
Cleaning paths with the lawnmower.
Cleaning paths with the lawnmower.It's a lot quicker and easier compared to the brush cutter, so we've been working on making the access paths flat enough for this to work.There's still a lot of work to do, but it's an improvement already.
Written for you...
Getting started with mushrooms
Sometimes you discover a topic, get interested, and dive right in. You pick a project, gather supplies, and quickly do an impressive job for what is the first attempt in an unknown field. This post is not about one of those occasions. During the last two years, both...
Observation: Looking for succulents for fire protection
As part of our fire protection strategy, we have plenty of succulents in our site. While they don’t prevent a fire and should not be used as an insurance against fire, we use it as an additional tool in a vast toolkit to minimize the fire hazard. Looking for...
Plantar árvores — um guia
No início do nosso projeto de Permacultura, plantámos cerca de mil árvores e arbustos. Para quem esteja a pensar fazer algo semelhante, mesmo que seja apenas uma mão-cheia de árvores, partilhamos o procedimento que seguimos: Materiais Serão necessários os seguintes...
Rites of passage
Growing up, I remember feeling a sense of getting ready for something. It seemed like everything I learned and did as well as the passage of time were helping me get there. The feeling went away – at some point in my twenties, I’m not sure – before I could...
The Power of Observation: an example during early Winter
The Importance of Observation In Permaculture, few things seem to take as high a priority has observation. In fact, it is the first of the twelve Permaculture principles: “Observe and Interact”. The idea is that Nature is our teacher, and by carefully looking at how...
Burnout
Living at Alo Land follows a 15 years stint as a software engineer – most of it in SRE, for those in the know – at a tech company. In hindsight it was a great change, but at the time it felt miserable. I had burned out.I first noticed something was off in the autumn...
Wildfire protection strategy
Wildfires are unfortunately a common occurrence in Portugal. They have caused massive damage to life and property, and the underlying causes are as interesting as they are upsetting. When we moved here the risk seemed too small to worry about given that: We’re...
Happy anniversary – 1 year in Portugal
It has been a year since we moved here, which is very confusing. Because it was so intense, it feels like we just moved here, and we are just starting to get a sense of our whereabouts. At the same time, because so much has happened, it seems like many years have...
One year at home in Portugal
The moving guys left with their truck, having spent a couple days packing and loading everything. We loaded basic necessities and the children in the car, locked the house behind us, and left around 16:00. Inês and I took turns driving and sleeping in the car,...
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