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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...
Dominance standoff between two Muscovy drakes broken up by a fearless Khaki Campbell female.
Dominance standoff between two Muscovy drakes broken up by a fearless Khaki Campbell female.This keeps happening but it's the first time I caught it on video. It's always the same female. The Khaki male seems to be begging her to stay cool and not get into trouble 😅
Manually applying JADAM wetting agent (JWA) to bare, hydrophobic sand areas.
Manually applying JADAM wetting agent (JWA) to bare, hydrophobic sand areas.More than two years after clearing them, some spots are still quite water repellent due to the waxy eucalyptus leaf drippings having coated the sand.We were hoping to tackle this by injection...
Propagating sea buckthorn (espinheiro marítimo) by digging up and transplanting suckers.
Propagating sea buckthorn (espinheiro marítimo) by digging up and transplanting suckers.