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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...
Confirmed: the pine processionary caterpillars don’t like to walk on cling film.
Confirmed: the pine processionary caterpillars don't like to walk on cling film.Already caught a bunch, mostly at dawn but also a few at dusk. We spray them hairspray then vacuum them.It's not perfect: sometimes they manage to squeeze under the film, and we've found a...
Continuing cleanup in the veggie garden.
Continuing cleanup in the veggie garden.
Wrapping cling film around the trunks of pine trees in the garden and close vicinity.
Wrapping cling film around the trunks of pine trees in the garden and close vicinity.For the first time so far, most of them are full of pine processionary caterpillar (Thaumetopoea pityocampa / lagarta do pinheiro) nests. They seem to be descending earlier than usual...