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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...
Fully drained the pond of dirty water, then refilled it.
Fully drained the pond of dirty water, then refilled it.The ducks couldn't pass up the opportunity to dabble in the mud at the bottom.
Testing a submersible dirty water pump in the duck pond.
Testing a submersible dirty water pump in the duck pond.It manages to turn a sprinkler as long as it's not too high, which is helpful for using the poopy duck water as fertilizer. It also makes it easy to just recirculate and oxigenate the water, although the pump is...
Farm to glass!
Farm to glass!I was thinking of harvesting the radishes and roasting them with some herbs and lemon.But our youngest child was ecstatic with the idea of making radish juice. "It's gonna taste boooom!" I thought exactly the same, though I think with a different energy...