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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
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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...
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Water repellent sandy soil due to being coated with the waxy substance found on eucalyptus leaves.
Water repellent sandy soil due to being coated with the waxy substance found on eucalyptus leaves.After 50mm of rain in the past day, a thin layer at the top got wet. Just a few millimeters below, it's all dry. This makes it very difficult for seeds to germinate or...
Weeding the comfrey patch.
Weeding the comfrey patch.70 out of the 100 planted root cuttings grew leaves so far. I was hoping for more but this is quite good already given the rather poor soil they are in.Some are quite big already, some are just getting started. Let's see how many make it...