pascal morimacil

For comparison, i'm also adding a picture of part of the land where I've done nothing at all, and another part of the land where I threw some rye and oats.
Without the constant grazing and plowing, even the untouched part looks a bit better than the neighbor's land: there are a couple of tufts of bunchgrass that have regrown, and after a couple of years there is starting to be a tiny layer of weeds.
But most of the soil is still bare, and the pioneer weeds are not really adding all that much organic matter as they don't even manage to cover the soil with a single layer of fresh leaves.

In places where the rye and oats were sown, the tufts of bunchgrass are still there, but everything else filled out with lush green growth, lots more organic matter being produced, enough to cover the soil entirely after the first season

I took over an olive grove in Portugal, and yeah, the soil was mostly bare clay that was cooked by the sun, with low/nonexistent organic matter content, and some tufts of grass here and there.
We also don't get rain for a long time here, not quite 10 months, but 6-7 months of summer have no rain and temps up to 45 degrees.

I tried a bunch of different things, and I'd say that in my experience, cover crops are by far the best thing you can do.

Bringing in a million tons of mulch might have faster results, but it's not actually very realistic in most cases.

Planting trees, and even most shrubs simply did not work without quite a lot of added mulch and irrigation during the first summer. And even with irrigation I had quite a few losses.

During our short rainy season, the clay floods, and it tends to be a bit of a swimming pool.
Oats and rye grow well in the cold while flooded, and since there the soil isn't just lacking in organic matter but also has pretty much no nitrogen, I also sowed pulses like peas and broadbeans.
While nothing else really seemed to work, that worked great, and it was cheap and low effort.

for one hectare, 35 euros spent on a 25kg bag of rye, a 25kg bag of oats, and a 25kg bad of broadbeans thrown by hand onto the soil with 0 prior preparation of the soil, just before the automn rains arrived.
It germinates, grows during winter, and then you scythe/mow it down for the summer when it's dry anyway. (here we have to cut to comply with local regulations)

Now instead of having bare clay where nothing grows, I have a beautiful lush green field.
comparison with and without cover crops
 
You can see on the pic that after just 2 years, it look fundamentally different from the neighbor's land.

Now that the soil profile has moved along a bit, and I'm starting to see more perennials appear, and so I should be able to plant shrubs with more success, but I'm waiting another year.

I don't think that there is any easier or cheaper way to add huge amounts of organic matter to your land than spending 35 euros on a bag of rye, a bag of oats, and some broadbeans. I got the cheapest stuff I could find, so it was marketed as animal feed, not for sowing, but it worked fine anyway.

I know that stuff like fire can be an issue.
That's also part of why I think a community is probably a better idea that doing something all alone: If multiple people in an area are digging ponds, and creating wildlife habitats and firebreaks and things like that, overall it has a much greater impact, and a lot more things are possible.
If you have a small homestead lost in the middle of a eucalyptus monoculture... Well then yeah, you can try and do things differently, but overall the impact is going to be too small to make a real difference.

I don't necessarily need multiple ruins on one single piece of land, and I'm not really 100% set on anything tbh. I'm open to ideas.
I have to see if I can find other people who would be interested, and what they want.
I'm thinking that some people might be interested in living in a bungalow on free land, while others might prefer to renovate a small house and own their own land, and it's probably good if there is enough space for multiple different ideas and people and projects.

The area seems nice, and it would be possible for me to go live there.
However I'm not really seeing how this would be the best area to enable a community, considering that there are very few houses or ruins for sale, and the land in the area is about 10x more expensive than in most other areas.

It seems like that would make it really hard to set up a community of likeminded people, as most people these days are not overflowing with money.

Hey Elia,
I don't really mind one region or another. What's important to me is to find someplace where it's possible for a community to exist and grow.

I know that there are lots of homesteads and permaculture projects that are spread out, and who would not mind having a neighbor.

I'm wondering if there is enough enthusiasm to create a place where it's not just 3-5 people but more like 20-50, growing to a couple of hundred eventually.
Like all the small villages that existed almost everywhere in the world up until recently.

I could buy a very large piece of land, and set it up as the commons, so everyone has a place to gather wood and grow some stuff.
And then everyone only has to set up some housing for themselves.

I know that there are probably opportunities all over the world, however I'm pretty set on Portugal for the moment.

I like Portugal, because here I'm able to find remote work relatively easily.
Meaning I can live in a remote place, but still have enough income to buy a house and land. Even when working part time.
Like most people, I don't really have 100k + laying around to be able to just buy a farm and never worry about a mortgage. And I'm not super keen on the idea of working on someone else's property just for a bed and some food.
I think that having ways to have some income for the community is a pretty good idea overall, as if nothing else, we need to pay property taxes pretty much anywhere anyway.

Hey, I'm looking for like minded people to start a permaculture village in Portugal.

The idea would be to group multiple communities and/or homesteads in one area, where we can then share knowledge, tools, help each other out, spend time together, and collectively have a bigger impact on rewilding the land, managing forests to prevent fires, increasing water infiltration, and so on.

Not a community where everyone lives under the same roof and shares a communal kitchen (though such initiatives would also be welcome), but rather more of a village, where each person, family or community can have their own personal space, but we can still come together for some common projects, be it a library, a market, land management projects, or whatever else.

I think it's too difficult to do everything on your own. Putting on many hats is part of permaculture, in a way, but being a famer and a plumber and an electrician, and knowing about beekeeping and herding goats, and local laws, and everything else is in my opinion not so viable in the long term. Even if you were to manage it, you are one injury or illness away from having everything fall apart again.

Instead of 20-50 different people all investing in beekeeping equipment, we could have one or 2 people who know about beekeeping, and who set up or move hives all around the place.
Instead of loads of people having 2 goats, and the others using brushcutters and other mechanical equipment to clear the land, we could have one or two people with larger herds, doing rotational grazing, coming to clean people's land.
Are we all going to have a forge, and a kiln and whatever else? It's such a huge investment each time. It seems like it would make more sense to have community initiatives and infrastructure for some things, and some private stuff that is shared or rented out to others.

Ideally, someone who for example is working remotely, but wants a more natural lifestyle, would be able to move to the village, and benefit from buying locally produced honey, eggs, cheese and vegetables from others who live there and want to work the land.
Meanwhile the homesteader next door gets to have some income from selling their eggs and cheese and olive oil and whatever else.
And both get to have some company.

It can get really lonely and expensive trying to homestead all alone out in the middle of nowhere.
Let's get together and talk and figure something out, we can help each other!

I'm offering a 20 m2 room with a double bed and balcony in a 100 m2 apartment, and access to 4000 m2 of land where I'm digging a pond and planting a food forest.

150 euros per month with expenses included, fiber internet. I'm 36, male, I work remotely, I smoke and I have a cat. There is also a dog in the garden.

It's located in a small village with a shop, 15 min walk from the train station, 15 min to Tomar with the train.

I'm looking for someone who'd not just be a flatmate, but a like minded friend, who also wants to work towards food self sufficiency, and help in creating a bigger community in the long term.

Someone who would help in harvesting and drying figs, harvesting olives to make oil, taking care of the veggie garden and chickens, etc, with the long term goal to produce most/all of our own food.
Though each person is entitled to privacy, I'm looking for someone who would be open to regularly sharing meals and conversations, and cooperating to build a homestead.

Contact me for more information.
I speak English, French, German, and Portuguese.