Creating a new permaculture village in Portugal

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!

Hey Pascal,
are you set on Portugal?
I would love to have more permies move into the neighborhood here in Andalucía.

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.

Hi Pascal,
which area are you looking at?
Have you considered Alentejo by the "big lake"?

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 dont get notified when people answer my posts.... what am i doing wrong ?

Luckily i noticed your answer.

Not sure if i can post this here but near where i live there are 6 hectares available for a reasonable price.
https://www.idealista.pt/en/imovel/34648394/
super close to the massive dam/lake.

then there are much much bigger lands available too.... so if your pocket is deep, this area might tickle your curiosity.
Mind the "fire belt" area in Portugal and double check "mining projects" ..... terrible "accidental fires" that devastated the THEN prime coastal areas (last summer).... It reminded me of Lahaina somehow...

you can drop me a line via telegram/signal or email if you prefer. Would be interesting to pick your brain a little.

edit  for your reference this one is also one of my close by "neighbours" selling their property. This one is awesome if you have the cash to splash. they were called "restautante dos avestruces" it was a restaurant i am told but has been shut a few years since the "RONA"
https://www.idealista.pt/en/imovel/33932161/
https://miningwatch.pt/mapadominerio/index.en.html

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.

I encourage you to look at the link i sent previously regarding the "mining projects" their site "coincidentally" states
"The vast areas mapped naturally coincide with phenomena that also affect large areas of the territory, such as forest fires. To date, we are not aware of any direct causal relationship between these phenomena and extractive industry activities, nor of any statistical studies that suggest a correlation beyond mere coincidence. — September 17th 2024"

there is no secret that when people dont want to sell their properties, some fire "motivates" them to do so, forcing them to sell for pennies. Nothing new.

Areas covered in eucaliptus or large "mono cultures" bring pesticides that become airborn (ie Santarem, leiria for monocultures and Castelo branco area as part of the fire belt of eucaliptus plantations)

Much more expensive is Algarve..... Alentejo is an up and coming area, yet very infra developed and under populated, pesticide free...
I do agree with you there is land to be found cheaper, and you will find many expats flocking there..... i chose this area to avoid investing and losing all to fire.

I was under the impression you wanted to buy land and allow people to move in with their own home (bungalow or similar) i didnt get the impression you needed multiple ruins in one piece of land. Maybe you will find it. In Spain there are abandoned towns which might be cheaper and more convenient perhaps.

I wish you all the best on your search.

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.

Hey Pascal, I really love your idea! Completely agree that homesteading on your own is hard and lonely, we tried to do that in rural North Carolina and had a rough go of it. We had bees and ducks and a couple acres but kinda wished we had more friends at the time so now we're over in Northern Spain. I love Portugal too, but my mastery of the Portuguese language is lacking jaja