One of my potential future life-options is to rent out my house, hook up with a community and ‘do Permaculture’ for a few months or maybe even years. ATM I’m feeling quite drawn to Portugal as a friendly, cheap and climatically advantaged location.
However, I’ve found it quite a challenge to find the kind of communities I’m interested in joining – I want something very down to earth with normal people, relatively low commitment and easy going.
There’s plenty of Permaculture type stuff going on in Portugal, but I don’t want to go to a full on ‘Permaculture design centre like the Tamera Peace and Research Centre, less formal places aren’t as easy to find.
Three place I might visit
So far I’ve found three places I’m interested in visiting, mainly just by typing in ‘Permaculture Portugal’ to Brave.
A Quinta – is in SW Portugal near Tamera ecovillage – this is a 140 HA regenerative farming site based on deep ecological principles that seems pretty open to newcomers (to set up microbusinesses) or to volunteer for up to 30 hours a week. It’s only been established for three years but does look fascinating!
*It’s quite a common name!
Quinta Do Vale (1)* - In central Portugal, somewhere around 30Ks East of Coimbre – this is a 2 HA family Quinta established in 2008 and looks like a great place to visit. They seem to be well involved in rebuilding the area following the 2017 fires which wiped out many local houses (including many of their buildings). They’ve also got one of the most pro-looking Permaculture web sites I’ve seen. For summer 2019 there’s a very open invitation for people wishing to come and stay for a couple of weeks or months to help out, or even to just use them as a base to explore the wider area.
The Hive – located in Rossaio, an abandoned village near Colmeal in Central Portugal – of all the projects this looks like the most open and promising for me, although they are presently going through tough times due to recent forest fires.
Next steps…
I might take a little drive down next Spring or Summer (2020) to see what’s occurring in these places. In the mean time I’ll try and find a few more places to add to the list, I should be able to do better than three!
And the biggest downside to doing this....
I've got two and a half easy days work next week in Plymouth, £450 in my pocket, and today I was just offered (at short notice) what will probably be the same rate for the week after next.... that's £900 in my pocket (and expenses paid) for easy work.... I couldn't earn this in Portugal, and to be honest it's not as if my life is that hard here in the U.K!
Anyway, this is my positive post of the week, if you've got any inspiring Permies type tales do let me know!