Africa das Joaninhas - Permaculture project since 2008 Alpiarça - Volunteers Base - Free Volunteering and Work Exchange Opportunities.

Location: Alpiarça, Portugal

I'm Patrícia, I have 40 years old and I'm the mother of a 12 years old girl, Gabriela Sol and I'm Portuguese and I speak fluently English, Spanish and Catalan.

My small land is Africa das Joaninhas, 1,5ha of sandy soil.The name came from the name given to the surrounding country side area "Africa", and the fact that there is a lot of ladybugs,"joaninhas", in my field, a symbol of organic farming. They call this area Africa because , although now it resembles a desert, it use to be impenetrable land. The subsoil is full of watter and vegetation use to be so dense that no one but wild animals could cross it. So the potential of this land is enormous.

My background is Permaculture ( Fukuoka, Bill Mollison, Geof Lawton). I'm also Inspired by Emilia Hazelip synergetic garden work, Linda Woodrow Mandala Garden, Ernst Gotsch agroforestry work, Jonh Van Lengen the barefoot architect, and so many others.

We believe in a life were Nature and Human Beings live in full harmony.

I'm redesigning the Africa's Permaculture project to fit a 3 family's intentional community and to create tools that help re-enforce the connections with the local community. Our goal is to restore Nature and inspire others to do the same.

As do I was here from 2008. The last two years I was absent so now that's a lot of rebuilding and organising that's necessary. The conditions are still far from ideal. We still need to finish the main house so we can start working on a common space area, to create shelters and chill out areas for volunteers and visitants, to finish the warehouse, build a new workshop area, improve the conditions for animals, start the reforestation on the land, create and maintain all the property gardens, create conditions for wild life.

We predict that we will be able to do all this in the next 5 to 10 years. By then we will be building the final residential area, to full accommodate 3 family's or group of friends. In this final project we will feet a 1000m2 lake, a food forest, a wild area with bee hives and small family gardens.

The common area and the Workshop are fundamental to make possible to receive big groups activities, workshops and to start our life school.

The life school is a place were individuals can propose small projects and activities that will be nursed and follow by us, teaching you step by step how to materialised your dream.

Building: We build manly with what we have around.Following the Barefoot architect principles. Our favourite techniques is Cob, Coordwood and Bottles, Wattle and Doub. we also try to recover local and traditional techniques from this area and climate.

Garden and Forest: We know have a small permanent garden that produces enough food for 4 to 5 people. We have fruit all year round. We plan to reforest the land, introduce several areas of food-forest, create more aquatics environments, recover the mandala gardens, introduce some more extensive gardens productions for economical proposes and recover the greenhouse , possible build a nursery for small plants, a nursery for trees and leave the greenhouse for a tropical trees, bushes and plants.

Animals: We plan to re-create as far as possible their natural environment and explore their characteristics to enhance the all ecosystem.

Conditions on site

Accommodation:

Camping – You should bring your own tent and camping equipment. If you don’t have a tent or sleeping bag, ask in advance to see if it is possible to provide you with one. For the moment there are no other options available.

We have 2 showers for the community: 1 Solar and 1 Wood Stove shower.

Cold water tank for swimming

WC: 1 dry toilet shared by the community.

Food:

We’re comitted to provided you with a complete experience on sustainable and heatly diet. Most of the ingredients are seasonal, produce local and mostly from our farm or organic certified.

Please if you thinking on bringing something to the farm, please respect the above principles. We don’t accept non organic products on our farm.Although It’s not demanding that they are certified.

We cook vegetarian meals. We can adapt to special diets like vegan or gluten free but please inform us in advance.

Usual Meals

Breakfast: Oats with yoghurt, honey and fruits from the garden and tea.

Lunch and Dinner: Organic cereals or potatoes with legumes and vegetables from the garden. We have eggs from chickens and geese.

Minimum stay: 2 weeks

Ideal: 1 to 2 months

We’re working to improve the volunteers conditions so we can all make the best out of this exchange!