About

Lavandeira is a community permaculture farm of 8 hectares with terraces and a river. Our objective is to show that permaculture can scale and produce food for the community and encourge other farmers to move to a more sustainable farming method that leaves room for biodiversity and production as well as sustaining the community.

Let me give some context behind what we are trying to achieve. Land is plentiful, labour is not. In Portugal, as in many places in the world, there has been an exodus of people in the last 70 years to the cities. As an example, the valley here was, until only 50 years ago, sustaining around 20 families. Now zero. The land is “cleaned” once a year to reduce fire risk and nothing productive is growing. Trees are scarce since the fires of 2017 and there is limited shade.

The Lavandeira project is about using agroforestry principles to bring back life to the valley and bring back people and community to nature.

Our first year has been about kick-starting this process. We cleaned the land, retained the trees that had survived the fires, put in the basic watering infrastructure and planted lots! The secret is no secret, we focus on maximising photosynthesis! Creating an ecosystem.

Based on ideas around communities and allotments we are now looking to engage local communities to join us in making Lavandeira a productive farm for us all and feed us all sustainably leaving room for nature, and bringing us back to its very heart.

Join us in journey to create a replicable model for all farms everywhere!

Our Story

In 2015, a short, 15 minute documentary about Syntropic Agriculture called Life in Syntropy, was published. After seeing this video, the idea of scaling permaculture seemed possible and the project of buying a farm in Portugal began to take shape.

After 2 years volunteering with Duncan and Hannah in 2018 and 2019 and with plans held up by Covid, Lavandeira was purchased in June 2023.