Organic Smallholding in Central Portugal
Oct 3rd 2007sophieblogging & webstuff & portugal & friends
The lovely Pete & Cynthia are now ‘almost owners’ of a beautiful quinta for their Awakened Living Project - spiritual evolution & healing, meditation, permaculture, holistic health, raw food diet - see the blog of their progress at
http://portugalproject.com
Jul 3rd 2007sophiewwoof & self-sufficiency & food & friends
This appeared in this month’s issue of the WWOOF newsletter “WWINDY NEWS”
From: Vinod, India.
There was a farmer who grew superior quality, award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the State fair, where it won honour and prizes.
A newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. He discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbours!
“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours, when they are also entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.
“Why sir,” said the farmer, “don’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn.”
The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbour’s corn also improves.
Success does not happen in isolation. It is very often a participative and collective process. So share the good practices, ideas, new learnings with your family, team members, friends and neighbours.
Today we’ll be helping some friends move onto their quinta. They moved over from Italy about a month ago to a lovely quinta near the Rio Mondego. Today all their belongings arrive, including the yurts they make and will be living in. Experts in an Italian system of organic gardening similar to a ‘no dig’ system, they have already planted the quinta with this year’s crops. Once settled in their new home they’ll be running courses, workshops and ‘open days’ on this gardening method, and are especially keen to have children visit to play and learn.
.
Powered by FireStats
