Preparing for a major planting and pruning operation 🌳

Hello everyone,

We’re delighted to be able to share with you the first major operation planned in Terra Livha. As soon as we made the purchase of the land, in April 2023, we were able to start planning the project’s priorities. And knowing that the work leading up to the restoration of the old farmhouse was going to take place over a fairly long period of time, we decided to start, at the same time, with an operation aimed at preserving nature, and encouraging its regeneration.

In fact, from the very beginning, our vision has been to make this land a genuine space dedicated to nature. The region has suffered greatly from farming methods that have destroyed many ecosystems, and desertification is gradually intensifying, creating more erosion, less rainfall, a lack of vegetation, and the gradual death of local trees such as the cork oak and holm oak. On the other hand, global warming is having a major impact on this region of Portugal, and rainfall is becoming scarcer, coming in short, but intense periods, which makes it very difficult for the water to infiltrate efficiently. So, we want to do what we can to try to slow down or even stop this downward spiral, in order to restore a rich natural environment capable of regenerating itself, and to increase the amount of water infiltrated into the ground.

To this end, in June 2023 we were lucky enough to meet André Vizinho, a recognised specialist in Portugal on the subject of regenerating the region’s typical ecosystems. It’s a great advantage for us to be able to work with him and his team because he coordinates numerous actions in the region, and this allows us to integrate our approach into a regional and global vision, which will enable us to do our utmost to halt this negative trend and try to gradually return to conservation and regeneration areas, which are rich in flora and fauna.

With André’s help, we drew up an action plan to define the priority actions on the ground to restore vitality where it was most needed. This was done in several stages, and André went out into the field several times to get a better idea of the current situation, understand the plants health stage and to see what the best approach was to start with.

After a lot of sharing and different versions, we came up with an action plan combining 2 areas:

1. Prune sick and weak trees, essentially cork and holm oaks, in the most critical areas. This type of pruning will help to restore their vitality. At the same time, we want to store the organic matter from pruning at the base of the trees, because it helps to protect the soil from high temperatures, increase their humidity, and as a consequence, it balances the composition of the soil and creates nutrients for the tree’s growth. Also, it helps to prevent the development of diseases (a bacteriological imbalance in the soil encourages the development of fungi that infect the tree). Some dead trees also need to be cut, to speed up the process of creating organic matter for the other trees close by. But some of them are being deliberately preserved to help create small ecosystems to promote the development of biodiversity.

Pruning and cutting area above the road that crosses the land:

2. Planting trees and shrubs in some key places:

a) In some areas that have been identified as conservation areas due to the fact that there are bigger slopes (which is not so good for agriculture) and they are close to water lines. This helps to increase humidity, water retention and better infiltration, and encourages the development of genuine conservation areas that help nature to regenerate throughout the land.

b) A diverse planting area was planned for the area below the lake and above the eucalyptus trees, taking advantage of the humidity naturally present in this location.

c) Set up of a natural barrier of trees and shrubs in the north side of the existing lake, with a syntropic concept, to protect the lake from the prevailing winds from that direction, and thus reduce evaporation from the lake. Syntropy is an approach originated in Brazil, aligned with the principle of agroforestry, while working in a linear layout, which simplifies its management.

A great part of the property has trees that need to be pruned. But we start with what it’s possible. We planned this pruning activity in a 10 hectares piece of the land.

Diagram of the conservation areas (hatched in green), the area below the lake (b) (thin purple line), and the plantation lines (a) and (c) (thin yellow and orange lines):

This intervention, of course, has a cost. We launched a special appeal for donations to the community to help us finance this operation (the purchase of the trees and the André’s work, who spent many hours preparing this activity, in addition to his presence and his team’s during the operation). It was a real pleasure to see that, despite the very tight deadlines, everyone wanted to contribute what they could to make this operation possible. A big thank you to everyone for that 🙏💚.

After all this work, what remained to be done was to organise the logistics with the volunteers, ideally just before winter, which is the best time to plant🌳.

To carry out the pruning and the cutting of certain dead trees, it was needed to make official requests, as the cork oak and holm oak species are protected. So, to prepare for this, in August 2023, Pureza and Cyrille marked with white paint all the dead trees that needed to be cut (this is part of the official request process).

At the same time, André contacted the nurseries in the region to start booking the young plants that we would need for this major planting operation, which is going to take place in November, in cooperation with volunteers from the community volunteers who wanted to be a part of it.

See you in November for more adventures and the big planting and pruning intervention! 🌳