WHO IS THIS FOR?
PERMACULTURE DESIGN is useful for those who are guardians of some land, whether that is a big farm, a small homestead, a little urban yard, or a children´s playground… A designer will help to read the landscape and gather the useful information about the site in order to place the different elements and include all the functions desired by the guardians. A designer will notice opportunities to gather and store useful resources in the land as well as solving potential problems that the property might have.
It is for those who already have a vision and already know what they desire but don´t seem to be able to make a plan or find the best placement for each element they desire. A designer can help to bring the pragmatic side to a vision, to make it do-able and realistic.
Using Natural ecosystems as their master, a designer can bring real solutions to difficult landscapes that are ecologically sound and restorative to the land. A Permaculture designer could be able to improve any existing ecosystem to reach its best potential, using the natural resources locally available, meeting the needs of all its elements, including humans.
You might have done a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and still have difficulties in gathering all the pieces and make your design. Even an experienced designer will face challenges, but like everything, those who have years of practice, years of trials and errors, years of research and study, will be able to give you sensible counseling.
NATURAL BUILDING consultancy is for those with specific buildings in mind, who want to use natural and local materials. Whether is a chicken coop, a compost toilet, a small shed, a ruin to restore or a new build, Barbara will be able to give counsel about the different techniques and materials that would suit best according to the owners´ desires and dreams. She could also help you with the location in relation to all the other elements on site.
An experienced consultant can save you a lot of your time and money trying to figure out things you are not so familiar with yet.
Bárbara in particular will only work on a 50km radius from Fundão town as she is not available to go far from her homeland and there are probably more consultants available in other regions who will know their region better.
ABOUT BARBARA AND HER EXPERIENCE :
Barbara is the dreamer and founder of Mount of Oaks/ Monte dos Carvalhos, near Fundão/Central Portugal, an off-grid and human scale Permaculture project in Portugal that has been standing the test of time. After 18 years being part of this ecosystem, Barbara has grown together with it and learned many things with it. Mount of Oaks (MoO) has been her master teacher in so many ways.
It’s possibly important to mention that she has started with no budget as she was living as a sort of a nun without attachment to any institutionalised church. She had only two vows : to follow the guidance of the Spirit of Christ and to live simply and modestly. She lived of donations for 8 years before she came to help the couple who bought this land from the local Mayor. It´s a long an incredible story but Barbara ended up being the only guardian left with a vision for a community, and she ended up buying the land of that couple with a miracle of many donations (crowdfunding way before this concept existed…check it here if you are curious…https://shantipilgrim.blogspot.com/2007/04/god-made-it-happen.html )
I think this is important, because it´s very different to design with a budget, and without a budget… and Barbara’s experience allows her now to design with any budget to no budget 🙂
Her training started with lots of observation (and listening in prayer) until she organised here a PDC (Permaculture Design Course), as she could not afford one otherwise. Her teacher was the great pioneer in Portugal, Lesley Martin, whom she admires a lot as a person and as an excellent teacher . Lesley still lives and teaches at Vale da Lama- Algarve. Lesley came back several times the following years until she left the nomadic life of teaching from north to south with a backpack to give opportunity to the new teachers she was training.
Barbara was gaining some experience and she taught hundreds of volunteers for many years. She taught in residential courses she designed herself, both here at MoO and in other projects that invited her. Lately she has been teaching in our neighborhood which has been growing with likeminded people.
Now that she´s 50 and has all this experience, she feels it is time to share her knowledge in a different way as she has done enough of organising courses and all the constant communication involved. It’s tiring for her to be on a screen for too long, as she much prefer to have her hands dirty and do work outdoors or designing her ideas on paper. When it comes to design, she usually says that the tech part is not a skill she chose to develop as it takes a lot of time and energy to keep up with all the high tech softwares. She does good enough sketches by hand, on paper, and only uses higher technology when it comes to geographic maps that she gets from the city council or google earth if details are not important.
So, if you are looking for a fancy computer designed work, she will not be that person. But her hand designs are just fine, and some people still prefer to have something more handmade anyway.
Her desire and motivation is to help, not only people but also other lands in this region that are in need of restoration and resilience.
Of course there is also a financial motivation, which part of it will be for her own personal needs and part will be for Mount of Oaks´s development. When she bought this land with all the donations she didn’t want it to be her private property, so she donated it to an Association, “White Stone”, that she has been serving all these years without receiving any wage. Actually, she has given all she has, money and time. Thankfully at this stage the maintenance expenses to run MoO have been covered, mainly by donations and the percentage we all give from selling produce, hosting events and guests. Each resident guardian provides for themselves with their own personal skills and contributes a percentage to White Stone/Mount of Oaks, for its maintenance and development. Today the resident guardians are Barbara and her wife Emma and Tomás who is our vegetable grower at the moment and still in his novice stage as a guardian. We are looking for more humans as the system grows.
At this stage Barbara would like to help those who are maybe initiating their journey as she did in 2006, passing on her knowledge and also encouraging them when things are not going exactly as they thought (it´s not an easy life to choose, but it´s definitely worth it all).
When she moved to this land, it was a hill of mostly barren and plowed-to-dust clay terraces, some with some olive trees, a citrus grove and a few pear trees and a small stone ruin. (not unlike most lands people are buying now).
Well, as she often says, that is what was visible to her eyes… thankfully there was much more than that on the underground seed bank, and now we have more than 10 meter high oaks, cork oaks, ash and many other trees, bushes and pasture we haven´t planted, only selected.
Today is pretty much a food forest in an agro-silvo-pastoral system, as we start to introduce more animals to help and raise the diversity even more. In some years the production will be even greater from the new fruits and nuts we are introducing, but for a small group of humans is enough for now.
When a land reaches this kind of fertility and abundance, it only creates more…fertility and abundance.
Barbara is not only a permaculture designer to give you good ideas or work on the ones you already have, but she is a practitioner since she took on the guardianship of this land. As I mentioned before she got blessed with starting without a budget, and that meant she learned how to do most things by herself, starting with rudimentary tools and a lot of hard work as she couldn’t afford to pay labor, or take courses, and she enjoyed the learning process.
Today we also have a rich local network of like minded and skillful people we can exchange working days, but that was nonexistent when Barbara arrived here.
Here´s a list of the things Barbara is able to do, and therefore give counsel on her consultations :
- Design, of course. Landscape and Natural Building
- Natural Building. From site location, drainage and foundations, roofs (including reciprocal roof and thatch), Post and Beam structures, Earthen floors, earth and lime plasters, lime wash and Tadelakt, and many natural wall techniques such as : Wattle and Daub, Super and Hiperadobe, Adobe bricks, Cordwood, Cob, Strawbale (both infill and load bearing technique). Not as ecological, but she has also done a few burnished cement floors with pigments, and brick laying on the stone ruin renovation.
- Plumbing and irrigation. (gravity fed)
- Rainwater harvest and sewage system
- Basic 12v photovoltaic system ( then we improved the system and hired a local friend)
- Small ponds sealed with ducks and geese.
- Veg garden. She is usually not so involved in the production as often others are able to do it, but she was the one designing the beds, creating most of them. She also designed and did most of the installation of a gravity fed drip irrigation system.
- Pruning and grafting as part of the Food Forest maintenance.
- Nursery and plant propagation (inside and outside the politunnel)
- Food Forest Design, implementation, experimentation and management
- Design and implementation of Agro-silvo-pastoral systems (in development now)
- Food Forest Produce : Firewood, crafts (wood and basketry) and transformation for food (this area is more Emma´s, and she will be available for consultation and training too)
Barbara chose to work mainly in this region as after 18 years she rarely left the land and feels so familiar with this Biome : it´s plants, trees and animals with their multiple functions, it´s patterns and relationships between them.
She is an autodidact , so she learns a lot through observation, books, research, videos, observing or helping others, asking experts and practicing straight away. She did enroll in a few courses as time and money permitted, and they have been a great help at the right time :
- PDC in early 2009 with Lesley Martin at MoO
- Pruning and grafting 2015 (one on fruits and one specifically on olives)
- Food Forest with Oregon State University (online) 2022
- Syntropic food forest (3 day course) 2022
- Regenerative Farming and Food Forest (one year course in portuguese by Claudio Esberard in Idanha-a-nova) 2023
- Holistic Management introductory course 2023
- PDC in early 2025 with Silvia Floresta at MoO (more as a review and update as technologies and information evolve, and also to learn from other fellow teachers and practitioners in Portugal)
- She never stops learning .Now she´s diving into coppice forestry
HOW DOES SHE WORK ?
ONE DAY CONSULTATIONS :
- If you simply want to test your existing ideas with her, she can go for a day trip to your land and you will have her for 4 hours. She will send you some questions before hand so the time is focused. If more is needed and if you liked her counseling she could go back, or stay longer that day. ( she can only do one full day a week as she has work at MoO)
CREATION OF DESIGN :
- If you have no clue and need more guidance she can visit the site and mainly listen and collect as much information as she can. she will previously send a list of questions for you to be prepared. It´s mainly about your vision, what exists and what you hope to exist, your budget and all the land´s considerations (position, history, previous use, sun location,potential hazards, etc)
- A good map would be advised, but a google map consultation can work too. She will request the location to be send to her beforehand so she can have it open on her laptop or printed for the field visit. A good map is essential.
- Observation is key, so, besides the interview she will need time to walk the land and feel the space based on your ideas if you already have any, or your feelings, goals and visions. (This might require several visits at different times of the year)
- After the survey she will need to do some homework and come up with different ideas for you to choose from and deliver a potential pattern design for your land. I´ve already mentioned above but she only does sketch and handmade designs as it would take her far too much effort to learn how to use fancy computer software and invest in a more fancy and faster computer, which would make her fees be higher too (what she asks for a day would be asked for an hour). This doesn’t mean the design is bad at all.
The general pattern design doesn’t need much detail anyway, and if what you need is a design for a specific element (a wind or fire break for example), a hand sketch will be as good and sufficient as a computer one, in our opinion of course. This is her way anyway.
A very important thing to know about design is that it is never “carved in stone” . Design is an evolving process, and she will be only helping you in your process.
Another important thing is your relationship with her. If you don’t connect with Barbara for some reason ,or her ideas, you are more than welcome to find someone else. This is a creative and collaborative process. She might have the experience and expertise, but in the end it is your project to develop and implement, it is your investment of time and money and ultimately you will be the one who will have to live with it.
Designing is one first step and yes, it´s at least half the work done. Then you need to define your priorities, make a chronogram ( She could help on that too) and do it step by step.
Keep in mind that most things in Nature are slow, apart from disruptions which can be part of the design, but then, restoration is often slow. We can’t rush a forest to grow. We can accelerate the process with our interventions, but we need to continually observe, analyse, design, implement, evaluate, do some improvements here and there, and again…observe, analyse, design…etc.. An ongoing exciting process !
When it comes to the stage of implementing, you can either do it yourself, invite friends to do it or find your own workers and professionals. She can help with the teaching, but at this moment she is not available to do the work as she has her own land to manage. As I mentioned above, she knows quite a lot of professionals in different areas in this region and she could help connect you with those and even coordenate the work if you like.
EXCHANGE:
For a DAY CONSULTATION of 4h – 150e (including the questions I will send for you to previously reply so we dont take much time on that and focus on the field visit)
For a DESIGN WORK will be the initial day consultation and if you are in agreement and liked her work, the rest of field visits and all the work she will do at home she will charge 40e/hour. She only does one design work a year as she has limited availability and she prefers to dedicate her time to one land at a time. Keep in mind that a good design takes time and a lot of observation in different seasons, unless you have already done that part yourself.
Feel free to get in touch with us for more questions.