Keeping animals are such a joy, especially when you can integrate them into the farm to reduce work load and increase fertility. Not to mention all the food you get. This year we have had so many births of piglets, chicks and lambs and here is a little into and some photos for you. more “Baby animals are so cute – births on the farm”
Want to know what it is like on one of our Permaculture internships? Check out this 20 min video showing what we got up to each day during the Summer 2021 internship.
Remember internships are different seasonally and annually but this will give you an idea. more “Permaculture Internship Video”
List of Olive presses in our area. Between Penamacor, Fundao and Castelo Branco Area, please leave comments about the ones you have used or if you know any others.
more “Olive Press Fundao / Penamacor / Castelo Branco / Idanha-a-Nova area”
Gift a tree to your loved ones! A birthday, Father’s day, Christmas present or whatever occasion you like. We will do a personalised video of the tree planting for you to share. more “Buy a tree for a gift”
We planted a chicken food forest two years ago with many species of plants. Fallen fruit and low hanging fruit will be for chickens, middle fruit for us and the highest fruit will be for wildlife.
Eucalyptus trees are bad for the environment and a fire hazard in Portugal. We have killed many areas of Eucalyptus on our farm and we would like to share with you how we kill eucalyptus trees. more “How to Kill Eucalyptus Naturally on Organic farms”
We can show you around the whole farm or focus on certain areas for a private tour and consultation. We will be happy to give you any advice you need and answer any questions you may have. more “Farm tour”
You are welcome to stay and experience our off-grid permaculture farm in Central Portugal. Find out what off-grid living in nature is all about, learn from us how we got started and see some of our permaculture and off-grid systems. more “Offgird eco farm stay Portugal”
A simple gluten-free recipe with Carob and Rice flour, both ingredients readily available in Portugal. I just tried this one day and it is the best gluten-free bread we have made. more “Gluten Free Bread Machine recipe with Carob Flour”
Here is an update on what we have been doing on the farm, information on upcoming yoga retreats and volunteering opportunities, and farm-stay holidays and experiences with us. more “Update from the farm”
We were set to open our doors for guests again in two weeks but last week Portugal went back into a strict lockdown, so we have to close until further notice. more “Closed for guests due to covid restrictions”
We made a youtube video on our morning tasks at Keela so you can see he we start our day. There is nothing better than getting to connect with nature, get some fresh air and connect with animals and plants every morning before breakfast. more “Morning Tasks on a permaculture farm”
This winter we are planting out our newest agroforestry field in multiple stages. A field to integrate fruit crops, reforestation and sheep pasture. This week we planted in 54 fruit trees into the agroforest along swale lines. Have a read about the stages we have completed and what we have left. more “Fruit trees going into the agroforestry field”
In November 2020 we planted our first 13 trees in our new agroforestry system. We have prepared this field over the last year with swales, fencing, cover crops and a pond and now they have 13 cool new trees! This field will have a forest planted that will offset carbon, create habitat for wildlife and provide food, medicine, timber, firewood and hay for animals.
We wrote a three-page article on Sheep Wool Insulation for permaculture magazine. It talks about ways of cleaning and using insulation. More people should be using wool for insulation, this article looks at the effort vs cost saving. We have subscribed to this magazine for a few years and can highly recommend it to you. more “Our first Article in Permaculture Magazine”
This year we have had a bit of rain in September so we started our tree planting early. On top of that we further planted into the layers of our silvopasture plantation.
Thank you to our Permaculture interns for buying trees and planting them. We planted cherries, nectarines and almonds into space that we had in our silvopasture. We also planted cabbages between all the grapevines that were added last winter.
We are lucky to have had our friend Kiko help us make the wine for the past two seasons. Kiko grew up making wine at his father’s winery, studied winemaking and has worked in various wineries. We make wine from organic grapes and nothing is added during the wine-making process and no chemicals to the grapes during the growing for truly organic wine.
This blog details the process and if you live nearby and have grapes you can bring us your grapes next year and we will make your own wine for you in exchange for some of the wine.
During the summer of 2020, we ran a 10-week Natural Building internship where guests joined for 1 week, 1 month or the whole 10 weeks to help build a barn from start to (almost) finish using sustainable building techniques.
There are terms such as ‘natural building’ and ‘low impact building’ but this time around we went for a ‘sustainable build’ that offsets carbon and has a positive impact. We used recycled materials, materials from our land and used a variety of natural building techniques including cordwood, wattle and daub, stone walling and straw bale. more “Photos from the 2020 Natural Building Internship”
During the lockdown, we had 5 guests guaranteed with us for 3 months after they were meant to leave and then we enjoyed the farm to ourselves for a while. For those of you that are not following us on social media for our daily updates, here are some photos of all the things we were up to. We are now open for guests and are running permaculture internships. more “Life During Lockdown”
Sheep are amazing creatures to have on your permaculture farm. For very little input they give us so much in return. They manage our pasture helping to keep our land fire safe, they provide us with income from meat, cheese from their milk and manure for our food forests and growing gardens. more “Cleaning and Using Sheep Wool for Insulation”
We started our new chicken powered compost system one month ago when we finished our new chicken run. The chickens will make us compost whilst producing food for the chickens. This is part of our wider Keela Yoga Farm chicken system.
We have just got two piglets from a friend to help us manage our farm and give us sustainable food. We look forward to learning how to look after pigs and use them as workers in an effort to offset more carbon and produce more food.
The breed of the pigs are half Mangalitsa, half Bisaro and they will live in our pig house for two weeks whilst they get used to us. Our farm is officially called ‘Vale Leitao’ meaning Valley of the Piglet. There were already three stone build pig houses on the land when we purchased it. We had been using one of them as a chicken house until the recent completion of our new chicken house and run, so the pigs are currently in the old chicken house. more “Introducing our pigs”
In September 2019 we completed the building of our straw bale community house. This is a large building where our visitors can eat, work, attend classes and relax. This was built on rocky land using a sustainable design and building with straw and clay from our area or nearby. Please take a look at this blog post which shows photos of all of the build steps. more “Building our Strawbale Community House”
Over the past year, we have planted one field using silvopasture principles. Silvopasture is where you grow trees and shrubs with animals integrated into the system that benefit each other. The idea is to reduce carbon based inputs into the system such as tractors to cut grass and fertiliser for trees whilst getting extra forrage for the animals. more “Silvopasture for Chickens & Sheep”
Kimberly Manchee is the co-founder of Keela Yoga Farm. She is the farm and kitchen manager and resident Yoga teacher. Kimberly teaches workshops on Reiki, food fermentation and preserving, makes cheese, connects the fresh farm food to the kitchen, runs yoga retreats, teaches local yoga classes and looks after the farm animals. Have a read for more information on Kimberly Manchee. more “Kimberly Manchee – Yoga Teacher and Co-Founder of Keela Yoga Farm”
We have had a very busy year on the farm with more than 100 volunteers, many courses and retreats. We have started some new permaculture systems, continued in the food forests and with our reforestation project and the natural building projects. Here is an update on some of our current projects for those not following us on facebook or Instagram. more “Photos and updates from 2019”
An 5 min video update on how the earthworks that have been dug on all of our food forest course are doing after heavy rain. more “Swales and earthworks in action”
Keela Yoga Farm featured a double-page spread in the local printer newspaper ‘Jornal do Fundão‘. It was using us as an example of the many people coming here to set up farms and communities offsetting the reducing population in the area. more “Double page spread in local newspaper”
There are three types of chickens, chickens for eggs, chickens for meat and then there is Beyonce ‘The Gentleman Cockerel’. more “Introducing Beyonce – Our Pet Cockerel”
We are so happy that Sudhir Rishi will return to us for another 6-day retreat at Keela Yoga Farm on the 13th June 2020J. Join us to deepen your knowledge of Yoga philosophy, Ayurvedic practices, Permaculture and sustainable living whilst being immersed in nature. The focus of the retreat will be Mastering Relationships with yourself, partners, other, yourself, nature and food.
more “Retreat with Sudhir Rishi June 2020 – Mastering Relationships”