Join us at Keela Yoga Farm for our food forest and agroforestry permaculture course with yoga in Portugal.
Learn everything you need to know about starting your very own food forest and off-grid farm while experiencing community living on a permaculture project. Enjoy daily yoga and meditation practice in the beautiful Portuguese countryside!
Food Forest & Agroforestry Course Dates
Accommodation Costs
- Your own tent: Free
- Rented tent with (proper) mattress and bedding: 80 EUR
- Caravans: EUR 150
- Click here for accommodation information
Click here for information on our food forests
Your Hosts
Laurence Manchee
Your teacher Laurence has been running food forest courses since 2017. Students learn and build the food forests at Keela Yoga Farm. Laurence has managed the permaculture farm since its inception in 2017. Laurence also teaches permaculture workshops, sustainable living workshops and natural building workshops.
After attending many courses including PDCs and food forest courses, Laurence realised that most courses don’t actually teach you the practical aspect of gardening and creating a food forest so created this course for people who want practical hands-on experience in permaculture gardening and food forests. Laurence runs the course to give you hands-on experience in all aspects of designing, installing and maintaining a food forest. This is not a demonstration but a real-life experience of what it would be like if you had to do it for yourself.
Kimberly Manchee
Kimberly is the co-founder of Keela Yoga Farm, she will teach you yoga, the fermentation workshop and help you will all aspects with your stay at keela yoga farm.
Click here for information on our food forests
Click here for photos from our March 2019 one month course
Click here for photos from our October 2018 one month Course
Click here for photos from our March 2018 one month Course
Click here for photos from our November 2017 one month Course
Course Outline
All these topics will be included in the one week course:
- Learn and eat from the existing food forests:
- Chicken managed food forest
- Guild and polyculture mixed food forest
- Restoration Agriculture food forest (for sheep)
- Design and help to expand each of the above food forests
- Learn how to draw to scale drawings for design and planning
- Implement the design for a new food forest at Keela Yoga Farm
- Learn about the food soil web, how to make organic fertilisers and cultivate microbiology for the soil
- Discover how to properly research trees and their companions
- Learn how to design guilds and a food forest
- Plant trees and guilds in the food forest
- Propagate perennials to plant into next year’s food forests (how to get free plants)
- Create beds for annuals in between the trees for planting to maximise the space in the food forests
- Learn how to design, select, buy and install irrigation systems
- Plan and perform earthworks for water catchment, swales and ponds with a tractor
- Learn how to graft trees trees
- Learn how to prune trees
- Learn how to make compost piles, and organic fertilisers and how to cultivate fungi and bacteria for the soil
- Daily Yoga Class
What else is included:
- Three healthy meals daily with lots of produce from our own land
- Optional yoga classes every day (included and free of charge).
- Have time to relax in nature
Permaculture Systems on our farm
- Straw Bale Greenhouse for propagation of plants for the food forest
- Long Drop Vermiculture compost toilet
- Flushing Vermiculture Toilet
- Sunken Beds
- Wood Chip Back to eden beds
- Hygeculture Beds
- Many Natural Buildings
- Greywater systems
- Swales and Ponds (earthworks)
- Reforestation fields
- Chicken Food Forest
- Hot water heated by compost, Solar and Firewood
- Restoration Agriculture fields
What to bring on the course and how to get here – Please click here
Video about being at Keela Yoga Farm (made in 2017)