About Keela Yoga Farm

Keela is a sizeable 18-hectare homestead, permaculture farm, off-grid retreat center and permaculture education centre. Keela was founded in 2016 and first and foremost, it is our home where we live off the grid and in harmony with nature.

At Keela, we have a reforestation program, market vegetable gardens, agroforests, food forests, yoga room, many natural buildings, a cold plunge pool, lakes and many established permaculture systems. We also have a reforestation program and a community centre for permaculture education.

Laurence Manchee lives onsite and is a certified permaculture educator with the Permaculture Association UK. Apart from being a farmer and educator, he speaks at permaculture events, writes for permaculture magazine UK and provides consultancy services locally.

We have Permaculture Design Courses, yoga retreats, natural building courses and volunteers starting every month.

We are located in the centre of Portugal near Fundao

Our Projects

Food Forest Program

We have five food forest areas, one planted each year since 2017 (artificial edible forest of trees, shrubs, ground covers and climbers) covering 1 hectare of land, which will keep expanding until 18 hectares of land is full of food forests or similar concepts (e.g. restoration agriculture).

Daily Yoga

Yoga Portugal — The yoga deck with a sunrise view

Our resident yoga teacher and guest yoga teachers provide optional free daily classes to volunteers and students on the Natural Building and Permaculture courses.

Natural Building

We try to use materials from our land as much as possible. So far, we have built two large straw bale houses, a wattle and daub chicken house, a long drop compost vermiculture dry toilet, a non-flush pee station, two compost toilets, a straw bale greenhouse, a natural sheep barn and a vermiculture flushing toilet.

Permaculture Vegetable Gardens

One of our many growing areas

A big focus of the farm is gardening and growing food for ourselves and our guests. We work in the gardens every day of the year. We are growing perennial vegetables and fruits in the food forests; we grow annual vegetables in the growing gardens; we have sunken beds, raised beds, wood chip beds, hugelkultur beds, herb gardens, a herb spiral, traditional beds, a kitchen garden and we are working on reviving some springs and systems built on our land by the Moors.

Where we do not grow food, we buy organic from a local organic permaculture farm or the local market bio stalls. Our dry food is bought in bulk from an organic distributor of food and other products such as washing up liquid and floor cleaner (we purchase this with a local bulk buying co-op that we coordinate).

Permaculture system research and experimentation

Compost water heater — Drawing of the compost pile that we built that is currently heating water. We have many experiments on the go, including a long drop compost vermiculture toilet, different styles of food forests, ways to do cover crops, vermiculture flushing toilets, and restoration agriculture.

Daily Harvest of Food

Wine Making

We make wine and other fermented, healthy drinks such as kombucha and kefir. Next year we would like to try making cider.

Natural Products

Home Soap with ingredients from the land — Homemade soaps

We make soaps, moisturisers and cleaning products. We usually do free workshops on these for guests.

Preserving Food

We make jam, chilli sauces, and fermented foods from our products every week. We also dry herbs for cooking and making tea blends.

Reforestation

We commit time, money and space to reforestation. We like offering people a cheap option to offset their carbon footprint.

Offgrid and sustainable

Our PV panels create electricity for the farm.

We have our drinking water from the land, our electricity, and a lot of our food, and we make our income to live and expand the farm.

Fun

We have pizza parties with our stone-built pizza oven, BBQs, fires around the stone circle, film nights, visits to the cafe and fun during all courses and work. ‘Smile, it’s your birthright’ – Sudhir Rishi.

Glamping and Caravans

Enjoy sleeping in nature, with stars, birds and views. We have tipis, various caravans and eco huts, or you can bring your tent.

Animals

We have thirty chickens, twenty sheep, pigs, bee hives, cats and dogs.

Facilities

Straw Bale Community Kitchen

straw bale house portugal — It is an eco house made of straw bales and clay. Guests enjoy a large communal room and many outside areas to eat and socialise. Click here
for info on the build of this house.

Long Drop Vermiculture Compost Toilet

Tropical Strawbale Greenhouse Shower Room

In addition to our outside shower, we have an inside wood-powered shower in our greenhouse. The water heater heats the greenhouse, and guests stay nice and warm. This gives the beautiful feeling of showering outside in nature but inside in the warmth of the greenhouse. Read more about it.