I planted 160.000 trees on my Portugal Homestead

My name is Mark and at the age of 24, I started planting trees on this piece of land in Portugal. At the beginning, the soil was dry, compacted and poor in organic material, exposed to extreme heat and seasonal drought. There were few trees and very little shade, very little fertility. But since then, a lot has changed. Over the past six years, more than 160,000 trees have been planted here and they have completely changed this place. Entire fields have been transformed from unproductive pastures into multi-layered forest ecosystems. The birds returned, water retention improved, food production increased year after year. But the process was far from linear. There were droughts, frosts, heat waves, financial challenges, thousands of trees lost and many other unexpected events. There was a constant need to redesign and a continuous adaptation to everything that the ecosystem was teaching. This is the story of Quinta das Abelhas. My journey into Centropic Agriculture began years earlier, when I first met Ernst Goetsch. The encounter with him marked a pivotal moment in my life, as I saw someone who had spent his whole life doing exactly what I dreamed of doing one day. During my internship on his farm, what fascinated me was not only the productivity and health of his plantations, but the underlying logic behind them. The greater picture with which he sees the whole planet. The idea that agriculture could function as a process of increasing life rather than diminishing it. That human intervention, when focused to optimize ecological processes, could actually create incredible acceleration in the recovery of ecosystems in crisis. In 2019, at the age of 24, I came to Portugal to put that vision into practice within my own life. I found myself in a landscape very different from the humid tropics where I had studied under Ernst. Mediterranean climates have a number of challenging properties. Long and dry summers, irregular rainfall, extreme temperature fluctuations, degraded soils, floods, followed by water scarcity. Many people believed that the dense forest systems could never function here, but to me that challenge was a huge motivation. At the time, I was very fascinated by Greek mythology, and in all of their stories they described the ecology of the places they visited. The landscapes they described were very different from what exists in the region today. Large forests, springs, rivers, humid forest ecosystems full of life and abundance. The same stories also tell how they cut down these magnificent trees and began waging wars on each other in order to secure the remaining natural resources. These stories inspired me, and I began to ask myself whether it would be possible to bring back these forests that I read about in the ancient Greek myths. Through Ernst I was invited to do an internship on a farm in southern Portugal called Freixo do Meio. I began experimenting with first attempts of agroforestry systems on their land. I could see what worked and what didn't, and when I returned to visit the sites half a year later, the results clearly showed me that it would be possible. The systems needed to be refined in a lot of ways, but the trees were there and they grew. Alfredo, the owner of Freixo do Meio, also believed in that it would be possible, and he gave me access to a piece of land inside of his farm. In December 2019, while still in university, I began planting trees on what would one day become my own land. As my graduation project for university, I planted the very first field on my farm. At the time, I had no financial resources. The only thing that initially made the project possible was support from Alfredo. He offered another opportunity for me to earn money by harvesting acorns for him. I spent two months gathering acorns in his forests, and I totaled 1,500 kilos. This gave me the money I needed to pay for the preparation of the farm's first tree lines. Together with my mom and my brother Alex, the first trees on the farm were planted. Everything was planted directly by seeds and cuttings into the ground. There was no money to buy plants. About 10 weeks later, I began harvesting the first vegetables that were seeded into these rows and could already see the young trees germinate in their shade. When the trees started growing a few months later, the visible results impressed everybody. Over the course of summer 2020, over 300 people came to visit the farm and see the field for themselves. I had created some documents about the project and its first results, which I sent to a number of people I met during my time at university. Through this, I received the first donations to keep investing into the project. With funding secured and COVID lockdowns limiting my movements, I spent the next two years practically without leaving the farm, only planting and taking care of trees. Every day. From the people that visited the project in the first months, a number started coming to volunteer. All of these people contributed in unimaginable ways to planting this forest. Without their help, this would have not been possible. Everything was going better than what I'd ever hoped for. A lot of this changed during the summer of 2022. I realized that I was not able to offer the necessary conditions to keep hosting volunteers on the farm and have since then stopped having interns. At the same time, my main funding partner, who was contributing about 85% of the donations that kept the project going, was unable to continue funding the project. I had no foreseeable way to keep financing the project and no one to help me continue working on it. The money that I still had, I invested into paying friends of mine to help me do maintenance work and planting vegetables. I was hoping that the vegetable crops would give sufficient income to keep the project going, but I had no experience producing and selling vegetables. In the fall of 2022, I invested the last amounts of money I had into two new plantations. I thought I was doing everything much better than ever before and was sure that the fields would pay for themselves. But then, disaster struck. In December 2022, a huge flood wiped out half of my new field. Everything was washed down the river. Following this, in January 2023, a 10-month drought began. I experienced the coldest winter to date on the farm that year, and between January and March, I recorded over 45 frost events, with temperatures reaching down to minus 6 degrees. And no rain would fall that spring to help the plants recover. And then, the irrigation system also broke. I lost thousands of the trees I had planted that year, and the vegetables I counted on to pay the bills did not produce. Everything seemed to be failing. In that year, so many of the things I tried failed. But in the end, this was possibly the most lesson-rich period. Luckily, an opportunity arose to implement agroforestry systems in a farm nearby, a job for which I would be paid. Through this work, I was able to balance the bills and get the irrigation system repaired. I also offered the first workshop on the farm, which further helped me to keep the project going. All revenues were immediately reinvested into the farm, and I kept building up these revenue streams to continue supporting the project. During the summer of 2023, while looking at everything that didn't work from the months before, I realized that I needed to change my strategy. I decided to follow through with something which seemed like a crazy and unfeasible idea at the time. To plant the biggest field of the farm to date. All plantations I had previously done had a maximum size of 3,000 square meters. They were planted with little space between the tree rows, and were mostly focused on water-loving species like poplars, willows, citrus, figs, and walnuts. It turned out that with the limited amount of water that I was supplying to them, they were not able to grow reasonably well in this climate and soil. Until now, most soil preparation had been done manually, but the new field would not allow me to do that, so I looked for solutions to mechanize the soil preparation. With this new field, I decided to make the rows further apart, and focus on more drought-hardy species. I shifted from citrus trees to stone fruits, and from poplars and figs to mulberries. Everything else in the system was also chosen specifically for the low amounts of water that the plants would have available to them during the summer. I also decided to risk something I had never done before, but always wanted to try. To plant in completely dry soil at the end of the dry season, trying to time the planting just before the first rain. As I was planning this implementation in August 2023, I needed to choose the dates on which I would begin planting, but how would I know when it would start to rain? So I decided one thing, to time the plantation so that it would be done exactly three days before urns would arrive on the farm. With the dates fixed, I began inviting past workshop participants, previous volunteers, and friends to come to participate in planting this field. In September, soil preparation began. The irrigation system was built, and the plants were delivered. After subsoiling all of the tree rows, we mulched them with a generous layer of waste materials from neighboring farms. October 9th, 2023. Twenty people came together for a five-day volunteering event. Everybody extremely motivated to begin planting. After spending the morning on the field with everybody, and explaining the first steps, I remember collapsing in my room from tiredness. Three weeks of non-stop physical work to get everything prepared now took their toll. I accepted my condition and took a nap on my bedroom floor. When I woke up 45 minutes later, the group had already planted 1,600 olive seedlings, what I thought would have taken the whole day. I joined back in with the group, and the group spirit helped me push through. 34 degrees Celsius, under the strong October sun, shining down on the Alentejo plain. During this week, the incredible group energy kept us going at all times. With our head torches, we would continue planting until late into the night, and some of us would wake up in the dark at 4 a.m. to start distributing trees for people to begin planting as they woke up. We danced, we sung songs, and planted trees at all hours of our waking day. On the third day of the planting, the weather forecast shifted. Cloudy weather and a slight chance of rain for the fifth day were announced. After four days, we had planted over 50,000 tree seedlings. We spent the fifth day doing finishing touches on the field. We distributed seeds throughout all the tree lines, mulched the trees, and planted extra ones in weaker areas. On the evening of the fifth day, the rain arrived. The very first rain in 10 months. And five days after finishing the field, on the day Ernst arrived, a huge storm brought over 40 millimeters per square meter of rain to the farm. Everything I worked out, and it all began to grow. Over the following months, this field grew like no other field had ever grown before. The fact that we had managed to plant everything in October, when the soil and air temperature is still warm, and that it actually rained created a huge boost in the growth. By the end of February 2024, the cover crops were partially already two meters tall, and the fastest growing support trees were just behind them. Entering into summer of 2024, a young forest structure was already visible. The wider row spacing allowed me to cultivate crops between the tree rows. I used the methods I had found most successful to date to prepare the soil and harvested abundant strawberries, pumpkins, potatoes, and corn. Fast forward another two years, and the field has actually grown into a productive young forest. The pruned eucalyptus trees grant the structure for everything else to grow underneath. Tagazaste and Budleja plants offer additional early succession support. Almonds, plums, and apricots are carrying an abundant quantity of fruit for their age, while grapevines climb up to fill the niches in the ecosystem. In the shade of all of this, a mix of over 20 species of native forestry trees are growing up. Between the majority of all the tree rows, cereal crops are maturing. In select in-between lines of the field, the first potatoes of the season are being harvested. Strawberries produce abundantly in other parts, and tomatoes grow up the trellis, shading salads in other sections. All of these plants grow together to make one coherent system. All of them have their function in the ecosystem, and are strategically placed and integrated into relationships with other plants to fulfill a complete picture. Aside from the organic material brought in the beginning, there has never been any other fertilization or soil amendment. No crop protection products for any of the crops growing in this system have ever been used. Irrigation has been modest at all times. Seven years after first arriving in Portugal, and six and a half years after I began planting trees on Quinta das Abelhas, a lot has happened. Over 160,000 trees planted into 10 different experimental agroforestry fields, together creating one consistent block of green in the Alentejo landscape. What used to be an unproductive pasture has turned into a multi-layered, food-producing, forest ecosystem, which contributes to regulating the microclimate, is a home to thousands of birds and animals, and produces more than 85% of all the food that I eat. Every year I notice a huge step forward in the productivity of this landscape. Frost events become less common, as evergreen trees create a buffering effect. Heat waves are more tolerable. Flood rains are immediately absorbed into the soil, and slowly released through the farm's water spring. The organic material in the soil helps to retain humidity in the ground during drought spells. When you arrive on the farm, you can smell the difference, and feel the humidity on your skin. All crops grow with no signs of pests and diseases. The forest that exists here today is still very young. Many of these systems are only beginning to enter a productive stage, but every year the land becomes noticeably more fertile, and every year it becomes clearer to me that agriculture does not have to exist in opposition to nature. It can become a process through which life continuously increases. But this is not the end of this project. In fact, as I have now finally come to a viable concept, I consider it to be only the beginning. If you have enjoyed this video, please press the like button and subscribe to my channel to stay informed about future releases. If you have any questions or would like to suggest topics for future videos, feel free to post a comment.