Life

Step One: Learn to cook vegetarian food… So here I am sitting at the breakfast table, set with bread, butter, cheese, an egg – just the way we’re used to in a hotel – the cup of coffee, the orange juice, the granola mix. I’m thinking back to the previous evening and trying to put myself in the place of a meat eater told that as from the next day there would be no more meat for them, no more sausages. For ethical reasons, say, or because the climate is out of kilter. Everything is at stake, I’m told. If …

Humans always want more: more technology, more comfort, more consumption, more money. Their lifestyle throws up many unanswered questions. What is happening in the fields, the forests, the streets, the cities, the workplaces, the schools and universities? Humans shirk from concrete responses and decisions. Humans carry on, just like their machines, as if these questions – what is inside their food, their clothing, their medication? – weren’t relevant. Has industrialisation poisoned them and their Earth? How clean is the groundwater, the air they breathe? Does their lifestyle stand in the way of further development? Should Humans not simply switch off …

Saturday 20 of February 2021 Our goal is to become self sufficient with our food. We need five years to achieve this. We will reach this goal in five steps. In the first year, we worked the land, clearing it and creating a fine tilth, removing the stones and weeds. At the same time, we composted, then used compost as a fertilizer for the first sowing in the second year: potatoes and onions, peas and beans, tomatoes and peppers and many more things. We also would recommend a permaculture course at Quinta Vale da Lama in Lagos. For today’s recipe, …

Saturday the 13th of February 2021 The forest is filled with animals, plants, grasses, herbs and mushrooms. And that’s why I love every native tree growing exactly where it happens to be. For our forest and winter cuisine, I have chosen three types of mushrooms. Why? Because I know them. Those mushrooms that I don’t really know stay where they are, and I leave them to carry on growing in the forest. They don’t get to see the inside of my kitchen. I’m happy to admit that my knowledge is finite; too many people have paid with their lives for …

Saturday the 6 th February 2021 One of our family’s favourite recipes is “flammkuchen”, or “tarte flambé”, as it is often called, since it is a typical speciality from the south-east of France. There are a thousand and one varieties of this dish to be found in Lorraine, but also in Alsace, Switzerland and the German State of Saarland, and, as it can easily be made without either meat or fish, it’s a great choice for a vegetarian meal. We sometimes opt for a vegan version, but we love it in all its varieties, and, in today’s recipe, we are …

Forest gardening is the first sustainable form of multicultural agroforestry management in the history of humankind. Since prehistoric times, a form of forest gardening has been practised in the tropics (Mesopotamia), with forest cultures creating small clearings in order to replace the plant species that would provide the food, fibre and medicines for their communities.   Coming back to modern times, in the 1980s, an English horticulturalist, Robert Hart, adapted the age-old agroforestry techniques applied in a temperate climate and created the first temperate forest garden on 500 square metres of his farm in Shropshire, 120 km south of Liverpool. …

Saturday, 18th July 2020 Lisbon. The “Natura 2000”  network was created by the EU Commission and aims to protect species and habitats of great importance in all 27 EU countries as a genuine form of nature conservation. There is a total of 2,000 species and 230 habitat types in the 27 countries between Finland and Portugal that have been designated as Natura 2000 sites. If you are interested and want to find the nearest nature reserve in your region, just click on https://natura2000.eea.europa.eu//# and enter your place of residence. Monchique is PTCON0037. The whole of the municipality has been designated …

Here is some more good news! Over the next ten years, ECO123’s employees, friends, sponsors, subscribers and customers will plant more than 1,000 different young trees in the new botanical garden of Caldas de Monchique. To plant a tree, it’s not enough just to make a hole and put a plant in it. A biotope is a complex system that lives by giving and receiving, waiting and growing, while also resting in order to gain new strength and the ability to interact. This story will cover everything that is needed to make a tree feel good on the planet Earth. …