Home Real Estate Off-grid living in Portugal: Moving on after the fires. Wendy Howard’s Quinta Do Vale [Benfeita]

Off-grid living in Portugal: Moving on after the fires. Wendy Howard’s Quinta Do Vale [Benfeita]

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Off-grid living in Portugal: Moving on after the fires. Wendy Howard’s Quinta Do Vale [Benfeita]

Wendy Howard might be the personification of resilience. In 2008 she decided to escape the rat race and start a sustainable permaculture project in Benfeita, Portugal. Fast forward ten years and there is a blooming site where many aspects of the permaculture philosophy came together. Then disaster struck in the form of forest fires. In 2017, about half of the project got destroyed.
Wendy tells us about the inner guidance she experiences and how she still has a strong sense that she needs to be here, in Portugal. She is rebuilding everything, and after a grim winter, things are looking good again.

Finding A Better Way To Live:

Buy us a cup of herbal tea:

Wendy Howard:

Off-Grid Leven in Portugal: Verder na het Vuur. Wendy Howard’s Quinta Do Vale [Benfeita]

Wendy Howard is het toonbeeld van veerkracht. In 2008 besloot ze om ze om de jachtigheid van het ‘normale’ westerse leven te ontvluchten. Ze startte een permacultuur project in Benfeita, Portugal. Fast forward tien jaar en er is een bloeiende plek ontstaan waar veel aspecten uit de permacultuur filosofie bij elkaar komen. Toen sloeg het noodlot toe in de vorm van bosbranden. In 2017 werd ongeveer de helft van het project verwoest. Wendy vertelt ons over haar innerlijke kompas en dat ze nog steeds een sterke intuïtie heeft dat ze in Portugal moet blijven. Ze is alles aan het herbouwen, en – na een moeizame winter – is alles nu weer op aan het bloeien.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. Someone living in a block of flats, eating industrially farmed food has far less of an impact on on the planet than this woman – I would argue. Just imagine if everybody decided to live on there own 4 acres of land. It would be a disaster for the planet. I know a lot of people will argue against this as this woman has good intentions.

  2. Thank you for the lovely interview, I'm on my way to Portugal to do something similar. I wanted to ask – is there any real way of preventing a fire from coming in and burning everything down again next time?
    We know it's an inevitability that in the next 2-5 years there will be at least another great fire in most areas in Portugal

  11. This is amaizing! Don't mind if there are any stupid comments, Gaia has approved you with it's tiny little yellow butterfly already… Mother earth is with you and so am I!!!

  14. In reply to @Tom Edward, I made a very quick and dirty calculation and came up with the very hypothetical figure of 1.8 ha per person if everybody would move onto arable land. I took the figure for arable land in ha and divided by the world population. How much do you need to sustain yourself? My estimate is that you can get by with 250 m2, based on my experience from growing veggies. In suburbia a lot of backyards can be transformed into kitchen gardens and use sustainable systems.

    Everybody will not move out from the cities, so that´s another reason that Wendy Howard sets an example to us. Some arable land should be reversed to forests again, we need avery tree we can plant.

    So in summary I'm of the opinion that it's possible on a scale larger than the odd permaculturist.

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