And so the volunteer journey begins… my first week at Altanure
Hi friends! On Sunday I finally arrived at my first volunteer spot and I started working there on Monday. Let me give you an update on how it went!
First Tavira
Last Saturday I left Portimão and took the train to Tavira. I spent one night there and explored the town before heading towards my volunteer place. The atmosphere here in Tavira is completely different from Portimão. Tavira is beautiful and very charming little town. The energy is calm and relaxed. There are lots of historical buildings, many from the 18th century. There’s a small castle, a roman bridge, a lovely square and a little park along the river and lots of nice restaurants and cafes. I had a really lovely time exploring the town!
Next Altanure
Sunday evening I took a taxi to Altanure, my first volunteer place. It’s located about 5km west of Tavira and about 4km from the beach.
My hosts at Altanure are Monica and Ze, who’ve been taking care of the gardens at Altanure for the last 18 months. Altanure is a large and beautiful wild property with organic vegetable gardens, a food forest, a herb spiral, a fig orchard, ornamental gardens, a meadow, a natural swimming pond, …
Next door there are Casa Terra and Quinta Sol d’Agua, two wonderful holiday villas, owned by the same owner Frederic. Really lovely to rent for retreats or a big family holiday. He first bought Quinta Sol d’Agua 30 years ago and started his permaculture project there. Then he built Casa Terra, using rammed earth technique (a natural building technique). More recently they built the Altanure property I’m volunteering at and that Monica and Ze manage.
Altanure is still a bit of a diamond in the rough, there’s lots of work to be done and the property is big… They’ve been spending their time and energy trying to regenerate the land. The soil here is mostly clay, which means it’s very hard to grown things because it gets rock hard when dry and it’s hard for water to seep through.
They’ve been growing cover crops to improve the soil, making compost to add to the vegetable beds bit by bit. It is a large property so they havent done it to all the beds yet and it’s very clear which beds have not been amended yet (the soil is already much better in the beds they amended last year). They also added a vermiculture (worm composting) station to one of the beds. They’ve been adding trees and plants to the food forest, trying to grow different plants in different locations on the property, with mixed success. It’s definitely a learning process. In the future they also hope to set up a learning center here to do workshops around regenerative agriculture.
Monica, Ze and Frederic did an interview where they talk about their vision and Altanure, it’s well worth reading. You can find it here.
Volunteering at Altanure
I’m volunteering here together with a German girl, Rosanna. We share a large room which has been divided into private sections with bamboo screens. The kitchen and bathroom are quite rustic, though the shower is hot and the kitchen is well equipped. They’re located outdoors close to the vegetable gardens and about 200m from our room. There’s also a compost toilet.
From Monday to Friday we work 5hrs/day. In the afternoons and the weekend we’re free. This week we started at 8am til 1pm, next week we’ll start a bit earlier because the weather is heating up. I really love the early mornings here, temperatures are still cool and the sunrise over the gardens is magical.
I must admit, the first two days I struggled a bit with the work. The work involves pretty standard gardening stuff – lots of weeding cause they are going crazy after all the rain here in March and April, turning compost, adding compost to vegetable beds, putting straw as a mulch on top of amended veggie beds, clearing grass from pathways, planting seedlings in the garden and digging holes for these seedlings in the clay soil, making cuttings of plants to propagate them, …
For someone who’s used to sitting in front of a computer all day, doing 5hrs of physical work is pretty intense! I also had some digestive issues and a massive migraine Monday afternoon, which caused me to skip dinner and that meant my energy levels were pretty low on Tuesday. At times I was even starting to wonder if I would be able to do this sort of work for the next 5 months, I truly wasn’t sure…
But from Wednesday I felt much more able to handle the work, my body seemed to get used to it pretty fast and my energy levels were up again. And I was enjoying it more too, it’s actually quite satisfying to see the progress you make in the garden. On Friday one the jobs I had to do was to weed the Herb Spiral which was just wonderful, it smelled divine amongst all these aromatic plants…
Hot Weather Looms
But another big question mark is already looming around the corner… The temperatures here in Tavira are getting hotter and hotter and the sun really burns. Towards the end of the week it was 25°C, which isn’t crazy hot but for me doing physical work in the burning sun now is starting to get difficult and I know that the temperatures will rise above 30°C not that far from now so it’s only going to get worse.
I’m also a little bit worried about my skin exposure to the burning sun. I’m religiously putting on sunscreen SPF50+ every two hours and I’m wearing a hat to prevent burning but I still worry about it having had 2 spots of skin cancer removed last year.
So we’ll see how it goes. At the moment I’m really just taking it day by day and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. Next week temperatures will go up a little bit more. Hopefully it will all go gradually and my body can adjust to it bit by bit… And there’s even a tiny chance there might be some opportunities to help out with more design related projects here and there, which could be interesting. Nothing is sure yet though, so we’ll see but it could be nice to work on those when the sun gets too hot…
What’s Next?
If all goes to plan I will stay here at Altanure one more week and then move to my next volunteer place, an organic farm just a few kms from here. I really look forward to see how they do things there. It’s an organic market garden where they produce csa boxes and they also have a market stand on the Saturday market in Tavira.
The plan is to stay there for one month and then return to Altanure, possibly til August though this will depend on how I can handle working in the heat. Altanure is really lovely and the people here are very friendly so I’d love to return for sure but ultimately I’ll have to listen to my body as well.
If it truly gets to hot I will probably travel north and maybe see if I can find any volunteer places on the West coast or just travel til I can start at my 3rd volunteer place, which is in Santa Cruz on the west coast, temperatures there should be much cooler than here in Tavira, so I think it will be okay there…
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