Korashan - Vale das Lobas

Riverside lagar (olive oil mill).

Wake up and remember the dream!

Are you dreaming of living on the land, in harmony with nature? In a home that is ecological and efficient, built from organic materials, comfortable, yet with a light footprint? Do you want to live more simply, with time for being creative, or simply being? Would you like to earn your living from what you can grow, make or produce? Do you want to be consciously involved in transforming the way we eat, work and live?
Then you are receiving a call to action.

It is time to create a new future, where the social and economic infrastructure is no longer geared towards competition, isolation, and profit. The change in consciousness is already underway. It is time to join together. Sustainable living requires individuals who can share resources in a responsible way, whilst respecting each other ’s privacy and freedom. We need to remember once again, how to live in circles, made of strong units, each supported by the whole.
Vale das Lobas is a response to this call.

The Centre for Spiritual Ecology will be a sanctuary of peace and divine inspiration. There will be courses, conferences, workshops and gatherings, in harmony with the cycle of the year. The focus will be on transformation, both personally and collectively. We are concerned with supporting change, and also the implementation of those changes in practical ways. This will become a home for ecological design and construction, traditional and organic agriculture, art and artisan production, the creation and development of clean energy technologies, and developing a model of community to meet the challenges of our era.

In the valleys surrounding the centre, we have acquired lands for eco-quintas and eco-moradias. Vale das Lobas will be an organic co-operative farm, producing wine, olive ol, vegetables, fruits, grains, medicinal plants, tinctures, oils and extracts, goats cheese and bread. The river district will be developed as an artisan village, with workshops for pottery, metal-smithing, textiles, sculpture and wood-craft, jewelery. There will be an exhibition centre and gallery, open to the public, in the riverside olive oil lagar. We are gathering people - farmers, artists, craftspeople, folk of the Earth. If this speaks to you, contact us, and let us know of your interest.
Vale das Lobas

Vale das Lobas is a valley, high in the Beira Alta region, in the foothills of the Serra de Estrela range, the highest mountains in Portugal. It is at the eastern edge of the Dao wine region, and the main products are olive oil and wine. There is also an abundance of apples, pears, oranges, lemons, limes, figs, peaches, cherries, plums, persimmons, quinces, strawberry fruit, and more. Maize, rye and other grains are traditionally grown here.

Fraga de Pena - A neolithic site,
overlooking Vale das Lobas.

The Ribera Muxagata runs along the valley, between the villages of Aldea Nova, Fuinas, Maceira, Sobral Pichorro, Mata and Muxagata. Five kilometres upriver is a hot sulphur spring, still unexploited. From November to May, the mountains are filled with rainwater, and rivers and waterfalls cascade down the valley sides, and tumble towards the Rio Mondego. Above the valley is pure wilderness, there is no agriculture, no populations. The water and the air in this region is free of pollution.

Until now, rainwater has not been harvested for summer irrigation, but there is the potential to create natural mountain reservoirs which will fill in the winter months, and become useful in the dry summer. These water harvests will also provide potential energy for hydro generation.

Almost all of the mountain quintas have been neglected or abandoned in recent years. Young people have left rural life for the cities, leaving mainly the elders in the villages, where the average age is over seventy. This land is rich beyond measure in natural resources, and was once able to support large communities, yet now this potential lies dormant, awaiting a new generation of farmers and land workers.

The Basket of Apples
Walkabout

Lizzie Daisley-Smith

14th February 2010

While we were there Maria–Jose took out her beautiful handmade bed spread to show the volunteers, it must have taken her hours of painstaking needlework; the pattern is typical of the Colchas de Castelo Branco, these are bedspreads inspired by those bought back by Portuguese explorers from China and India. The colours of the silks are strong and the design is exotic. There is a beautiful central pattern of flowers sewn in reds, oranges, yellows with tendrils in pale blue, grey and a little pink. There are birds of Paradise and some very interesting donkeys. I asked Maria-Jose if she knew how long it had taken her, she shrugged her shoulders and told me that one flower would take around 8 hours.

This led Maria-Jose to tell us that her mother made the cloth from ‘linho’ which is flax, by hand. I was entranced sitting across from this grandmother who in two years time will be a hundred years old and who told us that she used to put the ‘linho’ in the river under the sand for eight days before beating it and then separating the fibres, this process of releasing the fibres from the cellular and woody stem tissue is known as ‘retting’ (English word, the Portuguese translation could be either ‘imergir’ or ‘mergulhar’) or controlled rotting. The separation of the fibres is known as ‘scutching’ (English), in Portuguese the word is ‘espadelar’ the rough fibre or ‘estopa’ (English, tow) would be used for sacks and the fine fibres which would be made into silk thread. Spinning the thread was done on a wheel and as Maria-Joses mother described the process with actions her face was alight. It was a lot of work, “muito trabalho, muito trabalho” but now she was having a lovely rest, quite happy in her chair, her daughter looking after her with such exquisite care and love.
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