Fireside Chat with John D Liu and Quinta Vale da Lama, Portugal - May 2024

So hello everyone and welcome to our May fireside chat. Today we have Walt Ludwig and Hugo Oliveira from IRC Quinta Vale da Lama here with us. And Quinta Vale da Lama is one of the most recent additions to our global IRC network, and they are located in the Algarve region of Portugal, which is in the southwest. Of the country. Valle de la Má's work focuses on agroforestry, reforestation, habitat restoration in a desertifying Mediterranean landscape, which is also threatened by overgrazing and is facing a rapidly changing climate. And before we leave the floor to Hugo and Walt, as usual, let's kickstart tonight's fireside chat with a message from our founder John D Liu, who is joining us from China.

Thanks so much. Um, it's really great to be in a community of people who, who are doing so much to restore the earth in their locations, and that this is happening around the world is just, uh, so satisfying to see. And there is quite a lot of work to do. And so we're, we're very aware that we're going to have to prepare for a marathon. It's not a sprint. And that we're also facing a very, very serious moment in human history. So I've often called ecological restoration the great work of our time, and I think that this is absolutely true. We need to do this, and there's no one else to do this. Humanity has to do this, and it's, it's both for the healing of the earth and the human spirit because What we're seeing is that there's a kind of a spreading of unhappiness around the world. It's like social psychology or social pathology is kind of contagious. And we need to find consciousness and compassion kindness and forgiveness and gratitude in everything that we do. And one of the things that I've noticed is that in communities, it's really easier and better to do that, that we need each other. And we need to realize that we're a social species. And that's why humans have accomplished so much. If we hadn't worked together, we couldn't have done very much, but working together, we've become the apex species on the Earth. But now we have to look and see we've made mistakes in the past. We've lost a lot of biodiversity. We've lost a lot of biomass. We've upset the hydrological cycles, we've upset the soil fertility, and because humans have done this, it's up to humans to replace it. And when we do that, I think we find our actual self, you know, so we get away from the idea that we're materialists and realize that we're just here for a short while, passing through, and many generations have come before us and many generations will come after us. And that we have a responsibility and we have also knowledge that wasn't here before. I know when I first went out to the Loess Plateau in China and saw that anybody could, could even imagine that we could restore such a massively degraded state, I was really questioning, is this actually possible? And then to watch it over the years transform, and now it's 30 years and we're going back this year to film again the transitions. And I can tell you, I've already been out there earlier this year. It's amazing what's taken place. And it's possible to bring back the soils, it's possible to bring back the water. And when you do that, you really change the, the the lives and the livelihoods of the people there. So we need to do this. And today we're going to have the most wonderful presentation from Portugal. I've seen this and it's so— such a, a fine effort, and it's moving to the next stages, and it's just going to be so effective because it has been effective in its own right, and now it's giving to more and more people to be able to replicate what they've done. And that's what we all need to be doing. So we've all— I feel very deeply that I've been empowered to work in this area for many decades, and it's a responsibility to empower as many people as possible throughout the world. To do this because we all need this. And so I'm so grateful that I'm able to be here, and then we're going to hear the most wonderful presentation.

Thank you.

Okay, uh, thank you, John. That was so inspiring as always. In fact, uh, your work— I'm Walt Ludwig. I'm the owner of this farm, Quinta Valderrama, a regenerative organic farm. For more than 20 years, we've been working the land here. But since 2017, I've been on this project with Hugo Oliveira, our not resident, but he lives a stone's throw away, ecologist, ecological designer, teacher, the just the ideally qualified person to to be leading this project of, so in 2017, following some horrific, that was the year of the worst wildfires in Portugal, that's when we started doing these ecosystem regeneration camps. In our own way, at rather a small scale, we were very much inspired and motivated by the work of John D Liu, starting with the Campo Altiplano in Spain, and clearly that was going to be a much bigger work, but we had an immediate need. A bunch of people came out of the woodwork here, the smoldering ruins, to say, we need to plant a million trees in Portugal, but how do we do this? And we had some considerable years of experience and some of it school of hard knocks, but when Hugo came into the project, a much more structured, effective approach to doing ecosystem restoration. So he's got a presentation to show what we've done over these years, and I guess we should launch right into it. And it's a lot of slides.

Thank you very much, Walt. It's really grateful and also honor to be here today and sharing the work we've been doing for the last years. And I will, I will start sharing my screen. Okay, so the idea here is a little bit to share and invite you into this particular landscape. And so we're going to do a little bit of a guided tour towards the farm and also then highlighting then our rehydrate— rehydrating dryland strategy. So the, the strategies we are putting mostly on the rain-fed systems, but to give you a little bit of an overview of the, of the, of the farm. So we're going to start with that. So we are situated here in the deep southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. As you can see, we're really by an estuary ecosystem, by the Ría of the Alvorã wetland, a high biodiversity. A lot of migratory birds nest here and pass here. And the farm is really by the coast. As you can see, we are really by the seaside and in these tidal zones where historically, you know, seafood has been harvested from Neolithic times. You know, we have still structures present in the region that guide us to that particular practice. And the farm has a 44-hectare area, and it's situated on a ridge. Here you can see altitude. So blue is close to the sea level, and as you come up to the reds, the reds are at 40 meters from sea level. And we are in a ridge. We don't, we, we don't sit really at a valley, but this ridge, it's where the farm is situated. So to make also, uh, you know, to organize the management and also look at the quality and the potential of each landscape, uh, characteristics on the farm, we've organized the farm into different landscape units. And then these landscape units are organized in certain landscape areas. So we have the feet that are the lower parts of the farm. We have the belt area that is like at the, at the thermal belt also, and it's where the soils are deeper. Uh, it has a more, uh, more accumulation of sediments from the higher areas. And it's also where we have access to more water. So it's the area where we have like mostly the productive, uh, units of the farm and also more irrigated systems, although very consciously irrigated. And then as we go up to the higher, uh, parts of the farm, then we have what we call the head. And we're going to look at these 3 different areas, and then focus mostly on the head as strategies for dryland regeneration. So here we are at the feet. As any— as you can see, the what we call the lowlands, or the feet, is an area that has been taken from the, the, the estuary, so taken from the wetland, and through a dike. And it has been historically used as rice production, although now with the amount of water that is present, it's not what is what we, we are doing. So it's mostly now, uh, divided in 3 areas. So this central area here, it's the area that we have like the summer pastures and where we have a group of sheep. Like, we don't have many sheep, it's 20, 25 sometimes, but we are doing holistic plant grazing and rotational grazing with this particular flock and going around in this particular pasture, regenerating this pasture as we, as we move the sheep along. To the right here and closer to the wetland, we have an area that is very salty. We had actually a backflow of water, of saltwater here, and so we are, we have a plan of doing a restoration project to give back these to a more wetland ecosystem and to focus mostly on biodiversity. As the identity of this particular place, landscape unit. As we start going up a little bit, then we have— we are getting closer to the educational center of the farm. And close to the educational center, we add a particular temporary Mediterranean pond that was there because of a depression on the land. And we've noticed that it harbors a particular ecosystem. So a couple of years from now, like 2 or 3 years ago, we established 5 more of those ponds to extend that particular ecosystem so that we have in the winter months places with rain, with sweet water, that then harbors certain, uh, certain biodiversity. That it's then also inviting the activities of the educational center. We work a lot with youth and children also to engage with the local biodiversity. And, uh, and so coming now more to the social arena, we are now in the educational center. It's, uh, the headquarters of Projeto Novas Descobertas, and it's where most of the educational programs happen. We have, uh, we, we have, uh, the good partnership with the municipality. So, uh, most of the schools from the municipality do have activities, uh, here on the farm. So every week we have different schools coming into the farm. Uh, the Projeto Novas Descobertas is a, a non-profit organization that has already 30 years of experience working with bringing children and children at heart close to nature. And so doing summer camps and different activities that, you know, bring us closer to the natural patterns, to the natural cycles, and reskilling also in a lot of green skills, skills that bring us closer to a more natural and connected, this pattern of livelihoods. So here you can see the area, and you already see also what we call the belt area, so the area that holds mostly the productive site of the farm. So in 2007, as you can see here, the— when the farm was, uh, was, was purchased, uh, you can see that it was mostly abandoned. You had remnants of fig trees here and there and a remnants of a structure that in the past were harboring vegetable production and cereal production, but at this moment was really abandoned and, uh, and drying out. And since 2007, different landscape units were designed and installed in the site And, uh, and we're going to go through several of them and, uh, and, and just to have an overview of this area also. So the one is marked now, it's what we called a soft fruits orchard designed in an alley cropping system. So basically we have alleys where we rotate chickens that give us eggs And then we have the fruit trees being also integrated with the pest management, integrated pest management with different shrubs, with also provision of nitrogen-fixing shrubs, and also breaking the cycles of the pest using the animals, and of course fertilizing the system. And this gives us, gives us fruits that then we sell in the market or we provide to the other parts of the farm. That I'm going to mention lately. So this is during an ecosystem regeneration camp and we are intercropping with shrubs and doing some of the implementation in the— in this particular landscape unit. Going to another landscape unit on the farm, this one here is focused on animals. So basically we have 2 donkeys, a couple of sheep, and then several chickens on the farm. And so in the summer months, in the area we are, we don't have a lot of green feed to give to the animals and green fodder. So we designed this area in a way to provide fodder for the animals in the summer months. So it's our area of fodder production and also our fertility booster. We have the stomach of the farm here also with the fertility booster of the farm. Uh, so as you can see, it's an alley cropping system also. With different fodder species. We have here mulberry, elephant grass, and then we grow different crops in the middle, and we do a rotational, uh, cropping plan, uh, to, to produce other fodder or any other cash crop that is important for the farm, uh, at a particular moment. So here is the fertility area where we have worms, and also we do compost teas. Where we do indigenous microorganisms. And so it's where most of the organic material of the farm gets processed and inoculated with life, so that then goes into the rest of the, of the farm. Another landscape unit I want to highlight now here is the syntropic forest garden. So in 2011, we had Ernst Gotsch here at the farm, and through a workshop, a particular system was— it was actually the first system installed in the Mediterranean climate. And through the years, different learnings have been going on in this system. But basically, a syntropic agroforestry system, it's a multi-layered system that provides different types of functions and structures, and that then provide also different benefits to the farm. So in this case, we have a huge biomass so that we then manage that biomass, put it on the ground, and we work the ground up with produce that is grown on site. And it's one of the areas of the farm that we have a higher topsoil at the moment. So another landscape unit I want to highlight here is the market garden. Being the area that it's more financial productive in the particular belt. And also it's— it provides food sovereignty in this region by contributing and being sold in the market twice a week. So there are two markets in the bioregion one that is more a niche market called Vivo Mercado, and another one that is a farmer's market, a more general farmer's market. And the farm is present in both, in those both markets, and it's where most of these products goes to. Also, it feeds the educational project and also an eco-resort that is located on site. So, and this is an overview of the market garden. Basically, here we use mulching and windbreaks to, uh, to, to minimize the evapotranspiration of the system. And why is this important? Because we are actually— you can see we are here in this red corner of Portugal, and we are in one of the reasons, one of the regions that are most severely being attacked with drought. The availability of water in this particular corner of Portugal is very scarce. So we used to have this dam. This dam is a bi-regional dam. It's called Bravura Dam, and it would feed most of the agricultural ventures that are present in this bi-region. For the last 3 years, the, the structure, you know, it has been at 8% or something like, you know, more or less 8%, so on and off. And so the canals that run from this particular dam have not been running with water for the last 3 years. So that was a wake-up call for all the region to also, you know, acknowledge that other strategies are needed to be put in place to tackle the limitation of not having available water for irrigation. So this brings us to the head part of the farm, and it's the area where we have also shallower soils, and it's also the area that dries the most. And, and so here we have been using rain-fed systems and trying to innovate in different strategies so that we, we are able to restore and regenerate these particular lands at the same time that we contribute to adapt to climate change, but also are able to rethink ways of acting in dryland conditions. So a couple of years ago, we've done a research together with some friends and colleagues, uh, on creating a framework for climate change adaptation for the agriculture and forestry in the Mediterranean climate regions, and focusing mostly in the Alentejo and the Algarve, so the south of Portugal, and looking at doing review of different adaptation measures and the efficiency that they have in terms of when they are put into practice, what is the efficiency of it to counteract drought or other types of climate change impacts. I'm not aiming that we look at this, but it's just to inform that with that particular work, We then, for the farm, highlighted a couple of those techniques, those adaptation measures, and we put them into practice. And we've been monitoring lightly the success of them and also getting informed to also, you know, promote them in the rest of the farm and also get more collective knowledge on these particular techniques. So one of the techniques we had, we highlighted, was the swale, the creating of swales. But in our case, we trialed with also making hugel swales, so burying wood under the swales. So doing a ditch and a berm on contour, but then burying wood below the berm so that we, we, we also create the sponge below the— below the berm. In our condition here in the Mediterranean, it is very important that we bury deep this particular organic matter, otherwise it can oxidize and not decompose so fast. Another method that we've been using is holistic plant grazing, and with a flock of 25 sheep, we have been managing the different pastures we have on the farm and rotating them periodically. Two other methodology— methodologies we've been using, or techniques, are the half-moons, or planting, uh, different trees in half-moons. In this case, here is carobs. We created a carob orchard using these half-moons as condensation of the sediment, but also of water and micro, uh, water harvesting structures so that then we have the water where the water is needed and when the water is available. And also using mulches, using thick layers of mulch. We've been going from lighter mulches, from grass and from straw, into woodier mulches. And in our case here, we've been having more success with woodier, woodier mulches. They are more rich in fungi and they stimulate more the, the, the tree growth. These for perennials. In the market garden, we do use like straw mulches. So with this information, with these particular patterns, we then devise a kind of a water-wise dryland regeneration strategy for the farm, and mostly for these head area of the farm, and it's focused on agrosilvopastoral systems. So re-alivening a traditional agrosilvopastoral system that is called rain-fed mixed orchard, or pomar misto de sequeiro in Portuguese, uh, very ancient agroforestry system, but renew it with little prototype, uh, techniques that then can boost the— and can buffer the impacts of climate change as that we are experiencing them now. So things like the organic swale or the hugel swale, the fodder banks, the holistic plant grazing of moons, and creating, you know, doing it mostly with native species, although we do have also some other species, and using a lot of biofertilizers as inoculation of microorganisms. So here are an overview of the head and with those different landscape units highlighted. And then depending on the potential of each landscape unit, if they have slightly deeper soils or less or more rocky soils, or they are more at the top or slightly lower down, we devise different management plans, different management design guidelines. So we have agro-silvopastural systems with fodder banks as one of the strategy, and also another one encouraging native regeneration, where we— I'm going to explain it, you know, in a little bit. And then also allow native regeneration. And this is the— we, we have a garrigue, a wild zone, in the, in the end of the farm, and we keep it as zone 5 also to observe. But also we let the Garrigue develop itself and we monitor it, how it is growing. And then on the encouraging native regeneration, we devised different types of patterns so that we, we then so maximize the native regeneration by stimulating the Garrigue, but also including sea moist tree traps. Basically, we are by the coast, so we have daily a lot of humidity coming from the sea. And so we, by planting casuarinas, for instance, we are able to trap moisture daily by, by the needles of the casuarina. And this is minimal, but it, it adds up to the efficiency of the regeneration. Then also we have some examples of canopy trees in the, in the, in this particular units, but we wanted to boost up the canopy trees. So we are working with carobs and all oaks as, uh, canopy trees. So we do actively plant them on this, on the site, both by seedling as also by seeds. And then we also use fast-growing biomass trees and shrubs, and those are the ones that will create shade, will create biomass, and then we'll be cutting them and giving them to the soil so that we have a return of biomass produced locally with fast-growing biomass. Then also the dispersal of native seeds and also planting things on half moons. We did a little bit of a trial with water boxes, uh, and also by planting in shade and using wood emulsions. So in this way, we want to increase the areas that are already vegetated. So we want to increase them, uh, working through them outwardly as nodes, as well as creating these wildlife corridors and water corridors in the shape of swales that then— it's where we focus the plantation. So it's where we focus planting the biomass, the sea moisture traps, and also where we mulch so that we have a kind of a connectivity happening through the landscape. Then on the areas that are agro-silvopastoral systems with fodder banks, we are managing it— we design it and managing it through using an agro-silvopastoral system, using holistic plant grazing in the, in the paddocks. And the paddocks are divided by organic swales. These, uh, and also renovating this traditional rain-fed mixed orchard and adding to it fodder banks so that we can increase a little bit the time that the animals are in the site. But also we can also give it more— give them more nutrition and provide shade and use these fodder banks also as, as a shade and condensators of humidity in the system. Then we also have living fences that are productive living fences with drought-resistant plants such as pomegranates, quinces, and other ones. And we inoculate the entire area, especially the nodes of the swales, with biofertilizers, indigenous microorganisms. So here is the design of that particular area with the catchment area of each one of the swales that overflow to the next swale that then overflows to the next swale. And we focus the plantation on those swales since they, uh, they harvest the water in the winter months. Then we want to transform that water into vegetation the fastest we can so that they get stored in the cells of vegetation instead of evaporating towards the, uh, towards the atmosphere. So by designing those swales, then we define also the paddocks of pasture. And we also have here an area that is here in green that we are now doing some Miyawaki experiments, but with burying a lot of wood underneath. So we buried 1.5 meters of organic matter, cover it with soil, and then plant very densely. And in this way, because these are very— we are in the Mediterranean coastal regions, have been deforested for many, many, many different ages. So the building of topsoil, we found out that it's not enough just to build it from the top. Layer downwards. So we actually have to dig in, or we find it is very efficient, efficient to dig in, bury the wood underneath, inoculated with microorganisms, then cover it, and then yes, add the organic matter in the top of the, of the farm, but, uh, and then do the plantation so that we have, or we have topsoil being built from bottom up and top down. Uh, this is an overview of the area with the swale, with the vegetation, and also with the sheep being rotating. And then one thing we've done, the first swale we've built, we've built it half-half, so half with wood buried and half without burying wood. And this So we've been monitoring, and what we've been noticing is that every time we have like the first strong rains of the autumn, what we notice is that the area where we buried wood, the pasture just below it starts renovating much faster. So with that in mind and getting that feedback from the system, we, we started boosting up the organic matter of the farm. And so we receive organic matter from the bioregion, from landscape centers and landscapers of the region that brings them— that we trust, that bring— that brings us the, their leftovers, uh, and their waste. And then we transform that waste into compost, mostly woody compost. And then we sift that compost, and the finer material we it to either plant or to go into the market garden, or— and the thicker material is the material we use to bury or to mulch the plantations. So here is in another zone where we have an agro-silvopastoral system. Uh, this was actually implemented in our first ecosystem regeneration camp back in 2017. And it's a carob orchard, extensive orchard, and these swales are, are then with wood underneath, and they are the fodder banks. And each one of these plants, these trees, were planted on a half-moon pattern so that we have also sedimentation around the carobs and also water harvesting during the winter months. So here you can see we had around 30-something people here, very energetically planting, and it was an amazing first. It was so amazing that we wanted to continue doing it, and we've been doing two every year until we got— until COVID came, and then we started doing only one, but now we are back into two again, and it's a very enjoyable moment where a lot of people from the local region come, coming to these events, and also from the neighboring bioregions. So we have people coming from other places in Portugal and also internationally, so that we, we, we look at adaptations that are making sense for this particular landscape, but we are also able to broaden the conversation to other contexts. One of the main strategies we are doing here at Quinta Valdolama is creating these swales. And these swales with a ditch, a ditch that we bury— where we buried a lot of wood, a lot of decomposing wood. We then come and inoculate it with microorganisms to speed up the process, and we cover all of these with the soil that we took out. This is our preparations for plantation afterwards, so it stays here for for 1 year decomposing, and then after a year in the winter months, we come and we do the plantations here. So after we cover with the soil, then we go into the plantation process. Here we have a very dense plantation with 3 lines with only drought-resistant plants. We are creating a system without any irrigation. And so we incorporated indigenous microorganisms in the soil, and we are now in the phase of covering it with a thick layer of woody mulches, do a little bit of a chop and drop of material into the ground so that they become also food for the microorganisms. This is one of our strategies to increase hydration of the land, creating these ecosystem sponges that serve as nodes of fertility by creating these swales on contour, burying organic matter, inoculating it with, with microorganisms, then covering with the soil, then doing a plantation, a dense plantation with a diverse selection of drought-resistant plants that have different life cycles so that we keep our harvesting and also managing through the different stages of succession. We then follow all of these or accompany all of these with monitoring and evaluation processes that we are developing here on the farm. And it's very important for us also to share our findings, our learnings, and receive feedback from the local community. And so we have these different educational programs that we run through the year, the Ecosystem Regeneration Camp, the Permaculture Design Course, different volunteering opportunities that then allow us to also share what we have been learning here and receive feedback and have a collective impact through the bioregion of our initiatives. Hope this was useful, hope to see you around one of these days, and you know where you can find us. So this was a little bit an overview of the, of the farm and the work we've been doing here. I hope you have a clear image. And, and now I think we, we would like also to go into a conversation and looking at the also the future of what we— what's coming out from this, because we've been focusing a lot on the farm. And now what about now? What about the future?

Well, thank you. Thank you all. That was such an inspiring, so inspiring presentation. Thanks a lot. And yeah, before we get into a general discussion, we have a few questions. That were shared in the chat. There was a question from Jenny Anderson, actually multiple questions. So she asked, what is the potential of Valle de la Lama to have a regenerative effect on the economy and culture of the place in which it is nested beyond the farm itself? What engagement processes have you tried with local people and economy? You mentioned starting a BioRegion Learning Center in the region. What do you see as the process of doing that? Is there growing interest in funding this as a development in Portugal?

Ah, very good question. You know, every context is different, and you know, you just need to understand upfront that the Algarve is not any longer— it I mean, it once was and it is potentially a very rich agricultural region. But, you know, powers that be that do the zoning and stuff have decided essentially that— and it's market demand. It's a beautiful place. It's coastal. It's, you know, whether people want to sit on the beach with a tall drink or they want to go surfing, adventure sport. It's a wonderful place for all of that. So tourism is primary. In fact, his farm is an agrotourism operation. And I've always said with a small a and a big T, which in fact at the moment the tourism is shut down and it's rebuilding. But it's a different form of tourism that we practice here and that we exemplify. In fact, we're known as one of a handful of projects in this emerging field of regenerative tourism, agrotourism in our case. It's a farm to fork to farm, actually, operation where most of the produce from the farm is— most of the produce they eat in the restaurant comes directly from the farm and goes back to— there is no organic waste on this farm. So it's a closed loop system. Waste is just, you know, resource in the wrong place, as we say in permaculture. So, all of the organic kitchen scraps and crop residues and prunings, plus stuff we're even bringing in from the outside, it's, as you saw, is converted into soil. So, we're kind of a lighthouse project that's leading, I think, at the forefront of this movement to regenerative tourism. Besides the market garden, which is, you know, it's economically viable, and I mean, it covers its own operating expenses, not the things, all of the things that we've done on the farm. That's something else. That's private investment interest. So I don't know, trying to, trying to show economic pathways for people in the community. I think it's there, at least in this region, there is typically that tourism component, and the agriculture needs to be a special kind of agriculture that's not commodity, large-scale agriculture, but specialty products. You know, it's all organic biological produce here, and we also have— we have spawned a spin-off in process foods, you know, pickling things and kimchi and sauerkraut and that kind of stuff, dried fruits, etc. I don't know, Hugo, maybe you know more about these economic pathways.

Yeah, like there were several things in the question, and for me, what is more alive is this aspect of the what is the impact in the region, or how can the work that is being doing on the— that has been, you know, happening on the farm, how can it impact also on livelihoods of people around. And also, how can people then re-enliven what they are doing in terms of— but doing it in a more, you know, in balance with the cycles that they are in terms of restoration. And so I think in the case of this, of the farm here, With these ecosystem restoration, regeneration camps that we've been running, inspired very much by the ecosystem restoration camp movement that John D Liu has so much inspired, what we've been inviting is that local actors, you know, people that have land, a lot of back to the landers, a lot of people that are around our region, can come into the, into the site, into the farm. And by being in this particular condition that has an eco-resort and has a particular, uh, you know, structure and that dimension that makes this buffer, this edge between these different ventures, able to, to, to create value, uh, so that people can come and get the lessons that are more relevant to their own context. If they are working more with tourism, they can get that part of the inspiration. If they are working more with schools, we have this example with the Projeto Novas Descobertas and several alternative schools that actually come here to learn the way that the education for regeneration happens in this particular hub, and then they prototype and innovate and do the, you know, do their own type, in their own places, but informed by what's being trialed here. And the same with these ecosystem regeneration camps where people come here and they see the different landscape units. The way we've, we tried to, to design them is that people have one day per landscape unit. So if you are in a deeper soil context, you have that particular learning to take. If you are in a more, you know, like rocky context, you have that particular learning to take. If you are in a more like, if you want to create an orchard that is more tailored to production, then you have that particular lesson to take. And of course it's not to do exactly what we do, but it's to do inspired with what you do and actually bring the lessons. And we have cases of people that came to one ERC went home, do their things, came back the next year and actually brought us feedback and gave us information. And, you know, it's not a big community, so we are able to also see each other in the markets. And in the— so, so, so I see this is the value is like, uh, also of, of being able to inspire, but at the same time we want to do it more effectively.

Yes. Well, so that's the, the other part of the question that I'd like to address, and this is It's an open question and it's a part of an answer at this point. But what we can do to facilitate working at scale beyond this farm, beyond the bounds of this farm. We've had many people passing through and taking what they take from here and maybe they apply it, maybe they don't. We don't know anything about impact. So to move into impact, this is where one of the first steps I thought very important was the the monitoring and evaluation framework that actually just before the last ERC, what, a month, between a month, two months ago, Mick dos Santos came, who actually came to one of our ERCs earlier, and he came back with this framework, the Soil, Soul and Society framework, which we have adopted like fully. And this is one of the things doing monitoring and evaluation We were experimenting. I mean, what are the most important aspects of this?

For us, it's soil.

It's fundamentally— this farm is— we grow in living soil. Living soil is just a different substance entirely from— it's not just a substrate to hold the plants up. It's the microbiome, the soil microbiome and the gut microbiome, so connected. So, but we aim to prove this through. And we have some early evidence. We've done some trials of, you know, applied like worm extracts. What is the impact of that versus crops that are grown all the same but without? And it's very, very encouraging. And so to share those findings and to extend, we also provide these fertility products to neighboring farmers, people with projects that have come in and They, they, we can supply them with biofertilizers and worm castings, worm tea. We've been doing that. We have a plant nursery here which is expanding because we have a lot more plantation to do on the farm, and we aim to also supply support species, not the ones that you typically get at the local nurseries. So these are a few, and, and seed bank and you know, like lists of what are the plants, knowledge of what are the plants that work here and in soils of the region, because we got a watershed to restore that's far beyond the bounds of this farm.

And with these, you know, like, it's also very important for us at this moment that we are doing this movement out to also get lessons from the broader community. We are very focused here in the Southwest corner of the Algarve and of the Iberian Peninsula, but it would be great to hear, and especially from John D Liu, you know, what lessons you've been visiting, what places you've been that add the potential, and they've gone through that potential of actually incorporating larger areas and act on, you know, different stakeholders, how to inspire. In our context, we have, you know, different private— the lands are mostly private. How do you work with these?

How do—

how can we, you know, get that collective impact that, that, that is so important this time of age? And we would love to hear from lessons of, of, of established projects or, or even things that didn't work so well, you know, for us to also get inspired to do this outer movement.

Yeah, it's a new chapter and we can't pretend to know. So we want to answer whatever questions you've received, Chris, but we'd also like to engage John in this conversation of how can we go out to scale and to achieve collective impact.

Of course. No, I was also listening to the answer, and I'm also curious to hear John D Liu. So please go ahead, John. I didn't want to interrupt. The conversation was naturally flowing. So let's continue with that.

Great.

I think what you're doing is inspiring to everyone who hears about it. It's just extraordinary. And I do think that there are a few things that might work for you. I know you have accommodation for about 30 people, is that right?

Well, the camp has the 30 people, is kind of the limit for the camp. There's also this regenerative touristic hotel that is going to have, well, that's like double the size and it's expensive. And it's going to be— it's closed right now for this big expansion, but it's going to be opening this time next year, probably.

Do we do the spoiler of the design camping?

And we are aiming to open another area of camping that is specifically in that head zone of the farm that is focused on— this is where we are hosting— we have an internship program here on the farm. And this, this other area of the farm is called Lama Village, and that's where we have the resident staff, a handful of resident staff living here, and also capacity for another— up until now, the capacity has been like 6 interns to come and stay for 6 months, but we aim to expand this program. So there's different zones of the farm. And only one of them has a capacity of 30.

Yeah.

You know what I was thinking about, when we went to the second camp after Altiplano, is, was the Villa Organica in Mexico, and they have a really interesting situation where they have a really fully functional farm, and it's also a training center. And that training center is similar, it seems like it's similar, I'm not, maybe I'm, maybe it's a little bit bigger. What's the total, total?

It's actually 43 hectares is the 9 properties of this farm together.

So I think it's, it's in that area. Maybe a little larger, but they have also a restaurant and a store in, in the town, so they actually become— became the hub where all the expat people in San Miguel de Allende and all the Mexicans who want organic food go. And I think having one— one of the things that we've been thinking about is organic food cooperatives, because we could— you could work with all the, the farms that are farming organically, and you could have two things. We're seeing this in China, for instance, that you have— you could have in-person cooperatives, and you could have online. And if you eliminate all plastic and all single-use containers, yes, then you get to influence, you know, everybody who uses it completely. So only reusable containers And then basically when people have their containers, they can come and use them.

Yes.

Buy online, they can get— you can sell them the containers. So you can eliminate all of, all of this stuff. I would also say all of the, all of the communities and camps should be growing loofah. Loofah. Luffa can completely, especially in dry areas with full sun, you can completely eliminate those plastic scrubbers in the kitchen. You know, you never need them again. And of course you can also bathe yourself with, with luffa. So luffa is a really wonderful— the Chinese actually also eat it, but you have to eat it when it's young.

Yes.

When it gets really old and then you have to care for it and it's just prolific in making seeds too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's just a wonderful thing and I think all of us should be giving loofah sponges to our friends and family at Christmas and, you know, and once you plant a few loofahs you get so many loofahs and they also look funny because they hang They can be, and they hang down and they're really funny. And then when you dry them, you just lay them out, they dry and they take care of themselves. You don't have to do anything. And you don't actually peel off that outer peeling, just the loofah inside. You just want it to totally, you know, get dried and then you can shake it and it's, you can hear all those seeds inside. It's just, it's its own seed container. So you can, you can give them to people with the seeds inside, then they can just drop the seeds and take off the outside, use the loofah inside. It's a great present. Um, and I, I think have, like, if you get the concept of the, of the cooperative together with a restaurant, yeah, and this restaurant, you've got a number of, of possibilities for this restaurant. Um, if, if you connect that to a stage, so you have the restaurant can sell your food, and it can also second in the non— when it's not mealtime, if you have a pretty large industrial kitchen in there, you can do all the kind of things that processing with fermentation or canning or whatever other types of things that you want to do with the surplus food. So nothing goes to waste. And you could do this from a, from a community point of view, just like if they're hungry people. I mean, I, I'm not sure what it's like in Portugal, but I, when in California, it was just stunning to see how many people were homeless and hungry. And so if, if you just have a situation where you can create a restaurant and the community says, okay, we're going to send all surplus food to this restaurant, and then, you know, there— then it's either fed to the people immediately as fresh food, or it can be, it can be processed for storage. So I think And then if you have a stage there with a restaurant like this, then you really become the hub. You get a really nice sound system and a place to— if it's outside, you can even do it outside, but you have to have a place to close, enclose, and you just sort of open for the speakers. You know, the speakers are inside, it's all plugged up, and you have the microphones. And then as long as it's good weather and everything, you just open the doors and you put the microphones out on the stage and you bring out the— you can have the drums or whatever else also in a shed kind of thing that opens up on the back of the stage. You could even have that on wheels and push it out. You could have pianos, electric pianos especially, electronic ones. And, and when you do that It's just that you're having fun, you know. We, we have fun now, so let's have fun. And let's— and when you do this, people show up because then it's like, wow, this place is really happening.

Yeah.

And you can have the music, and you can also have movie night. You can have a big screen, and you can have dancing. And you can have lectures and you can have theater. Can you imagine? Have— just have a theater company for your, you know, just like do, you know, um, do whatever theater kind of theater that you want there. Man of La Mancha or something, you know, how, how funny, how crazy. Midsummer Night's Dream, can, you know, get just either traveling companies or just get people who are in— oh, community, and you're attracting. That's the way to attract. I mean, to say, come on, let's build some soil, that might not be the fastest way to get people in. But if you say, you know, come have a great meal, listen to this wonderful band, Or let's get, let's get Jacob Collier and have him go from place to place and do his thing with, with, you know who, Jacob Collier in Britain, and have him do this audience choir where everybody sings. It's just so beautiful and it just opens everyone's heart and everyone is resonating together and it's, it's beautiful. It's kind, it's generous, it's attractive, and that, that's what you need. I think you, you've basically proven that perennial polycultures, or you're seeing this, perennial polycultures are just better than annuals, planting annuals in monocultures. It's from an ecological functionality point of view and also from productivity.

Yes. So, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, we're, you know, it's kind of been, well, there's the annual veg garden over there and the orchards, and then there's everything that we're doing with perennial polycultures. But we're actually in the phase of introducing perennial polycultures into the annual vegetable garden in an alley cropping system. It's what we have to do. Have row crops exposed to the sun and the wind. Where we are, the wind is actually the most desiccating factor. So, you know, it's shelter belt and it's, you know, a bank of fertility and auxiliary insects and putting the two together. But again, this is kind of new. You know, there's a lot of talk about agroforestry techniques that integrate perennial and annual culture. But for us here, we've been looking around for examples and there really aren't any. So once again, we're off on a limb pioneering, but if there's anyone that's doing that very effectively, we're really interested to learn. A number of the things that you spoke about, I mean, the stuff with the stage and the opening to the, you know, it's like a saying in permaculture, you want to change the world, throw a better party. I don't know who said that, but And John, you know, you've been all about that from the beginning, and that's our experience. That's kind of how we started as a WWOOF host, hosting WWOOFers, you know, the Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms, and pizza nights, always a big thing, and party, party, but doing it effectively to integrate that somehow with the learning, you know. I mean, if we were to have a film night, I would love to be showing Hope in a Changing Climate. Let's, you know, bring music into it as well and that kind of thing. The food hub, the food hub idea, that's another one. We are members of a local integral co-op that we joined in order to create a local food ecosystem in our community. Where we bulk buy and distribute dry goods. At this point, it doesn't deal in freshies, but we have a food hub here on the farm that's an outlet for the co-op so that people that come on farm— most of our veg sales is at the Lagos Market, but here on farm we have some people that come here to pick up their veg and they can get dry goods at the same time. And then there's all these farm activities that we do more and more on Saturdays, but it's really hard to get that going. I have to say, yeah, it's a matter of context if you're near a big city or not. Lagos has got to be the smallest city in Portugal. I don't know how many people, but a few thousand. And the percentage of those people that are really interested in, you know, Organic food grown in living soil. It's not the cheapest food on the market, and sadly, too many people are going to the hypermarkets for the convenience and the cheapest price. So raising that awareness is difficult.

And at the same time, I was smiling all the time when you were mentioning, you know, that because I was picturing it and the region we are the region where we are, it's very alive in that sense.

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of cultural, you know, milieu. There's a lot of events and there's a lot of— and it's true, like, we, we, it was what, 1 month ago or 2, 3 weeks ago, we had a venue here from an, uh, an, like, an association that is based on the farm also.

It's a theater company actually.

It's a theater and dance company. That is also based here, and then it's just what you were mentioning, you know, like community chorus, and we have someone locally here that is doing community chorus, and it's exactly what you say, John D Liu, that it brings people together in a kind of a felt way where you see that a new civilization can be emerging and a civilization that can be hand in hand with the ecological practices on the, on the on, on the ground. And, and the beauty, like, and it would be great, and, and I'm very excited to see then how can this become a— can come— become more, uh, available and more reaching more people, not, not solely the niches, you know, because it's still yet a thing of the niche. And, uh, and it would be nice to to be able to reach, you know, like less advantaged people, you know, like people that are, you know, dealing with other challenges in their lives that also are linked with climate change for sure, but that the choice is not as easy to make. And so it was interesting also to see in the How can we bring, you know, bring the community on board in that inclusiveness, inclusivity, and in that broadness sense of, of human humanity in a way?

I see that Kath has got her hand up for a long time.

Oh, sorry.

No, just because I'm getting so excited about what's being discussed and I just wanted to see if I could add to the discussion in any way. So just a couple of things I picked up on. I just want to say I love the idea of this stage, this amphitheater, and I mean, you guys have built everything else on the farm already. I think it's just, you know, natural to have that. And living in Cape Town, I know all about howling coastal winds. So obviously you need to find the right position where it is most protected from the prevailing summer winds because it's those glorious summer evenings where you'll get, you know, people to come to to the theatre. And I was wondering if there's a way that you can tap into the thriving hotel industry on the Algarve. And yes, I know that you're dealing with people who just actually want their piña coladas and their, you know, sun and hot type holidays. But, you know, there is a growing interest in regenerative tourism. And if there was a way that you could maybe work with the tourism office or tourism board to offer tours of the farm, and two people staying at hotels who wanted to at least feel that they were giving back, you know, in and sort of offsetting their carbon emissions of having flown to the Algarve to visit a local regenerative farm and see what's happening there and pay for these tours. And it's wonderful because that money that you can obviously then reinvest back into, into what you're doing. And then I also just wanted to mention that in terms of of having a wider impact. There are a number of ecosystem restoration communities that do fall into the Mediterranean biome. And, you know, certainly, I mean, ALP in Turkey immediately comes to mind, what's happening at Altiplano, and several others here in South Africa too. And I think there's definitely opportunity to have a webinar where perhaps each of the ERCs in this biome first get to do a presentation like the one that you've just done, and then afterwards just open a general discussion where you all share ideas and you come up with brilliant ideas like John D Liu's idea, or it might be, you know, growing moringa and what that really means. Like, is it a lucrative product? Is this something we can market afterwards? Is it financially feasible to do this? How long does it take to grow? You know, what is the market like? And have all these kind of ideas where you really share your collective knowledge on Mediterranean biome ecosystem restoration and your experience, and then share all those, all that knowledge and all those findings. And I think it would be a really interesting conversation that goes beyond the Mediterranean biome, because obviously one of the biggest challenges of the Mediterranean biome is the constant stress about water. You know, will we get good rains this year or won't we? And so, it's the whole drylands ecology aspect as well. I think it would have wide appeal and interest. And I think that's certainly something that we could put together as a webinar later in the year. So, those are the main ideas that I just— well, not really. They were new ideas. I just wanted to share them. I see we have lost John, but hopefully he'll be jumping back on the call shortly.

Yeah, so we lost John.

Great ideas, Kat. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And boy, if you're going to pull together a Mediterranean webinar, well, count us in. We're there with bells on.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, and yeah, this connection with the wider, you know, the more mainstream tourism thing that's going on here on the Algarve. And I think that's a Mediterranean— whether it's Spain or south of France or Greece or Italy or right around the horn, you know, uh, Turkey and the North African, um, tourism is in most of these places, especially those that share the, if not the hot summer Mediterranean like we have, many of them are in the real arid zones. But they're nice places by, by a waterfront. So tourism is a common denominator that we all, we all, anyway, a lot of us share. And that's a fertile topic to explore. How can we integrate with the mainstream tourism industry? And mainstream. I got to share one thing, John. I'd like to get your reaction, but do you see that there's a kind of incompatibility between, you know, the kind of, you want to change the world, throw a better party, the kind of people that have revolved around projects like ours or free-thinking, free-spirited people that like kind of a wild party. And that that is kind of perhaps a repellent to more mainstream tourism, perhaps. I'm thinking also about institutional supporters of ecosystem restoration. If you've got a lot of, let's say, hippie-dippie kind of stuff going on, They look, no, these people are not serious. Have you found that to be a thing, you know, an attitude that's out there?

Well, I'd say there's been a lot of attitudes over the last 3 decades that I've been involved with this. But the first one was that no one knew that it was possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems.. And when you, you know, introducing that idea to people who have never thought about it, they go like, what? You know, like, we can do that? And so that was, that was kind of the first strange thing. And then when people did realize that it was possible, then those in positions of power or positions of having capital to use, they said, we can take care of this, we don't need anybody. 'Yes, and we'll just do it and it'll be— we'll own it,' you know. And, um, I don't think that's worked at all. I mean, if, if you, if you look at what they've— what they have been able to do, they've just fought over the, like, who's going to get the money.

Yeah.

Rather than ever understand about what it is that they're supposed to be doing. And the real fact is the value of ecological function is so much higher than productivity. And so they're trying to say we're all workers and we're all consumers, and so we're supposed to be buying and selling things, and that's the basis of money in the economy. But the reality is the money is a derivative from functional ecosystems. So we're basically inflating the derivatives and we're devaluing the source. If we look at the GDP-style economy and this constant growth or, you know, forever growth based on finite resources, it's just an impossibility, actually. And so the thing is that it's changing, and we're in the decade of ecosystem restoration, and the policies and the science— I mean, when I I mean, they gave me all kinds of fellowships to go to all these places because they'd never heard of it before. And then now it's sort of like entering the mainstream in science, and it's entering the mainstream in policy. But there's certain things that I noticed is that policy or talking about it or even making movies about it, you know, it's not the real thing. That's an analog. That's talking about restoration. And what you're doing is the real thing. It's restoration. You're on the ground, you're changing the soils, you're understanding the microbiome, you're understanding the role of biodiversity, you're understanding the role of the canopy.

You—

most people don't know that the solar radiation is interrupted by the height of the canopy. Yeah, and that, and that they don't understand that maybe it was millions of years since solar radiation directly hit the surface of the Earth. Yeah, and the physics are altered when you remove that, and now you've got this physics change which is hugely important.

Yes, and the dilemma I'm with is it's serious work We're doing serious work here and it's got to be fun or it won't get done. Like, so, but that seems to be a kind of dichotomy that seems to be, you know, those that would perhaps support institutional support for the good work we're doing, they'll look at you and it's like, are you serious? Are you doing serious work? Or are you here for, you know, is it a joke? Is it a party?

Do you know when I was in Peru, there's an old saying. So this like executive from Lima goes for a beach holiday, and there's a young man, he's a fisherman, and he's lying in the hammock. He's already gone out early in the morning, caught a bunch of fish, come back and they've already been sold in the market. And he's just laying in the hammock in the hot part of the day. And the guy comes up and says, "Oh, you're terrible! Get out of the hammock! What are you doing, you young man? You're healthy, you should be working! Are you crazy? If you just keep working, you'll make a whole lot of money, and then when you're old, you can retire and lay in the hammock." And the young man says, "Why would I do that? I'm already in the hammock." You know, it's just— and I started to talk about hammock time then, you know, so it's how much hammock time do you get. But there are a couple of other things which I think are critically important that we're looking at that I think you might want to know about. One is botanical sanctuaries. There are endangered species in your region, and there's possibilities for small teams of people to make sure that you can protect and increase the endangered species. There's another thing that we're doing called From the Mother Tree. This has been started, but if you know about mother trees, when you go out and you find a tree, first of all, the DNA that has been altered by hybridization or extreme breeding for specific traits is not the same DNA that created, constantly filtered, and continuously renewed the oxygenated atmosphere, the freshwater system, or the fertile soils. So we need to look back toward a more heritage DNA, ancient DNA, really climax equilibrium and try to understand this. Because if we just go with these hybridized and, and selective breeding, or worse, genetically modified, we don't know what the outcome will be in the future. And the heritage DNA we know has certain qualities that we want. So if you have a mother tree anywhere, then when you look at it, it's probably big. If it's 500 years old, you know, it's a huge thing. And, and it's going to have a few, uh, seedlings that germinate right underneath it. Now they're not going to be able to live there because they're too close to the mother tree. So we've been seeing this, and it's already reached a couple of million or a few million seedlings that have been gathered from mother trees in Europe now, and I think we could use this everywhere in the world. When you gather these, I don't know about Portugal what the weather's like, but, you know, in the northern areas we wait until the sap is down into the roots and then we We gather the seedlings. We don't take them all. You maybe take 15-20% because next year you're going to come back and you see the ones that are maybe bigger and you take the bigger ones because, and then you get the root ball and you cover the root ball with maybe like canvas, loose, loosely woven burlap or something like that. And then tie it up so that you have the soil and the root ball is completely covered. And then you can water the burlap and it'll keep the thing warm— I'll keep the moist in the roots. And then you move it to a nursery where it's going to stay until the early spring, which is sort of the best time. You have to look at your locality. What's the best time for gathering and what's the best time for replanting. And then you already have a map of the places that need these kinds of trees, and especially if you're looking for the endangered species, and you very carefully relocate them to places where they can survive, because if they're really close to the mother tree, well, they're not going to make it. So that's one thing that I think is So the botanical sanctuary, if you make the botanical sanctuary on your place and you have a nursery that you can maintain these, but you really want to take them outside and have them widely distributed wherever they're needed. So that's really important. The other thing that I think— there are two other things, three other things that I think are important. One is creator spaces. So this, this is like tool banks and, you know, there's a lot of experiential learning and building that you need to do. You need to maintain things like solar panels or pumps or whatever kind of thing that you're, you're working on, but you can also build dwellings. So natural building materials, natural dwellings— this is going to be really important for a lot of people, a very large number of people. So that's one thing. And co-working environments that get you the digital nomads to show up and pay you to be able to be there. They can share their experiences and their technical know-how and so on. It's pretty useful to have them come around, and they also pay for themselves. So that's pretty good. And then the other thing that we've been talking about a lot Well, there are two things that I still need to tell you. One is community land trusts, that if, if you get communities where it's everybody is on the same page and they're working together, that's better than private ownership. And there's some kind of shared understanding and collaborative things. And the other thing is with your caserina pie, You're using casuarina pine, Ever?

Yes, it's a word for a tree.

Okay, I have a film called Forest of Hope, and it has a place at the end of the film showing what Renee Haller was doing in Mombasa in Kenya with casuarina pine. To restore mine tailings, basically. And the, the, there's a co-evolved species called the red-legged millipede, and it eats casuarina pine needles, which desiccate if you don't have some method. You know, they just desiccate and stay there on top of the ground. So if you use these red-legged millipedes they eat through it and give you something very close to worm castings. So just a thought.

Interesting. And I think I heard you say on another occasion that they use them to recover soils that are polluted with too much calcium carbonate.

Well, no, those were The mining, they were mining calcium carbonate and they just removed everything. So it was basically quarries that were down to bedrock, you know, and there was nothing.

I've been surprised some of the areas on the farm where that's all it is. This is a limestone coastal plain. And on the north slope in the belt area, we have more deposition of, you know, clay and it's more barrocal as we call. But on the south slopes, we've got areas that's just hard rock, that's just limestone, and the casuarina, they've managed to establish and find their own water and thrive. Amazing.

Yes, and if you use the red-legged millipede, you'll get soils on the bottom instead of just needles.

We have to get some of those millipedes. I notice again, Kath has her hand up. Are we running out of time?

Yeah, I think, I mean, Chris facilitating, but I think we probably do need to wrap up quite soon. But I just wanted to touch on two things once again that John mentioned. The one was the digital nomads. And, you know, certainly, once again, I'm going to use the analogy of Cape Town, but Cape Town has been inundated with digital nomads, people who come here. We have a very long summer season, similar to Portugal. So from sort of September until March, April, coming to live here, and where there's Wi-Fi, there's life, basically. So, well, certainly income. So, and I can see that you guys do have a strong internet connection, certainly if this call is anything to go by. So I certainly think that there's a lot of potential there if you did have sort of comfortable dwellings where people could stay and these coworker spaces where they could they could work and, you know, you could have some deal with them that maybe in their free time or evenings they actually helped out on the farm. But I also wanted to use this opportunity to highlight the fact that ERC Versailles in La Dordogne in France is actually running a course in August in partnership with two other organizations on how to find your land and make a living off it. And it is largely calling on digital nomads who could have or might have access to land who are looking to live off the land. And obviously initially they're going to continue with their day jobs, you know, online, but ultimately make the transition to living off the land. So you'll find that on our website under the Participate page. But that might be an interesting model for you to look at and possibly one that you could look at replicating in terms of, in terms of a course, if that's something you were interested in. And then I just also wanted to to say that the publication that you shared earlier, the one that was done in 2017, you mentioned a study that you were involved in. I think it looks like a brilliant, brilliant resource, sorry, and something that would be amazing to share on the Knowledge Hub that we have. And then obviously we'll put the link under this video. And you mentioned before some other links that you'd like to share too. And we can have those all attached to this recording for those that are keen to learn more and to continue learning about those resources and links.

Definitely put them in the show notes. Great.

Okay. I also wanted to mention something before maybe wrapping it up. It was about the point, important point that John made about the botanic sanctuary. So actually, unfortunately, before, shortly before you joined the EAC, we submitted a proposal for the Erasmus+ fund program in Europe that was actually related to something very similar. It's in partnership with a Dutch organization. More Trees Now, and they have a very similar way of operating, collecting seedlings from the forests and using them to go then restore and reforest areas that need to be reforested. So, the idea of the project is to take the learnings from the north of Europe, so we will have the Dutch organization, we will have the Irish ERC, Chantal Criée, and also Versailles in France, and also translate them to the south of Europe, to Altiplano and Rocha Viva. So it's— we'll see if it will be accepted. Otherwise, if we have to resubmit, you're also super welcome to join if this is of interest to you. And it's also an idea for maybe future cooperation, because it's, uh, this type of project all the ERCs are very, very excited about. It's very concrete. So yeah, fingers crossed also they will be funded. And I don't know if— I see that we've been here already for a long time. Should we wrap it up for today?

Great.

John, if you also— oh, my laptop is running out of battery. Also, if you want to stay on the call with John, if both of you have time, of course, Walt and John, feel free to stay. I just need to plug my laptop in one second.

It has been an amazing and really honored moment here, and I've been feeling very blessed to be in this call with you, John, with you, Kat, and Chris, and of course with you all here.

Always a pleasure. But finally to come together with this global network and the man, the legend, who inspired it all. You've got so much experience to share. Um, it's, yeah, it's a great honor and it's, it's the beginning of something that I feel has legs.

It's, uh, well, we can of course stay on for a little while longer. I think you've made me the co-host now. You want to stop the recording and then, yeah, I guess let's just close it.

I want to thank everyone.

Thank you.

But we can stay on as well. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you, Walt. It was really inspirational. It was an honor to host such a great initiative tonight. Thanks for all the information, the knowledge, the experience, everything you shared with us. And if anyone listening to this recording has questions for Quinta Valle de Lama, you can reach out to them through their page on the IRC website. Or you can send an email to hello@erc.earth, and we will make sure that you get in touch with them. So thanks everyone.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you so much.