Keela Permaculture Farm Portugal

We are an off-grid permaculture project in Portugal. We open our homestead and farm to visitors who want to attend a Permaculture Design Course, Food Forest Course, Natural Building Course and Yoga retreats with Permaculture.

We are working on restoring an abandoned agriculture farm into an abundance of food and life through Food Forests, Agroforest and land restoration activities. We have established working Permaculture systems with various natural buildings including Straw Bale, cordwood and cob. Our in-house yoga teacher can also provide you with morning yoga when you visit us.

Permaculture Design Course

Permaculture Design Course Portugal
Design and build permaculture systems and get a certified PDC certificate from the Permaculture UK Assosiation

Eco Yoga Retreat with Permaculture

Eco Yoga Retreat with permaculture
Eco yoga retreats in nature, with permaculture workshops and more. Click here for dates

Food Forest Courses

food forest course
Learn how to design, implement and manage a food forest.

Natural Building Courses

Natural Building Courses
Stone work, wattle and daub, straw bale, clay plaster, earth bags, lots of fun and daily yoga.

Permaculture & Yoga Volunteer programs

permaculture volunteering
Off-grid community living while learning, having fun and working hard

Reforestation Program

Reforestation
Donate towards our carbon offset and reforestation program or join us in January 2020 to help plant.

Latest Blog Posts

Baby animals are so cute – births on the farm

Keeping animals are such a joy, especially when you can integrate them into the farm to reduce work load and increase fertility. Not to mention all the food you get. This year we have had so many births of piglets, chicks and lambs and here is a little into and some photos for you.

Posted in Animals, Chickens, pigs, Sheep | Leave a comment

Permaculture Internship Video

Want to know what it is like on one of our Permaculture internships? Check out this 20 min video showing what we got up to each day during the Summer 2021 internship. Remember internships are different seasonally and annually but this will give you an idea.

Posted in About Us, Permaculture | Leave a comment

Olive Press Fundao / Penamacor / Castelo Branco / Idanha-a-Nova area

List of Olive presses in our area. Between Penamacor, Fundao and Castelo Branco Area, please leave comments about the ones you have used or if you know any others.

Posted in Cooking & Preserving, Fundao Portugal | Leave a comment

Buy a tree for a gift

Gift a tree to your loved ones! A birthday, Father’s day, Christmas present or whatever occasion you like. We will do a personalised video of the tree planting for you to share.

Posted in Reforestation | Leave a comment

Chicken food forest update

We planted a chicken food forest two years ago with many species of plants. Fallen fruit and low hanging fruit will be for chickens, middle fruit for us and the highest fruit will be for wildlife.

Posted in Chickens, Food Forest, Permaculture Chicken System | Leave a comment

How to Kill Eucalyptus Naturally on Organic farms

Eucalyptus trees are bad for the environment and a fire hazard in Portugal. We have killed many areas of Eucalyptus on our farm and we would like to share with you how we kill eucalyptus trees.

Posted in Agroforestry, Reforestation, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Private Farm tour & Consultations

We can show you around the whole farm or focus on certain areas for a private tour and consultation. We will be happy to give you any advice you need and answer any questions you may have about your plans and your project.

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Offgird eco farm stay Portugal

You are welcome to stay and experience our off-grid permaculture farm in Central Portugal. Find out what off-grid living in nature is all about, learn from us how we got started and see some of our permaculture and off-grid systems.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Gluten Free Bread Machine recipe with Carob Flour

A simple gluten-free recipe with Carob and Rice flour, both ingredients readily available in Portugal. I just tried this one day and it is the best gluten-free bread we have made.

Posted in Cooking & Preserving | Leave a comment

Update from the farm

Here is an update on what we have been doing on the farm, information on upcoming yoga retreats and volunteering opportunities, and farm-stay holidays and experiences with us.

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Closed for guests due to covid restrictions

We were set to open our doors for guests again in two weeks but last week Portugal went back into a strict lockdown, so we have to close until further notice.

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Morning Tasks on a permaculture farm

We made a youtube video on our morning tasks at Keela so you can see he we start our day. There is nothing better than getting to connect with nature, get some fresh air and connect with animals and plants every morning before breakfast.

Posted in About Us, Animals, Permaculture | Leave a comment

Fruit trees going into the agroforestry field

This winter we are planting out our newest agroforestry field in multiple stages. A field to integrate fruit crops, reforestation and sheep pasture. This week we planted in 54 fruit trees into the agroforest along swale lines. Have a read about the stages we have completed and what we have left.

Posted in Agroforestry, Food Forest | Leave a comment

13 cool new trees

In November 2020 we planted our first 13 trees in our new agroforestry system.  We have prepared this field over the last year with swales, fencing, cover crops and a pond and now they have 13 cool new trees! This field will have a forest planted that will offset carbon, create habitat for wildlife and […]

Posted in Agroforestry, Food Forest, Reforestation | Leave a comment

Our first Article in Permaculture Magazine

We wrote a three-page article on Sheep Wool Insulation for permaculture magazine. It talks about ways of cleaning and using insulation. More people should be using wool for insulation, this article looks at the effort vs cost saving. We have subscribed to this magazine for a few years and can highly recommend it to you.

Posted in About Us, Publications | Leave a comment

Tree Planting and Ally Cropping in our Silvopasture

This year we have had a bit of rain in September so we started our tree planting early. On top of that we further planted into the layers of our silvopasture plantation. Thank you to our Permaculture interns for buying trees and planting them. We planted cherries, nectarines and almonds into space that we had […]

Posted in Agroforestry, Animals, Food Forest, Permaculture, Reforestation | Leave a comment

Organic sulfate-free wine making

We are lucky to have had our friend Kiko help us make the wine for the past two seasons. Kiko grew up making wine at his father’s winery, studied winemaking and has worked in various wineries. We make wine from organic grapes and nothing is added during the wine-making process and no chemicals to the […]

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Photos from the 2020 Natural Building Internship

During the summer of 2020, we ran a 10-week Natural Building internship where guests joined for 1 week, 1 month or the whole 10 weeks to help build a barn from start to (almost) finish using sustainable building techniques. There are terms such as ‘natural building’ and ‘low impact building’ but this time around we […]

Posted in Natural Building, Sheep | Leave a comment

Life During Lockdown

During the lockdown, we had 5 guests guaranteed with us for 3 months after they were meant to leave and then we enjoyed the farm to ourselves for a while. For those of you that are not following us on social media for our daily updates, here are some photos of all the things we […]

Posted in About Us, Agroforestry, Food Forest, Permaculture, Reforestation | Leave a comment

Cleaning and Using Sheep Wool for Insulation

Sheep are amazing creatures to have on your permaculture farm. For very little input they give us so much in return. They manage our pasture helping to keep our land fire safe, they provide us with income from meat, cheese from their milk and manure for our food forests and growing gardens.

Posted in Animals, Natural Building, Permaculture | Leave a comment

Chicken Powered Compost System

We started our new chicken powered compost system one month ago when we finished our new chicken run. The chickens will make us compost whilst producing food for the chickens. This is part of our wider Keela Yoga Farm chicken system.

Posted in Animals, Permaculture, Permaculture Chicken System | Leave a comment

Introducing our pigs

We have just got two piglets from a friend to help us manage our farm and give us sustainable food. We look forward to learning how to look after pigs and use them as workers in an effort to offset more carbon and produce more food. The breed of the pigs are half Mangalitsa, half […]

Posted in Animals, Permaculture | Leave a comment

Building our Strawbale Community House

In September 2019 we completed the building of our straw bale community house. This is a large building where our visitors can eat, work, attend classes and relax. This was built on rocky land using a sustainable design and building with straw and clay from our area or nearby. Please take a look at this […]

Posted in Natural Building | Leave a comment

Silvopasture for Chickens & Sheep

Over the past year, we have planted one field using silvopasture principles. Silvopasture is where you grow trees and shrubs with animals integrated into the system that benefit each other. The idea is to reduce carbon based inputs into the system such as tractors to cut grass and fertiliser for trees whilst getting extra forrage […]

Posted in Agroforestry, Animals, Food Forest, Permaculture, Reforestation, Sheep | Leave a comment

Kimberly Manchee – Yoga Teacher and Co-Founder of Keela Yoga Farm

Kimberly Manchee is the co-founder of Keela Yoga Farm. She is the farm and kitchen manager and resident Yoga teacher. Kimberly teaches workshops on Reiki, food fermentation and preserving, makes cheese, connects the fresh farm food to the kitchen, runs yoga retreats, teaches local yoga classes and looks after the farm animals. Have a read […]

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Photos and updates from 2019

We have had a very busy year on the farm with more than 100 volunteers, many courses and retreats. We have started some new permaculture systems, continued in the food forests and with our reforestation project and the natural building projects. Here is an update on some of our current projects for those not following […]

Posted in About Us, Agroforestry, Food Forest, Natural Building, Permaculture, Reforestation, Research, Updates, Yoga | Leave a comment

Swales and earthworks in action

An 5 min video update on how the earthworks that have been dug on all of our food forest course are doing after heavy rain.

Posted in Agroforestry, Food Forest, Reforestation | Leave a comment

Double page spread in local newspaper

Keela Yoga Farm featured a double-page spread in the local printer newspaper ‘Jornal do Fundão‘. It was using us as an example of the many people coming here to set up farms and communities offsetting the reducing population in the area.

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Introducing Beyonce – Our Pet Cockerel

There are three types of chickens, chickens for eggs, chickens for meat and then there is Beyonce ‘The Gentleman Cockerel’.

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Retreat with Sudhir Rishi June 2020 – Mastering Relationships

We are so happy that Sudhir Rishi will return to us for another 6-day retreat at Keela Yoga Farm on the 13th June 2020J. Join us to deepen your knowledge of Yoga philosophy, Ayurvedic practices, Permaculture and sustainable living whilst being immersed in nature. The focus of the retreat will be Mastering Relationships with yourself, […]

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