Saturdays at the Farm, or Sábados na Quinta in Portuguese, is a recurring monthly program in which participants visit our location at the Quinta Vale da Lama organic farm. Each session features a regenerative agriculture and land use-focused guided tour of the farm, followed by a themed lecture or hands-on workshop. The program is free to attend and gives local residents and visitors alike the opportunity to engage with experts while spending time outdoors.
Mud Valley Institute recently completed the first season of Saturdays at the Farm and we are excited to share a bit about it. Now that we have four sessions under our belt, it’s also a good time to reflect on what worked well with the program and what we can do to make it even better in the future.
Why we offer Saturdays at the Farm
Our Saturdays at the Farm program supports our mission of creating a Bioregional Learning Center that empowers people with the tools, skills, and mindsets needed to be effective agents of change and regeneration in their communities.
These programs offer participants the opportunity to learn about different topics related to regenerative agriculture, ecosystem restoration, and our region in general, while spending time outside. The farm tour and workshop each last about an hour and a half, so it makes for a nice afternoon of activities and engagement in our beautiful outdoor setting.
The farm tour gets people grounded in our context
Many people hear about organic farms, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration, but don’t know what that means in reality. This guided tour, led by an expert in the field of permaculture and ecosystem restoration, is a way to share the specifics of what we do and how, in the actual context of the farm. People come away knowing more about the concepts of ecosystem restoration and regenerative agriculture. They will hopefully want to learn more or, even better, get involved.
The Saturdays at the Farm tour usually covers areas such as:
- Soil quality: how we work to improve it through regenerative agriculture
- Swales: why they are needed, and how they are constructed
- The role of topography: how we adapt what we do based on the landscape
- Composting: the variety of compost types we utilize at the farm and how each is created and managed
- Agroforestry techniques: how we apply them- alley cropping, wind breaks, living fences, and syntropic farming, to name a few
- Holistic grazing: what our chickens and sheep are doing
- Market garden visit: seeing the output that supports the farm’s operation
- Plus a few other things!
The workshop/open talk expands awareness of our ecosystem
The themed workshops or open talks that come after the farm tour teach the attendees more about the local ecosystem and area. We don’t want people to just focus on the farm or nature when we say “ecosystem”. We also want them to learn about the ecosystem we live in as it relates to social, economic, geographical, historical, and cultural factors. So, the topic changes each time to appeal to a variety of interests while also getting people to think more holistically about what is around them. These sessions are also set up to be interactive, encouraging attendees to be more engaged.
The dates and workshop topics for the four sessions held this season were:
March 16 – Vegetarian Cooking Workshop with Seasonal, Local and Organic (SLO) Food. Maria Quintana from Wild Zymu Foods showed us how to make a garden salad that featured fresh, homemade pesto made with organic vegetables and greens from the Vala da Lama garden.
April 27 – Water and Ecosystem Restoration in the Southwest Algarve. This workshop featured breakout sessions in three areas, each discussing different topics related to water conservation education and action. Participants also included representatives of the citizen-led group REGAR as well as attendees of the Ecosystem Restoration Camp being held concurrently.
May 25 – Archaeology: Ancestral Place. Ricardo Soares, municipal archaeologist of Vila do Bispo, covered the topics of menhirs and the Southwest Iberian Script as they related to our local area. He discussed the ancient writing system, its significance, and how we are still trying to fully decipher it.
June 8 – Biodynamic Agriculture in the Western Algarve, and the Centenary of the “Farmer’s Course”. This open talk gave an overview of the concept of biodynamics and presented some of the ways it has been implemented locally. It was presented as a part of Biodynamics Week in the Western Algarve, a multi-program event put on by a number of partner organizations.
Each of our Saturdays at the Farm sessions was well attended with about 25 people per session. The audience size was kept low in order to make the event more intimate and allow more interaction with the tour guides and workshop facilitators.
Improving the program
Mud Valley Institute will continue to offer the Saturdays at the Farm program in the future, scaling up the number of sessions to share important regenerative principles with more people. A key area for improvement is to increase the number of repeat visitors to the program. One way to do this might be to offer a series of related workshops that will allow us to go deeper into the given theme, rather than offering ad hoc and disparate workshop topics. We will also post on social media and write a blog recap immediately after each event, sharing what happened with our followers and building anticipation for the next event.
If you are in the area, check to see when the next Saturdays at the Farm event is. You can learn more here.
| Saturdays at the Farm is a key program allowing Mud Valley Institute to increase its impact, especially as it relates to educating people about regeneration and getting them more engaged with this critical work. We will continue to offer the program, and look to expand it in the future. |
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