Our Story
In 2011, our family bought a small farm in southern Mallorca, Spain.
S’Hort Gran d’es Palmer is beautiful, with its seven hectares of olive trees, wheatfields and terra rossa soils.
By 2018, however, we began to see the reciprocal of such monocultural beauty. Through the warm Mediterranean colours we saw with consternation arid and depleted farmland: the result of grain farming since the 1950s.
Soils that once were vibrant were stripped of organic matter and nutrients. The clay and silt are compacted hard as rock in summer and suck at your shoes with the winter rains.
Wild animals were rare, insect diversity even rarer after decades of monoculture and chemicals. As for birds, only the ubiquitous sparrows and pigeons could survive industrial farming’s ecosystem degradation.
In 2019, we reached out for assistance to the Spanish Asociación de Agricultura Regenerativa and, specifically, Permallorca, who specialise in syntropic forestry and permaculture.
Permallorca provide agroforestry consultancy, design and management services. Neighboring farmers have also been engaged in the effort to re-green; to assist in seeding, cover-cropping and soil preparation.
Today we are regenerating the arid and seasonally barren farmland into seven hectares of diverse woodlands, vibrant pastures - with flowers, fruits and habitat for birds, beneficial insects and animals - and a regenerative Mediterranean Food Forest.
Seeding and tree planting started in the summer and fall of 2020. A diversity of 13,500 trees and bushes will soon become a reality.
At S’Hort Gran d’es Palmer, we are prioritizing carbon capture and sequestration through wall-to-wall photosynthesis and adding biomass. This will enrich and vitalize the soil, causing the microbiome and fungal networks to thrive as nature intended. One day this living underground organic factory will be incalculably valuable.
The response will be manifold:
In a small way, taking CO2 out of the air (2-4 tons of carbon in the soil per hectare) each and every year, helps improve air quality and cools the planet (and our green leafy property).
Photosynthesis means that plants feed the soil through exudates from their roots, pumping carbon into the soil. This carbon is the foundation for a healthy, vibrant, humic soil structure.
A carbon-rich soil retains and provides nutrients for plants that are healthy, strong, pest-and-fungal resistant, and nutrient-dense.
In the same manner, a carbon- thus humus-rich soil provides a healthy home for an increasingly vibrant soil microbiota.
A carbon rich soil absorbs and captures huge volumes of rainwater and the heavy dew that rolls off the sea, rather than having them evaporate away.
This launches the regenerative eco-cycle that is so supportive of a vibrant ecosystem that will emerge as lands are restored to their natural state. We expect that all sorts of plants, insects, and animals will reappear and flourish.
As this happens, we will be able to do our part learning regenerative land management science and techniques to share with our neighbors and the next generation.
All this has no meaning unless our mindsets change, unless we embrace letting nature thrive instead of fighting it.
Our family is becoming a small part of the global effort to improve what threatens to be a disastrous eco-legacy being left to our children and future generations.
John-Freddy and Paola and their three adorable children live on the property. John is the maestro helping manage the re-forestry and re-wilding of the farmlands.
Jose, from Permallorca, is guide and guru, supplying the science, experience and soul to our regenerative efforts.
We will advance our small piece of the solution with nature and as fast as nature will allow.
What is already apparent is how interwoven and integral each aspect of nature is to all of us, and how these vital, complex, little-understood yet so meaningful relationships need to be preserved for the health of the Earth.
So, we will be regreening and rewilding S’Hort Gran d’es Palmer because it is so rewarding to the Earth, to humanity, and - frankly - to our own souls.
This is not a project in isolation.
We are in touch with a growing cohort of like-minded individuals who are aware that we can no longer ignore the travesty of current farming and forestry practices.
Hopefully, collectively, we will be advancing the template for regenerating Earth.