The document summarizes the goals and vision of Life Style Design from 2010-2011. It describes their journey of moving locations multiple times to find a permanent home, while reducing their environmental impact. Their goal is to eventually establish a permanent settlement where they can design and implement an abundant permaculture system that meets all their needs. They hope to help others through teaching permaculture, reforestation, and cultural/educational activities while having a peaceful existence.

1. Life Style Design
Jan 2010 – Sep 2011
Co-Created by Josh Gomez & Rosie Stonehill

2. Life Style Design
Throughout these two and a bit years, there have been many changes in our lives, from
moving house numerous times in the search for our own permanent home, to having a
baby who has grown into an adventurously inquisitive little boy. We have helped in many
different projects, Mount of Oaks, Varzea da Goncala, Vale da Lama and many of our
friends’ lands. At the beginning of the time we were living in Josh’s mum’s house in
Lagoa, a town in the middle of the Algarve 20 Metres above sea level and now we find
ourselves at around 600 Metres up in Central Portugal on the western foot hills of the
Serra da Estrella. Even from the beginning we were trying to live as consciously and
ecologically as possible, but day after day throughout this time we have reduced our
environmental impact to the point where now, still even without our own home quite yet
realised, we are:
•Producing a very large proportion of what we eat
• Mostly only using the car once or twice per week and sharing it with others
•Working much more locally (so not commuting any great distance)
•Independent of centralised power and water supplies
•Cooking and heating mostly with wood
Co-Created by Josh Gomez & Rosie Stonehill

3. Then – January 2010
This was the first date we decided to do a full audit of our consumption and global
impact. For one thing it was the first time since Lowarn’s birth that we had been in one
place for any length of time so it made it possible to get an accurate and regular rate of what
we were using and where it was coming from and being a parents’ home it gave us some
ownership of how things were.
It was during this time that we designed the roof top permaculture as a long term productive
solution to a long term problem with the roof. This design is detailed in the urban
permaculture section. This design was not ultimately taken up, for various reasons, and
compounded for us again the need to find our own space to be able to design and
implement freely.

4. Water
Travel
•bottled from
•Short, walk, shop Warmth &
bicicyal Cooking
•mains tap
•Mediam, friends •Electric heater
vehicle, bus, •Gas cooker
•Long, bus, train
aeroplane
Food
•Local market
Shelter •Small local
•Josh's mum's shops
house •super market
Then –
Clothing & Landry
January 2010 •Second hand /
Growing charity shop
space •Hand made
•None •Shops
•Washing
Ideas for where to grow Machine
Aljezur valley land Good Health
Rent land in Monchique / Medicine
Land with Afgan and Kinga Energy
Building and •Bought natural
Land with Lesley and •Mains
craft medicine
Howard
Yoga retreat in Sao Marco
materials •Farmacia
As yet unknown opportunity •Found/reused
Stay here and grow roof •Bought
garden

5. Goal- This is where we hope to
be ASAP
This may be idealistic, but everything has to start in an ideal so we know where we are going.
We feel that the question is not asked enough by the human race “where I would ideally
want to be?” and “how would I ideally like this world to be?”. As Ghandi said, Be the
change you want to see in the World, but to do this we must all clearly know that world
before it comes into being and have generally and basically the same ideals.
Our vision is therefore for our future and the future of our children’s children unto the ninth
generation but we can only start and act today. Primarily for us at this time we feel a very
strong need to find our permanent settlement and deeply root ourselves in the here and now;
there is no permaculture without a sense of permanence in a place, a region, a community.
We hope to soon realise a home for ourselves and our lovely little boy. Beyond this point
we hope to invest the majority of our time in observing, understanding, designing and slowly
and steadily implementing an abundant, human centred, ecosystem that supplies all our
needs and allows us to exist on this planet as a part of rather than apart from the natural
systems which sustain the Earth.

6. With the rest of our time we hope to:
• help locally in other people’s projects
• start bio regional and regional permaculture groups and gain strength in numbers
• start a home education group locally with parents and children paving a way for free thinking,
passionately alive, artistically abundant, skilled individuals who can rebuild the health of the planet
and the people.
• locally, nationally and potentially internationally teach permaculture and create other teachers and
designers
• re-forest this area with diverse and more native woodland
• start a permaculture circus for the local schools and festas, we have already named ourselves “Circo
da Terra” - Circus of the Earth
• brighten up the villages and the locals with colourful diversity and a hopeful new spring of culture,
awakening their playful and joyful nature
• learn whilst we can, all we can from the older generations who played a part in shaping this country
and have the remnants of a rich tapestry of skills and stories to share
• exchange inappropriate technology for appropriate technology in the mountains
•cars for cable cars as they are a far more direct and can be
self ( or water) propelled
• reopen all the water mills or create new mini hydros for
generating locally used electricity ( is more appropriate than
the huge wind turbines that lose 40 % of their power in
transport to the centralised distribution hubs and are not
constantly producing.
• have a peaceful, enjoyable existence and help others have the same.

7. Short-long •Have own on land or near by source
•Walk •Spring
•Cycle / horse ride •Well •Max efficiency
•Shared biogas or hydro electric Water •River
wood burning
car, hiching / lift shair, Warmth stove
•Bus , train Travel &
•Passive Solar
•Crewing/ Ship share cooking
•From our land
and wild forage
Shelter Food •Friend and
•Yurt and tipi neighbours land
•Low impact •local market
self build house
Goal •Made from
home grown plant
Clothing / animal materials
Growing •Traded locally
&
space
•Our own land and Laundry for other goods
use surrounding •Second hand /
unused land charity shop
•Hand made
Good • Water Mill
Energy Health / Washing Machine
•Independent Building Medicine
renewable sources and craft •Home grown organic food &
•Wind •Grown materials herbal medicine
•Solar •Found / reused •Bought natural medicine
•Water •Bought •Farmacia

8. Now-August 2011
At this time we have been staying at Quinta das Aguias since January. When we first got here
we were invited to stay as long as we needed whilst we looked around the area for a place of
our own. The owner Thomas at this time was in the process of ending a long term business as
a goat farmer with the plans to move back to Germany with his family. We were originally
offered the opportunity to take over the remaining sixty goats and continue the business but
after a time of trying we felt that for us alone it was too much to start with so we declined the
offer and the goats were sold. He also had a horse, some chickens and several dogs. We felt
it would be a great shame for the horse to sold out of the area as there are very few horses in
this region anymore and we could see that she could be of great value not only to us but also to
the local community in her carrying and pulling power, grazing and manure production; so we
bought the horse. We have now been working with her for many months, Josh is able to ride
her and Rosie is building trust, confidence and friendship with her. We have been researching
and practising natural horsemanship as practised by Pat Perrelli and Monty Roberts which has
really changed how we work with the horse, in partnership rather than domination. The
chickens also stayed and we have added four more to the flock from the local market, they
have given birth to three others, one of which died. Already we have had a very good regular
egg production especially since we have provided for them some free range area for forage.
We also changed their food from a grain mix which contained some GM ingredients to simple
oats this we feel has also made them healthier.

9. The two younger dogs were left with us to look after and to see whether we want to keep them,
at least one dog can be useful, especially to protect the chickens, but time will tell if decide to
keep them both. To add to our menagerie we have also started to keep bees and have one
hive which is strong and healthy and has already given us some of our honey this year.
Since almost the beginning of our time here we have been working a small garden which was
born partly out of the necessity to supply at least some of our own food and also because we
had the use of a large greenhouse to get things started in. We bought a diverse selection of
organic seeds from Tamar organics, filled the greenhouse with plants, and very soon we
needed bed space outside to plant into; so we made our first raised bed in April and it went on
from there until the whole terrace was intensely planted with food. It was a mixture of quick
design and “we need more space to plant,” but we are both very pleased with the result and for
the last 2 months we have been getting most of our food from this beautiful garden. It has
shown us that it is possible to obtain a yield in a very short amount of time and in a relatively
small space. We have also seen a marked improvement in the amount of soil life in some of
the first beds we made.
It has given us a lot of confidence in our approach to gardening and when we find our own
place, and can give it more time in observation and design, we feel that we could create an
even more productive zone 1 garden that would be much more linked to the inputs and
outputs of the home (or zone 0) and be gracefully integrated with the forest garden (zone 2). It
has made us realise also that we do not need to buy a lot of land, even a small place could be
enough for our needs and would in fact be much easier to understand, manage and maintain
well.

10. •Three
sources from
springs on
mountains
•Rooms next to farm house at Water •Wood burning
Quinta Das Aguias stove
Warmth •Paint tin rocket
Shelter & stove
cooking
Now- •Second hand / charity shop
Temporary use of a terrace August •Hand made
at Quinta das Aguias (see 2011 Clothing •Shops
below for more pictures) Growing
&
Space
Laundry Laundry – Bucket
Stomp Wash with Hose
Rinse into Garden and
Building Drip Dry Over Plants
•Solar for our personal use Energy and craft
•Farm has independent materials
mini hydro system •From the land
•Wood for tools
•Craft things for children
•Found / reused Good
•Bought Health /
Food Travel
Medicine

11. Majority of veg from the garden Primarily from eating very vital
in the growing season fresh home grown food
Majority of fruit from the already Collecting local herbs to dry,
established fruit trees make infused oils, balms,
All eggs from the chickens tinctures and infusions
Some honey from the bees Propolis from the hive
Organic grain and staples bought Seasonal fresh herb teas
in bulk from collective Suma Good
order Health /
Food Medicine
Travel
Short – Long
Walk
Horse – Riding or with a cart
Car – we are sharing this locally with other families
Bus and Train
Fly

12. Our Garden – The space before
Rock Face
Stone edged
Lemon tree
raised bed
Estufa
Wall making two levels
Cherry tree
Calendula
bed
Pear tree Stairs
Pear tree
Terrace wall – grape vine fence all the way along

13. Our Garden Design
Random Squash &
Low’s bed polyculture bed pepper bed Planned
polyculture bed
Estufa
Pear
Second Bed
tree
Estufa First Bed bed
Bean &
bed Sunflower bed
•Synergistic raised bed •Bean Tipi
•Dug in manure bed
•Pond •Unplanted land – largely covered with
• Rock face clover and various wild food plants
•Path •Stairs
•Trench
•Trees : 2 pears, 1
lemon, 1 cherry 5 small
willows

15. First Bed
With this bed, we first marked out the size rectangle we wanted with stakes. Then we
gathered all woody garden residues from the terrace and laid these along the centre of
the bed as a rotting spongy water and nutrient reservoir and to introduce beneficial
fungal and bacterial life to the bed. Next we covered this with a layer of old compost,
from a nearby heap, after which we put down seed potatoes as an experiment. Then
we covered this all with the soil dug from a trench along one side and gave it a
dressing of goat manure and straw ready to plant.
Very rapidly, we began to get a variety of leaf crops from this bed then, as the potatoes
came up, we also saw that, at pretty regular intervals, we were getting spontaneous
volunteer sunflowers. These became very tall and at the base of each one we planted
climbing beans which we are still harvesting now, even after the sunflowers have
toppled towards the edge of the terrace, hitting the grape vine fence. We were
particularly impressed with the crop of potatoes which we were able to harvest from
the bed without disturbing the other plants.

17. Second Bed
This bed was prepared in the same way as the first, minus the potatoes. Once finished we
generally overplanted the whole bed with peas, beans, corn and pumpkins in the middle
and amaranth, various salad leaf vegetables and herbs around the sides. This was originally
intended as a version of the three sisters guild but it became more like seven sisters with an
amazing jungle of growth and food.
We have already taken some corn, a lot of beans, chard, kale, lettuce, cabbage, beetroot,
mustard, peas and 11 big squashes and it’s still producing more. To all these beds we are
returning all residues and occasionally weeding and heavy mulching.

19. Planned Polyculture
This bed comprised of several blocks of different crops interspersed with leaf crops and
bush beans with climbing beans at the back of the bed climbing up the wall. The tomatoes
growing beneath the lemon tree did really well and grew most of the way up the tree and is
still fruiting well. The bean tipi at the other end of the bed also did very well, swiftly out
growing the structure we created and growing beans out of our reach. The rest of the bed
did not do as well as hoped although there was still a fair crop of courgettes, some
pumpkins, a good amount of beans and continuing leaf vegetables. By comparison to the
harvest from the long raised beds we feel that the dig in manure method is not so supportive
to strong, healthy and productive plants.

21. Random Polyculture bed
Out of all the beds, this is the bed we feel we have learnt the most from and was also the
least planned. Firstly, we took all the “out of date” seeds and mixed them together. This
“fun mix” was then sowed in a few different places around the farm. This bed in the garden
was, by far, the most prolifically productive of these random beds and possibly, for the area,
the most productive bed in the whole garden.
The plants have formed very natural plant communities and really showed us which plants
have a good relationship with one another. In this roughly 1 metre² bed, we have many
large headed sunflowers, vast quantities of beans growing up the sunflowers and squashes
running away up the rock face and producing squashes several metres away from the bed.
There are also nasturtium, radishes and bush beans.
This is also a bed which has taken almost no care to produce so much food, beyond the
initial bed preparation and planting, we have had to little to almost nothing except watering.
It is so full that it doesn’t need mulch and, for a simply dug in manure bed, it has been
outstandingly abundant. It has created a huge amount of biomass which, if we chopped and
dropped onto the same spot at the end of the season, it would create quite a large raised
bed.

27. Worm compost
Last year, we started our own worm bin with some worms we had been given by a friend.
We started with a stacked barrel system which can be seen in the top left photo on the
previous slide. About three months ago, we started to realise that this system was a bit
limiting, both in the amount of veg scraps and garden waste we could put in and in the
amount of worm castings and liquid feed which came out. So we have now created our
own bath system. To make this we first put shade netting over the plug hole to ensure that
it could always freely drain and never risk drowning the worms. After this the bath was half
filled with horse manure. Next the worms and their castings were introduced and then we
filled the rest of the bath with a mixture of vegetable scraps and garden weeds. This we
have subsequently been refilling again and again as it goes down over the time.
We have seen the worm population boom in this short period of time, so much so that we
have been able to take the odd handful out, along with grubs living off the rotting veg and
give it to the chickens as a protein and egg enhancing boost. So now our kitchen scraps go
to the worms and then some worms go to the chickens, adding another element to the cycle
and enhancing yields from this “waste”.
Also, we have mounted the worm bath up on bricks, so that when we want liquid feed, we
can simply put our grey water from the sink into the top and get a high grade fertiliser out
of the bottom.

28. Lifestyle Summary
These last two and some years, since doing our PDC, have been an amazing culmination of the
adventure of our lives so far, putting into focus many of our long term intentions and
challenging us in ways we could never have thought possible. We have proved to ourselves
that, even without owning our own land, we could dramatically decrease our environmental
footprint We have made many very conscious and intentional steps towards sustainability both
in positive action to improve situations and actively reducing our impact.
Throughout this experience we have learnt a lot about different techniques and strategies that
work and also seen for ourselves and re-evaluated ones that do not. In the garden for example,
one of our mixed bed polycultures was all a fun mix of out of date seeds. This bed went crazy,
grew like mad and taught us a lot about beneficial plant guilds and symbiosis. One we would
have done differently was another mixed bed of pumpkins, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes
and leeks, growing alongside the greenhouse. Shortly after we introduced the tomatoes, there
was a black fly boom on the beans (this happened no where else in the garden). We think it
was either a very literal demonstration of why the books tell you to keep beans and tomatoes
apart (always good to see for yourself so you can know from experience) or it may have been
the micro climate created by growing beans against the side of the greenhouse plastic.

29. Permaculture ethics and principles have been part of our lives for many years now and tend
to permeate much of our activity and thought processes. The emphasis on observation,
working with nature (and the natural behaviour of any thing) and consequently achieving the
greatest outcomes with the least input necessary is profoundly appropriate to basically any
situation, event, activity, decision, plan, garden, outing, physical elements... (the list really does
go on ad infinitum... Permaculture is for life, about life and within all of life). For example, in
the way we set up our living spaces, we always try to arrange elements so that everything is on
the way to somewhere else and each journey made around the space can have many different
functions so that no journey is wasted.
It is an evolution and we are still in process but we try to live our lives doing the best we can
possibly do and making the best possible choices our planet for ourselves, our baby and in
any and every given situation.
© Copyright 2011 Rosie Stonehill and Josh Gomez