Learning to Work With the Landscape

From clearing to cycling: how ten years of farming in the Serra de Monchique changed the way we think about machinery, biomass, and the resources the land produces.

When Kate and I purchased Quinta Picapau, the enormity of the task ahead of us quickly became apparent.

Ten hectares of steep terraces, woodland and overgrown ground is very different from managing a small garden. We soon realised that if we were going to restore and actively manage the property, machinery would have to become an important part of our approach.

But in the Serra de Monchique, size matters.

Our terrain places very real limitations on what machinery can safely be used. The terraces are narrow, slopes can be steep, access is difficult and uneven ground can turn an apparently simple job into a dangerous one. We had a great deal to learn.

Much of our early work concentrated on clearing the land and reducing the vegetation that could contribute to wildfire. At the same time, we were beginning to understand that simply clearing vegetation was not enough. The material we removed was itself a resource.

Pines Among the Cork Oaks

One of the early decisions we faced concerned the pine trees growing throughout areas of our cork-oak woodland.

Pine and cork oak can coexist perfectly well. An occasional pine growing amongst cork oaks is not necessarily a problem. Difficulties arise when pine becomes sufficiently dense that it begins competing with the cork trees and changing the character of the woodland.

In Monchique, one of the greatest concerns is water.

During our long, dry summers, every tree is competing for limited moisture stored within the soil. Dense pine regeneration adds another demand upon that precious reserve, particularly where many young trees establish around mature cork oaks.

There is also competition for light. Cork oak (Quercus suber) can tolerate a degree of competition, but a dense pine canopy can suppress younger cork trees and make natural regeneration more difficult.

For us, however, perhaps the most important consideration was fire.

Pine needles, dead branches and other dry material can accumulate beneath the trees, creating combustible fuel. Pine can also contribute to vertical fuel continuity, providing a route for a surface fire to move upwards into the canopy.

Cork oak has an extraordinary natural defence against wildfire. Its thick cork bark insulates the living tissues beneath it and can allow trees to survive fires that would kill many other species. But even this remarkable protection has limits. Severe and prolonged fires, particularly those reaching the canopy, can badly damage or kill cork trees.

We therefore made the decision to remove many of the pines from amongst our cork woodland.

That decision created another problem.

What Do You Do With All the Brash?

Once the timber had been extracted, an enormous quantity of branches, needles and woody material remained behind.

Leaving it scattered across the woodland made little sense. We were trying to reduce wildfire risk, not rearrange the fuel.

So we bought a wood chipper.

It became one of the most useful machines on the farm.

Instead of regarding the branches as waste, we began turning them into woodchip. That material could then be returned to the farm as mulch, helping us cover bare soil, reduce evaporation, moderate soil temperature and slowly return carbon and organic matter to the ground.

It was an important change in our thinking: what initially appeared to be a waste problem was actually a resource waiting to be processed.

But producing that resource was hard work.

Branches had to be dragged across difficult terrain, collected and manually fed through the chipper. Green needles and small leafy material frequently caused problems, clogging the machine and slowing everything down.

Our tractor presented another lesson.

It was simply too small and, more importantly, did not feel sufficiently stable on our terrain. Negotiating uneven terraces and slopes could be uncomfortable, and the possibility of overturning was something we were constantly conscious of.

No amount of work on a farm is worth taking unnecessary risks for.

We gradually began to understand that choosing farm machinery should not simply be about horsepower or how much work a machine can theoretically accomplish. The machine has to fit the landscape.

Its width, weight, centre of gravity, manoeuvrability and stability can be every bit as important as its power.

From Chipping to Shredding

Those early experiences taught us another important lesson: biomass is incredibly valuable.

We no longer see branches, leaves, prunings and woody vegetation simply as material that needs to be cleared away. They are carbon resources produced by the farm itself.

Processed correctly, they can become mulch, compost ingredients, fungal food and ultimately soil organic matter.

That lesson has influenced the machinery we use today.

We eventually sold our original wood chipper and purchased a shredder capable of processing much greener material. This is particularly important as we begin work at Raízes da Montanha, where we have a considerable quantity of young eucalyptus that needs managing.

Rather than simply cutting the eucalyptus and removing or burning it, our intention is to process as much of that biomass as possible.

Shredding breaks leaves, twigs and woody material into a much more irregular and finely divided material than conventional woodchip. This greatly increases the surface area available to fungi and other decomposing organisms.

What once might have been regarded as a woodland clearance problem can therefore become one of the resources for rebuilding the soil.

There is a wider lesson in all of this.

When we first arrived at Quinta Picapau, we thought largely in terms of clearing land. Over time, our thinking changed. We began asking a different question: how can we cycle what the land produces back through the system?

A branch becomes mulch. Mulch protects the soil. Fungi begin decomposing the wood. Organic matter builds. The soil holds more water. Plants become more resilient. And eventually those plants produce the next generation of biomass.

That is the difference between simply clearing a landscape and beginning to understand it as a living system.

Our machinery has changed over the years, but perhaps more importantly, so has the way we think about the work it performs.