Landscape
The landscape of Freixo do Meio represents the extensive diversity of experiences within the project as well as its interaction with natural systems, focusing on human needs rather than merely what can be sold. This involves resource use defined by limits and rules.
The transformation of the Mediterranean Forest, characteristic of this bio-region, dates back to the Neolithic era and was managed, until the Middle Ages, within a unique ethical framework concerning how humans interacted with nature.
It was these early Neolithic communities, integrating pastoralism and agriculture with fire, hunting, and gathering, that created and developed what we consider the original concept of the Montado.
Different cultures over various periods have shaped the Mediterranean forest, solidifying it during the Middle Ages into the Montado system, a multi-use agro-silvo-pastoral model. According to Ana Fonseca (2004), “there is a substitution of natural balances with those mediated by man, more or less unstable, but respecting the limits of the natural system.”
She also notes that “the Montado system has profoundly influenced the human community that created it,” affecting not only professions, norms, and practices but also their way of being — their ethics. These small communities lived for themselves, the collective, and future generations, rather than just for the individual.
Harmony and abundance, in rhythm with nature, characterized the use of woodlands and forests, including silvo-pastoral use, wood, tools, brushwood, fruits (such as acorns, among many others), hunting, and the waters of mills and fisheries.
This historical moment continues to inspire the current Freixo do Meio project and defines its landscape, reflecting initial effects from early 20th-century grain campaigns and the later subjugation of agriculture to industrialization.
Today, nearly 30 years later, the landscape assumes a unique character resulting from sustainable management over nearly 600 hectares, featuring various approaches around the Montado. It is a landscape of a project composed of people, a diverse array of living beings and their ecosystems, culture, traditions, experiences, and inspirations, inheriting a long history of management around the principal seminatural ecosystem of southern Portugal: the Montado.
The return to agroecological practices has allowed soil recovery and the restoration of different strata of the system (arborous, shrubby, and herbaceous). The conversion process concluded in 2001, with the entire property and its products certified as organic.
Agroecology has thus become the adopted agricultural vision for this portion of land, associated with its own ethics regarding our relationship with the place we inhabit.
Gradually, the project has evolved into a multifunctional landscape concept, integrating silvicultural, agricultural, and pastoral activities, as well as fruit cultivation, horticulture, food processing and distribution, retail food, environmental services, energy production, research, and tourist-educational services.
The macrostructure of this landscape corresponds to that presented in 2020, when the Protected Landscape of Montado do Freixo do Meio was established.
It includes a “Conservation Area,” covering 97 hectares of Montado agroecosystem, where projects are developed to regenerate various ecological habitats; the Almansor River; the Neolithic Park of Monte das Pedras, the Arrifes, the Pinhal do Zambujeiro, and the Ribeira do Zambujeiro, whose riparian gallery of willows (Salix sp.) and black poplars (Populus nigra) constitutes an important ecological corridor in the region. It also includes a rich mosaic of native animal and plant species, such as the wildcat, otter, alder, cork oak, strawberry tree, and oregano.
The “Montado Area,” approximately 300 hectares, corresponds to the gentle plain between the right bank of the Almansor River and the Mosqueiro festo line, covered by cork oaks and holm oaks.
The “Innovation Area” covers 135 hectares in the extreme north, where, at the beginning of the last century, all trees were cleared from soils enriched by years of Montado agroforestry, which had become depleted. Various experimental afforestation projects are developed here today.
Rock outcrops, some like Pedra Alta, serve as viewpoints and are associated with pre-desertic thermomediterranean shrubland habitats.
Archaeological elements such as Pedra Alta (a probable Neolithic sanctuary), a Neolithic settlement, a menhir with cup marks, and other archaeological remains currently under study also stand out in this landscape.
Fonseca, A. (2004). O Montado no Alentejo (Séc. XV a XVIII) (Portugal, Edições Colibri).
Our mission is to build a community around Herdade Freixo do Meio that is democratic, inclusive, transparent, autonomous, and resilient, that achieves a constantly improving relationship with natural resources, and that encourages personal development.
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