Syntropic Farming Flow
A living classroom where soil becomes teacher
"The land is not a backdrop. It is the curriculum."
Rooted in Ernst Götsch's lifelong practice of syntropic agroforestry, this five-day pre-festival immersion brings a small circle of 30 into genuine soil work at Sítio Semente — the living land that holds Waking Life.
You will learn to read the land. To work with succession and regeneration. To plant food forests tuned to the dry pulse of the Alentejo. This is not a lecture series — it is an initiation into a different kind of listening, led by three practitioners who have spent decades in conversation with the earth.
Every row planted is a conversation with the next hundred years.
Everything held within this ticket
Five Days of Guided Immersion
Morning-to-evening sessions across five full days, each building on the last. Theory, practice, and land time woven together.
Full Waking Life Festival Access
Your Flow ticket includes a full 5-day festival pass. You arrive before the gates open and move through both worlds.
Three Organic Vegetarian Meals Daily
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner prepared by our resident kitchen collective. Sourced from local Alentejo farms. Shared tables, no rush.
Tipi Accommodation with Mattress
Your tipi is pitched and waiting in the Flow village. Queen mattress, cotton bedding, and lantern. A shelter that is already yours on arrival.
Welcome Ceremony & Arrival Feast
Your first evening opens with introductions, shared food, and a ceremony that roots the circle in the land before the learning begins.
Morning Integration Circles
Each day opens with shared reflection, a grounding practice, and intention-setting before entering the field. The circle gives the day its shape.
Evening Community Fires
Nightly gatherings around the fire. Informal, open, unstructured. Where the real learning tends to arrive. Stories settle into the bones.
Heritage Seed Packet from the Living Library
A visit to the on-site seed library and a personal packet of Alentejo heritage varieties to carry home. Seeds are memory. You leave as a keeper.
Field Journal & Land Design Workbook
A printed field journal, site maps, succession diagrams, and your own design workbook. A record of what you learned and what you touched.
Shared Herbal Tea Station
Fresh herbal infusions throughout the day, prepared from the land's own growing medicine. A continuous thread between practice and presence.
Closing Ceremony Before the Festival Opens
A ritual farewell for the circle. The permanent contribution to Sítio Semente is witnessed. Then — the festival gates open for the wider world.
Intimate Circle — 30 Participants Maximum
This is intentional. Deep learning requires small circles. Each person is known. Each voice heard. Each pair of hands on the land, counted.
Who holds the circle
Gonçalo Fonseca
Syntropic Agroforestry Practitioner
Trained alongside Ernst Götsch in Bahia, Brazil, Gonçalo has spent the past decade restoring degraded Alentejo land through syntropic succession design. He speaks in soil and reads the landscape like a slowly unfolding text — each plant a word in a longer sentence.
"Every row planted is a conversation with the next hundred years."
Rachel Ingram
Keyline Water Design & Permaculture
Based between the UK and Portugal, Rachel designs water harvesting and keyline systems for dry landscapes. Her work focuses on restoring the hydrological cycle from the ground up — slowing water, sinking water, spreading water. She has taught internationally for fifteen years.
"Water remembers where it wants to go. Our work is to listen."
Ana Rodrigues
Seed Sovereignty & Ethnobotany
Ana has spent fifteen years documenting, cultivating, and sharing the heritage seed varieties of the Alentejo. Her living seed library holds over 400 varieties that would otherwise have vanished. She teaches that seeds are living memory — and that saving them is an act of resistance.
"What you plant, you carry forward."
Five days, one arc
Each day deepens the one before. You will move from orientation to soil, from water to seed, and finally to canopy — from arrival to lasting mark. The arc is intentional.
Day One
Roots
Arrival and land orientation. The site reveals itself slowly — a walk, an introduction, an unhurried look at what grows and why. The evening welcome feast opens the circle. Fire follows. Sleep comes easy under canvas.
Day Two
Soil
Syntropic principles brought into practice. Morning field walk with Gonçalo, reading succession across the slopes. Afternoon soil labs and the first regeneration beds — hands in earth by midday. The body learns what the mind could only map.
Day Three
Water
Keyline design and water harvesting systems with Rachel. Reading the contours of the land for where water wants to rest. Practical work in the afternoon — swales, earthworks, the slow geography of abundance. Integration by the lake at dusk.
Day Four
Seed
Ana opens the living seed library. Morning in the archives — stories behind each variety, hands holding generations of saving. Afternoon shifts to food forest planting, succession in action. The day ends with a community harvest meal from the land itself.
Day Five
Canopy
Synthesis and permanent contribution. The morning session draws the five days into a design offering — something real, planted, that will grow long after you leave. The closing ceremony witnesses what was given. Then the festival gates open, and the wider world arrives into the circle you have already woven.
What to know before you arrive
Your Tipi
Set up before your arrival in the dedicated Flow village, separate from general festival camping. Queen mattress, cotton bedding, lantern. A shelter that belongs to you from the moment you step off the road. Bring only what you need.
The Table
Three meals daily from our kitchen collective — breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Local, organic, and entirely vegetarian. Sourced from Alentejo farms and the land itself. Shared long tables. Slow mornings. Unhurried evenings. Food as part of the practice.
Dates
Five days in the week before Waking Life 2027 opens. Your Flow immersion runs first — the festival begins as your circle's closing ceremony ends. Exact dates confirmed to registered participants ahead of the event.
Group Size
Thirty participants maximum. This is not incidental — it is the design. Small circles make deep roots. You will know everyone in this circle by name before the first evening ends.
No Plastic
This program is entirely plastic-free. Bring your own cup and water vessel — refill stations with spring water are placed throughout the site. The land we are restoring asks this of us.
What to Bring
Work clothes you can get dirty. Sturdy shoes for field work. Sun protection. A personal journal. Curiosity with no agenda. A complete packing list is shared with all registered participants before departure.
Reserve Your Place
Pricing Announced Soon
all inclusive · limited to 30 participants
"Five days of deep practice. Shared meals from the land. A tipi already waiting. And a festival that begins from the inside."
- Five-day guided immersion with three expert practitioners
- Full Waking Life 2027 festival access included
- Three organic vegetarian meals daily
- Tipi accommodation with mattress & bedding
- Heritage seed packet from the living library
- Welcome ceremony, evening fires & closing rite
Spaces are extremely limited. 30 participants maximum per flow.