I've always been interested in growing food and self-sufficiency, and I grew up on a smallholding where my parents produced their own fruit, vegetables, eggs, dairy and meat.

In my late 30s I moved with my husband to our own smallholding in Central Portugal, where we started practicing many of the permaculture principles (though we didn't know that's what it was called then!).

Since then we've been researching permaculture and edible forest gardening and integrating many new ideas on the smallholding. We're about to move to a much bigger property where we will be thinking much more about the design principles of permaculture as we start "from scratch"!