The festival Ponto d’Orvalho recently held its fourth edition. Running from Friday to Sunday, September 13 to 15, 2024, the programme offered the chance to celebrate the landscape, food and the arts. All in a shared setting, in a place with unique and lively features – Herdade do Freixo do Meio, in the Montemor-o-Novo.
That was the premise. The following is a logbook of experiences.

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The idea of attending a festival, which is not exactly one, but more of a get-together of people interested in specific topics, on a September weekend, which did not feel so much like September either, but more like August, was a pretty promising sign in itself.

The journey started well, with a car ride. Hitchhiking is about letting go, the schedules are not our own. Two friends heading to the festival, trying to switch off. Halfway through the journey, we found ourselves in Alcácer do Sal, much to our surprise, as we got lost amid the never-ending conversations. We all assumed that someone had certainly learnt the route. No better way to break away from the starting point. I eventually reached Montemor-o-Novo, where I would be staying. A very special place, quite close to Lisbon. Its convents have specific purposes. One is dedicated to the performing arts, the other to the visual and multimedia arts and ceramics. Montemor is particularly vibrant, with collectives and associations carrying out unique work, with thorough research into materials and knowledge that nobody around there wants to lose sight of. It is a place of action, of life. Some have been Ponto d’Orvalho’s partners, such as Cooperativa Minga or Cru Atelier’s earthen constructions. This year was no exception.

Convents are such special spots in Montemor, I have come to realise. And Ponto d’Orvalho’s first welcome moment, on Friday the 13th (without any qualms), was at Convento de São Domingos. We entered its main nave at 7 p.m. to sit down and listen to a concert by Antonina Nowacha. The atmosphere was ethereal. Smoke hung in the air and covered the church’s features. The space looked bare. A hand sculpture on the altar helped us forget the deities that are usually worshipped there. I did not consider this silent beat to be any less important. I understood it as a preamble. To start focusing on the fundamentals. A church’s acoustics, always round and perfect, echoed with the sound of a soft stringed instrument, where Nowacha’s voice merged with the harp. It gradually rose. Perhaps to the heavens.

Dinner ensued in the same location. A certain buzz could still be felt from the encounters and oddness of the newly formed groups. But no one seemed unmoved by the mild evening and the setting that awaited us. A cloister with arcades to move around and, in the centre of the courtyard, a lavish table set up by Pousio. It brought to mind how the cloisters of convents and monasteries, when fully functional, are the heart of these communities’ lives. This is where food is grown, laundry is hung out and naps, reading and meditation take place. I had the feeling that the cloister had come back to life that evening. There was nothing random about the dinner. Pousio delves into the crossroads between food, culture, art and ethnography. In itself, the dinner was an artistic endeavour. The vegetables served, provided by Cooperativa Minga, had been fire-roasted in the Convento’s Workshops. Firstly, they had been wrapped in a protective layer of leaves found in the Freixo do Meio cork oak grove and a second, outer layer of red clay from Vendas Novas. All local. These vegetables were then laid on the ground and slowly fired for several hours. The technique is similar to Cape Verdean soenga. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and quinces were served with a unique smoky flavour. Pousio provided them with a coriander and chard deck, balancing the smoky taste with the freshness of the herbs. There were also pickled purslane, an oxheart tomato and onion salad. And olives, of course. The real kind. A chickpea and roasted red pepper salad. Bean and pumpkin soup. Legumes always sourced according to dryland techniques. A cold melon soup with watercress oil. A proper trough stuffed with Alentejo bread slices, as il faut. Bolo finto, a novelty for those who cannot taste the fennel in folares. And fig tiborna too. Like a drop of honey to me. The fig season is one of the happiest times of the year. The Pousio dinner offered guests what Ponto d’Orvalho is all about: a treasure trove of flavours and knowledge, but very much centred on a word that became a motto over the next few days: regenerative.
And that is the word I’m also now focusing my attention on. The way in which regeneration can be an active vehicle in how we engage with our surroundings, and how it is expressed through singular and collective expression. On the same evening, we headed to Herdade do Freixo do Meio to attend a Yuri Tuma workshop that promoted new language forms using gestures and sounds. Some carried on through the agroforestry late into the night. I hitchhiked back to Montemor.

The following day there was a bus service from Montemor-o-Novo to Freixo do Meio. I used the opportunity to enjoy some Alentejo bread toast in a bakery on my way to the meeting point. The coach station is closed on Saturdays. Buses were dropping off passengers in the middle of the road. Pólo Norte seemed like a shining beacon, but it was only the bus station café packed with people at that time of day. I sat down on the coach bus station steps, one of my favourite sports in Montemor, something that I have done many times waiting there throughout my life. Silvia turned up, an Italian woman carrying a backpack. She asked about the bus service. She had come to the festival to get out of Lisbon, as the beginning of September was getting intense. She was interested in the subjects of Ponto d’Orvalho. We set off the bus journey to the sound of ‘À minha maneira’ by the Portuguese rock band Xutos e Pontapés, ready to get going. Until we noticed a car parked right there at the traffic lights. Unlike us, it was not waiting for them to change. The horn blared, the car kept idling, and we got round the corner and set off again. Along the way, we soon passed into a slow, yellowish landscape, cork oaks punctuating the fields, with grazing cows, goats and sheep. I spotted an agricultural warehouse at a crossroads with the following sign: José Luís da Silva Memé, Lda – Providing services to agriculture. Names that matter and say what they mean. Meanwhile, at Freixo do Meio, a Futuros do Passado breakfast had been served in the agroforest. The Herdade do Freixo do Meio agroforest is one of Portugal’s largest. We must remember that there is a constant and living ecosystem, carefully maintained, of one of the Alentejo’s greatest assets: the montado (cork oak grove). In Freixo do Meio, the montado is treasured and made the most of and, for visitors, its brief existence is put into perspective, since this is an ancient landscape. Indeed, it has been there for thousands of years. The ensuing walk, led by archaeologist Manuel Calado, echoed this sentiment in so many of the participants.

The tour Manuel Calado put together at Freixo do Meio was entitled Origens (Origins). The idea was not so much to peer into the past, but to grasp some origins with a view to a better understanding of the future. The route covered about a kilometre and had five stops. It kicked off with a brief presentation of the roots of agriculture in that region, about seven thousand years ago, and how there had been signs of those first settlers found right there in Freixo do Meio. The conversation then turned to the megalithic constructions of these first settlers, and their technical and ingenious ability to build such huge structures. He mentioned the invention of the rope (the rope revolution, in his words), essential for wrapping and lifting weights greater than that of the body, he spoke of the lever, multiplier of our strength, and also of two distinctive human behavioural traits – resilience, in other words, not giving up on the intention to build, often handing this drive on to several generations later; and collective strength – the human species recognising that it can achieve greater things together than it can alone. These inventions and behaviour explain how some megalithic monuments were raised. They also serve as a reminder of our origins as a species, just in case we may have forgotten. The potential of the subject of origins was not confined to these constructions. The first sightings of the skies, the marking of the highest points of the Moon and the Sun, and the direction of their movements were also mentioned. There was a direct connection between the monuments built and the sky. Listening to this know-how and the triumphs of our ancestors was particularly inspiring, considering that they are still guiding principles for all of us today. It was even more inspiring to hear these words as we stood in the midst of an ancestral landscape. One that has witnessed all these layers of our collective memory.

The sun, of which we had just been talking, was in its midday glory and the heat could be felt there in the shade of the cork oaks. We walked back to the canteen area where lunch was served by chef Francesco Ogliari and his crew from Tua Madre, an Évora restaurant with a project to gather and combine Alentejo and Italian flavours. The roast black pig came from Freixo do Meio, slow-cooked with rosemary and served with lemon zest. I would also highlight a white bean salad in vinaigrette, and a Greek salad with goat’s curd to refresh ourselves from the immense heat. It was scorching, but I still remember the chocolate mousse topped with olive oil and fleur de sel.

I was not present for the entire festival, but I did return the next day for the talk Ecologias do Solo (Soil Ecologies), moderated and organised by Andreia Garcia. It was a strangely uplifting conversation considering the themes it touched on. That was my perception, at least. There was plenty of discussion on soil regeneration and sustainable, well-balanced projects, such as Freixo do Meio or Herdade de São Luís, represented by its founder Francisco Alves. Lara Espírito Santo, from the Sem restaurant, presented the possibility of cooking without waste, with careful and integrated choices and methods. Seasonality was honoured, every product was used in its entirety, and the menu varied according to the available products. Estação Cooperativa Casa Branca presented a cultural project aimed at rehabilitating the Casa Branca village, a railway crossing that has seen its resident population shrink. Mariana Sanchez Salvador provided a clear vision of the effect of our choices as consumers on the cities in which most of the global population lives. The issue of rehabilitating land, of knowledge, of trying to encourage people to be more conscious of what they consume was often heard. Joana Bértholo brought the I Ching, The Book of Changes, choosing a hexagram that had as its motto the idea of metabolism: all that goes in and out of the mouth. The metabolisms of soils, their regenerative ability, the emphasis on using resources and remembering techniques that live within us. The audience took part without hesitation. The last person to speak got emotional and moved us all. Having spent a lifetime as a teacher instructing her little pupils on the water cycle and rainfall, she had never understood it so well as a farmer. The water that comes from and returns to the soil, the steady pace of nature’s never-ending cycles.

The Ponto d’Orvalho meeting also wrapped up on this essential commodity, with a performance by Jacira da Conceição, asking the audience to join her in carrying water amphorae to the agroforest. I kept wondering how rituals force us to stop and look afresh at what we already know, with a certain reverence and humility. None of what we think we know is forever, none of what is essential to us is ever available. We need to regenerate our soils, our resources, our watercourses and our millennia-old land. We need to regenerate each other, in a communal sense. Collective strength is an ancient learning, just as regenerating our own surroundings is a learning for the future. Ponto d’Orvalho was a wonderful example of what we can be when we are aware.