The village buys itself

It’s hot, TDF Is closed for the summer, and we raised close to our 250k€ goal

Dear dreamers,

It’s summer in Alentejo again. Six months without rain is no longer a surprise to us, it’s the baseline we design for. The land is getting dry but the food forest is staying beautiful and green. The water table that was 20 meters below ground a couple years ago came way up over the last years of water retention works. Close enough for roots to find - and our poplars will soon enough reach there, pumping humidity up to our sintropic rows.
Meanwhile, the rest of Europe has been feeling the heat too. Cities are acting as heat traps while forests and drying up and burning. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Cities can become “sponge cities”, and forests can be kept hydrated too. Our macro climate can be mitigated by micro-climates everywhere.

Wouldn’t be nice if our institutions started to think in living systems too?

It’s been 6 years we are hustling in the dirt - and so far we haven’t received any public funding, despite fitting the categories of what EU is supposed to fund, those funds just don’t make their way to the progressive, life affirming solutions we need.

But that doesn’t mean we the transition into a regenerative economy isn’t happening. The culture is shifting rapidly. People are waking up to a rapidly deteriorating biosphere - and deep inside we all know something radical needs to change. That’s why we started OASA - to build a regenerative way of life.

And the beauty, is that just like we are able to increase our water holding capacity in a territory officially becoming a desert, we are also getting better and better at creating financial mechanisms to fund what really matters. When we launched our token in 2023, it was about creating sovereignty for regeneration. Locking land into perpetually regenerated commons - while securing access for humans. It didn’t come we a big million euro raise - but each year we are selling more tokens, and more importantly, bringing more people on our mission. Today we have 290 token holders, with 6,570 tokens minted, and the current price is 262.25€. As they say, good things take time.

But our token is not the only mechanism created to bridge the gap between where were are and where we need to be. Artizen platform was setup with an ambitious goal to one day fund 1$T per year for innovation and creativity, and right now has an endowment of $17,366,938. TDF has been one of the leading projects on there the last month. We raised $127,636 thanks to both community contributions, generous match funding from a multitude of funds that support our work, and some prizes for being a top project. Each week new match funds are made available and when you donate funds to us, those funds get multiplied. Helping bridge the gap to seeding a regenerative ecosystem that can sustain future generations.

Meanwhile, the TDF buildings are still in my name. They shouldn’t be.

Six years ago I moved from NYC to Portugal to start this crazy project. I bought a dilapidated chicken farm in Alentejo, 1500m² of buildings, floors covered in 15 years of owl regurgitations, four dead orange trees on the patio, sparse oaks and grazing sheep around. Classic montado. I paid for it with the savings I’d grinded out of a decade in tech. There was no one else to put their name on the deed, that could hold the risk. The token didn’t exist. The community was three people on the ground and a dream.

So I signed.

Six years later, the dream works. €1.25M+ raised, 5 hectares regenerated, 1.5 million liters of water storage, a co-living experiment that inspires people to leave a positive trace.

And the buildings are still in my name. TDF holds a secured option to buy them off me at the price I paid. The buildings are expected appraise >€1M. It’s time to exercise it. Why now?

1. I’m in Denmark, in treatment for a rare cancer. A village that depends on its founder being okay is fragile. The village outliving the founder is the entire point. The village already has a self supported team - now it needs to own itself.

2. And to work with banks on starting the construction of the 17 rooms + restaurant, TDF has to own the collateral. That starts here.

So our current fundraising round is towards securing the buildings. Thanks to our successful Artizen campaign we are almost there. We have raised 232k€/253k€. Help us get it over the finish line.

Or donate on Artizen

(your donations are matched 2x this week)

The goal is to transfer the asset by September, coinciding with our annual citizen gathering. We are just €21k short. After that, the next chapter starts on infrastructure we actually own.

If you’ve been waiting for the moment that proves this is real, this is it. Come and join us at the Citizen Gathering, where old and new Citizen will meet, enjoy our beautiful shared home, and co-create the future of regenerative living. Reach out to the team if you’d like to become Citizen - we aim to onboard 30 more this year. Citizenship is your lifetime access & equal governance in TDF.

With the buildings transferred in September, we enter the final sprint to finally build the rooms, the restaurant, and kick off an economy that will keep restoring more soil, water and life in Abela.

For now, it’s hot - TDF is closed, and the team is resting.

Regeneration applies to humans too. We learned that one the hard way, more than once. So this summer the team is deliberately slowing down, catching breath after a winter of storms, floods and a mushroom farm that tried to cave in on us. Our gardener João is ensuring our garden and food forests are well care for through the heat though ❤️

Rest doesn’t mean disappearing either. You’ll find TDF people at the GEN gathering and at the Artizen gathering and many other events this summer, cross-pollinating with the wider ecosystem of villages, builders and regenerators.

Much love,

Sam

A note on my health: I completed my initial immunotherapy treatment. Now I wait to see if it worked. I have follow up options. Cancer sucks, but I am lucky to be backed by community, to have access to a functioning healthcare system, to an amazing summer house, and to have been offered a sailboat to rekindle with old passions.