conversation

I like to talk with trees. It's not necessarily a verbal communication, though quite often conversations do begin with an uttered word or sound, it's more of a moment of shared consciousness. Some trees catch my attention, others are regular conversationalists, right now the nispero, the largest tree on the farm, is dropping fruit. It's a beautiful thing to see a tree in fruit; primal; abundant: there will be . . . 

And the forest celebrates: great lolloping morpho butterflies arc and stagger through the air; green and brown butterflies lazily open and close their wings as though doing so helped pump the juice into their bodies; bees and wasps collide and collude on heaps of the salmon brown fruit; clouds of fruit flies rise as I walk through: ants order, dissect, remove; black beetles dive below sticky peels. The insects are the most obvious, but wait a moment, stand still (if you can bear those clouds of fruit flies); there's a dozen lizards, frogs, spiders here to feed on the feasters. Birds perch on branches looking sharp and full on the banquet below. Squirrels and agoutis dash in and out, gorging between.  Look more closely and another layer will appear: grubs, larvae, maggots move through the pulp, stirring it up, breaking it down, spreading it out. Tonight raccoons, skunks, armadillos, rats and martillos will snuffle through enjoying sweet and meat together. Bats and moths will step in to butterflies' footsteps. Tomorrow a new world will arrive - molds, yeasts, fungi, bacteria feeding off the sugars and the debris. These new folk will bring a different wave of insects and worms. Gently the leftovers - sugars, acids, exoskeletons, poop and pee will enter the earth and the nispero and all her neighbors will inch rootlets and mycelium forward into the nutrient stew. 

And there she is in the center of the feast, the hostess. How could one not appreciate her generosity? A simple thanks is not enough. Awe and wonder and sheer delight in the magical coherence of nature, the exuberance of communal forest life. I feel nurtured. I honor and appreciate. And she answers, as almost always the trees do, 

"that's ok, it's all ok".

Sometimes I worry if a tree limb cracks in a storm, that thought stopping noise which raises the shoulders and the pulse. The tear looks always ragged and sore, the heartwood exposed so pale in contrast. I have felt pain and sorrow, offered my condolences. 

"That's ok, it's all ok" 

and always comes new growth, opportunity, change. The opened space becomes a hive of activity with sun and air bringing different species of plant and insect, creating a new and dynamic micro-environment. Seeds sprout, tendrils reach, leaves unfurl. A spider casts her web across the open space and lizards bask in the dappled glow beneath. Meanwhile the fallen limb becomes home then food for others, before finally turning back into rich dark soil. The forest gains. 

Wise teachers, trees.

views of the upper farm

workshops

I'm giving workshops to students interested in sustainable food production. For me that means taking what grows on the farm and making the very most out of it, preserving abundance and appreciating just how much beauty and joy and taste and energy a (fruit) tree creates.

For the student it means spending a day on the farm, in the kitchen and orchards watching, experiencing and learning how to do the things I learned from my grandmothers and from my own trials and errors. The students are all North American or European college students or freshly graduated who are down in Costa Rica to learn more about sustainable development or environmental issues or organic farming. They are fun to work with, armed with notebooks and pens, bright eyed and eager, and surprised and grateful at discovering how easy things can actually be.

We start with harvesting whatever is available in the orchards, it might be charichuelo, carambola, araza, cas, nutmeg - depends. While we gather I talk about the farm, cacao production, what happened when the cacao blight hit, monocultures, big plantations. We walk through rainforest back to the kitchen: perfect opportunity to talk about biodiversity, permaculture and tropical farming. We stop to look for edible mushrooms or pick some edible leaves.

Back in the kitchen we make sourdough bread and talk about making the culture. I have them take care of any sprouts that might be growing: both are such easy excellent ways to begin bringing consciousness into one's eating and living, as well as slowing down one's pace by engaging with one's food. I start soybeans for tempeh while they prepare the fruit we harvested.

It's good to see processes through in their entirety so after the fruit is washed and trimmed we make fruit leather and jam, or blend it to make frozen yogurt, or use it in cookies. Or usually all of the above. It helps when students can see different ways to use the fruit and sample the simplicity of each, basically it's just variation on the theme of banana for example, or pineapple. What I want them to experience is that there is absolutely enough and that with a little imagination and creativity, life can be very simple.

We drink kombucha and talk about cultures, ferments and microbes. So many North Americans are raised being afraid of 'dirt' that they don't know just how good it can be! I talk them around my microbe wall, electromicroscope images of lactobacillus, aspergillus, mycelium, rhizopus - all incredibly beautiful and bursting with energy.

Lunch is our sourdough bread with homemade hummus, tempeh or Miguel's cheese, served with whatever we found on our walk, and fruit. After lunch the tempeh is ready to incubate and there's jam to be bottled, dried fruit to be packaged, and sprouts to be watered again. And cookies to look forward to.

The students have an experience of every part of production, from harvest through preparation, drying, baking or preserving, to packaging and labeling. This is a working farm and we sell what we produce. Sustainable means taking heed of livelihood as well as the environment, and I believe it is important to show that one can live well by living simply with one's environment and making the best of what one can find.

Usually by the time afternoon coffee and cookies rolls around the students are so immersed in jams and jars, molds and yeasts, that I'm the only one eating. My small library of books is well thumbed and recipes and addresses are scribbled down on floury pages, while the talk is all about sustainable agriculture and the future of food.

Tomorrow I have two young women coming, one from France working on her masters in Sustainable Development and the other from the States who's thesis is on Food Security. We'll be making bread, tempeh, carambola chutney, lovi-lovi and carambola jam, cas fruit leather, dried bananas and candied ginger. Oh and cookies.

reforestation project

(first tree planted, a Cedro Amargo)

The farmer and I have a reforestation project on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. This last week we were there to start planting the trees we've been collecting since March. The Pacific side has a wet and dry season and the wet just started, we had to wait for the rains to come before putting anything in the ground.

It's an interesting project, a 100 hectare parcel(about 220 acres) of abandoned cattle pasture, 80% of which is to be reforested. The land itself is very beautiful being foothills of a coastal mountain range, but very close, about 5 kilometers from the ocean. The highest point is over 320 meters (over 1000 feet), and the lowest about 14 meters above sea level. It's a fairly steep climb to the top and the dirt road and tractor tracks are well eroded and slippy for even the horses. A road of sorts has been put in from the main road past the property, but with our two wheel drive pick-up it was challenging, if not downright scary, to drive.

The owners have had the piece for about 9 years, and although there have been cattle grazing it really is abandoned pasture. Cows eat grass, no surprise there, but really grass is about all they'll eat. Sometimes they'll nibble on a little vegetation, but grass is their thing. So over time seedlings and saplings from other trees and plants will grow in the pasture, the seeds probably dropped by birds or carried on hoofs or coats, or even the wind. The cows will munch around and about but unless someone is there to take care of the pasture and chop these saplings, they will grow. With all the sun and manure and with the cows conveniently keeping the grass low, the seedlings and saplings grow well and begin to overshadow the grass. The grass dies back, and other plants come in to take their place: a forest begins.

These pioneer species, in this case guava, wild orange, cenizaro, ronron, espavel and a few others, bring in their own community of non grass plants and soon small islands of woodland spring up in the pasture. Small trees form canopy and underbrush appears which in turn provides shade and mulch for ground covers, more delicate species and fungi. The whole now provides habitat for insects, toads, reptiles, birds and mammals and as it grows it is nourished by the manure and decaying remains of insect and animal life. With more animal species there is more chance of seeds being dispersed, and so the little wood grows. Pioneer species gradually make way to settler species which at some point will overshadow those first small trees, and over time the pasture will disappear under the growing forest. It's all very natural and very beautiful. Unless you're a rancher.



Our job is to help the spread of this natural forest by planting native forest trees. Though we are also orchestrating the land and thus the forest by deliberately planting specific areas with fruit trees and trees favored by certain animal and bird species, notably the Macaw parrot. In most parts of Costa Rica reforestation means plantation and it is hard to find examples of new natural forest; plantations being more or less monocrops, managed and harvested after several years. It has taken us much time and effort to find appropriate trees, most nurseries don't stock native forest trees. But we have managed to piece together over 3,000 saplings.

We had expected to have the land prepared for planting, but arrived to find it untouched. This meant we had to clear as we went. We cut paths through the scrub and cleared meter and a half circles around each planting site, planted the tree then mulched the site with leaf matter and twigs. We staked it too - it's the wet season and things grow fast. The land will need maintenance and we certainly don't want an irresponsible swing of the machete to cut the sapling off before it can even begin. With each plant well staked the maintenance crew will know where to look and where to cut.

It was hard work lugging the saplings up and down the hills, slipping in the mud, getting torn by thorns and brush. Our crew of Nicaraguan and Costa Rican workers worked hard and whistled as they went, and we were alternately dripping with rain and sweat as we chopped, dug, planted and mulched throughout the week. We did kill a snake, a pit viper, that struck at a worker from a tree branch he was cutting. I was sorry to see it dead, such a beautiful looking creature, but happy it hadn't bitten him.



This is an unusual project in that we are working to recreate a natural forest and because of this it is being highly documented: every tree we planted has a GPS tag, and every tree over 8 inches in diameter already on the land is also tagged. We should be able to watch and monitor the growth of the forest, an exciting prospect.