Pura Vida! My Experience Working On A Permaculture Farm In Costa Rica

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The Pig Shit Diaries

"Shit! Anwen I just gave the pigs diarrhea and now I have to shovel it all up!" Brooke shouted to me. I just fell down laughing, tears streaming out of my eyes. "How the hell did you give the pigs diarrhea?!" I replied.

Turned out the food scraps she fed them contained many papaya seeds, which are a natural laxative. Brooke spent the next day with a shovel scooping up the pig diarrhea into a wheelbarrow to be taken to a compost pile. And I learned what to eat while traveling if my stomach ever got a bit too slow.

Yes - this was our paradise vacation in Costa Rica, pig shit and all.

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The Journey to the Farm

I had just finished up 4 months of solo travel in Argentina and Chile when Brooke flew down to Costa Rica to meet me. We spent our first few weeks blissfully traveling around, from Puerto Viejo, to Rio Pacuare, to San Jose, to Arenal, to Monteverde. However, one night I found myself sitting in a hostel in Arenal completely bummed out.

"What's getting you down?" Brooke probed.
"I don't know...I realize we are in a beautiful paradise and I should be so happy right now but I feel wasteful. I feel like a tourist who is just consuming consuming consuming. I feel FAT! I don't mean physically fat. I mean I feel as though we are just consuming the Costa Rican culture and environment without giving anything back or learning anything."
"Okay, let's change that!" Brooke replied

And so we set off to "Villas Mastatal" - a 20 hectare permaculture farm. I found it on workaway.info, and immediately got a response back from Javier, the owner. The volunteer set up was a work exchange: we would work for four hours a day, Monday through Friday. In return we would get a bunk bed and meals. We had to pay $15 a day, because 20 hours per week would not cover our living costs and it was really more of an educational hands-on learning opportunity.

So we hopped on a 6am bus from Monteverde to San Jose. From San Jose, we hopped on another bus to Puriscal. From Puriscal, we grabbed an evening school bus into the mountains. The bus dropped us off right in front of the farm, where we grabbed our backpacks, turned on our headlamps, and trekked up to the main house.

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The People

We were greeted by 20 people and a large dinner. The family who owned the farm gave us hugs, and their 4 year old boy Andreas gave me a little kick and a snicker. He would soon become my favorite member of the farm. Javier, Raquel, and Andreas were all local Costa Ricans and could only speak Spanish. All of the others were temporary volunteers from all over the world. We dropped our bags and started to dig into a delicious organic Costa Rican meal. We met travelers who had planned to stay at the farm for 1 week and ended up staying for 3 months. We met a Swedish couple along with their 3 young kids they had taken backpacking with them. We met an herbalist, a singer, an outdoor educator, surfers, nomads, and more.

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The Space

"AHHH scorpion scorpion! I found myself yelling at 2am while meandering to the bathroom half-awake. Well, full-awake now that my headlight shone straight onto a scorpion that was guarding the throne to crap in. I turned around and headed to the other compost toilet, hoping to not run into anymore night critters. Despite occasional scorpion run-ins, the volunteer space was absolutely beautiful. It could fit up to 40 people, with the bottom floor full of bunk beds, and the top floor boasting hammocks and a large hangout space. The top floor also had some pretty sweet chairs to sit in and watch the sunset.

This space was built by previous volunteers, under the direction of Javier and Raquel. It felt open, alive, and comforting. It was refreshing to not be in a hostel any more, cramped up in little rooms, with often times shallow interaction with other travelers. Instead, we all became a "Villas Mastatal family". We went to sleep together when the sun set at 8pm and rose with the roosters at 5am.

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Our Daily Schedule

5:00 am - Rise with the roosters
6:00 am - Coffee and breakfast
7:00 am - Whole crew meeting, organizing work tasks for the day
8:00 am - Begin working!
11:30 am - Begin preparing lunch if it is your shift
12:00 pm - Finish work and begin lunch

1:00 pm - Clean up and free time
5:00 pm - Begin preparing dinner if it is your shift
6:00 pm - Dinner time!
7:00 pm - Hangout/story time
8:00 pm - Sunset watching
8:30 pm - Everyone asleep

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The Sugar Cane Press

The work was EXHAUSTING!!! But of course, rewarding. Our first day we set out to build a cover for the sugar cane press, so that it wouldn't be harmed during the rainy season. We hiked down to the middle zone of the permaculture farm and found ourselves in a forest of beautiful trees. "Bueno!" Javier said. "Tenemos que cortarlos!" And so we began chainsawing down a few trees. You may be reading this right now thinking, "Wait! No! Cutting down trees is bad!". My response - yes, cutting down a huge amount of trees in one location at the same time is bad. However, wood is what our structures are made out of. The wood has to come from somewhere. And Javier was sourcing his wood as sustainably as possible - from the forest in his very own backyard, and only a small amount at a time, and only what he absolutely needed. So, we split up into teams of two and began to haul these timbered logs up the hill towards the sugar cane press. Allow me to reiterate how exhausting this was - underneath the mid-morning sun, trudging huge logs a quarter mile up a steep hill. There may or may not have been some embarrassing muddy falls.

We finally carried all of the logs up and sat down for a 5 minute break. We needed electrolytes, so what did we do? Machete down a couple of sugar cane stalks of course! And wow what a treat that was - munching on a sugar cane stalk, having sweet, fresh, sugar water drip straight into my mouth. Re-energized, we set out to stripping the logs with our machetes. We also dug deep holes in the ground for the foundation posts. I became a machete pro by the end of that day ;-)

Did I mention we had an all-female team at the end? Talk about some female strength! While my arms and shoulders were sore as hell, I was successfully building a structure and building up my surfing muscles.

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I have so much more to share with you about my time at Villas Mastatal, so keep an eye out for part two of my journeys here. I truly loved my experience at the farm, I even returned a second time! I had found what I was previously lacking while traveling in Costa Rica - a family, an educational experience, and an exchange. I no longer felt like I was a tourist leech, just taking from the country what pleased me. Instead, I felt as though I was contributing something while at the same time learning some amazing skills. That's all for now, pura vida and happy Friday everyone!