Sacred Sueños Regenerative Farm Project

I recently came back from volunteering for a couple of weeks at a farm in Southern Equador. On the first morning I met up with Yves (pronounced Eve), the guy who runs the project. He is  Swiss born, Canadian raised fiery red headed ex-psudo-anarchist who completed a Bachelor and Masters in Environmental studies. Eight years ago he bought some land serverely degradaded by years of unsustainable farming where almost nothing grew, and committed at least 15 years of his life to help restore it. Today was his 37th birthday.

Clyde the baby donkey having his weekly bath

After a 15 minute taxi ride out of town I was handed the reigns to a horse loaded with a week´s worth of supplies just purchased in town, and we hiked about 1 1/2 hours up a steap, narrow and sometimes muddy trail. Huge respect to Jocito (the horse). We unloaded the weekly bounty of food. One of 12 eggs were cracked, several avacados and papayas were damaged, a few pears were uterlly destroyed, one bag of rice split open, and the bag of oranges and mandarins was left left in the chaos of the market. ¨All in all not too bad,¨ said Yves, who on other accasions had lost almost everything when the bags slipped off, sometimes bringing the horse with it over the edge of the trail. Then Yves, I and 4 other volunteers sat down to a hearty lunch of stewed vegetables, beans and grains.

The kitchen/dinning room/sitting room/library that we ate in was made by Yves at the begging of the project. After months of clearing flat land on the steep slope, he then dragged timber by horse from a tree plantation further up the mountain, and combined it with hand made adobe/mud bricks. After more than 6 months, there was a single room. The whole area was still covered in ferns and other weeds following the previous mono-cropping of sugar cane.

Now, after 8 years of using what he calls regenerative design (roughly permaculture principles), much progress has been made. With the help of a transient community of volunteers (up to 1000 over the 8 years), the soil quality has improved and now there are a number of productive vegi patches, greenhouses, native trees and fruit and nut trees. There is also running water from a nearby spring, solar panels for some eletricity, a composting toilet (aka the shit bucket), bee hives, 2 chicken coops, a solar shower, a dormitory and several cabins for sleeping. There is also a surpisingly extensive library with such titles as: Home Cheese Making; Butterflies of South America; 1984 (Orwell); Packin´ In on Mules and Horses; The Road; Ishmael and Human Manure. The other residents of the property include 2 milking goats, 1 baby goat (aka  a kid), 2 cats, 1 kitten, 1 dog, 2 puppies, an old horse, a donkey and her baby. Yves now lives on another part of the property intermitantly with his girlfriend, raising the goats and making goats cheese which he sells in town each week.

Mani (or Peanut in Spanish), the baby goat

We were expected to do 6 hours of work each day, and after splitting the chores to maintain the place, we could work on whatever projects we chose. I did such things as: weeding and caring for plants, planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, washing puppies, maintaining trails, fixing water tanks, feeding the animals, watering the garden and harvesting. I loved harvesting. While there is room for improvment in vegetable production, there were certainly enough beans. When I traced a thicket of climbing beans down to their stems, sometimes what I thought was 1 plant turned out to be 5, and other times what I thought was 5 plants turned out to be 1. These self seeded beans from past cropps were everywhere. I also harvested root vegetables, salad greens, some squash-like thing called Sambo, berries, a few types of fruit and eggs from the chickens. You could go pick a bowl of salad in a few minutes for lunch or pick some strawberries, rasberries and blackberries to go with your pancakes in the morning.

Living at a farm that did not import fertiliser or chemicals and that did not take any rubish off the property made you very aware of the consequences of your lifestyle. The rubish was sorted into careful piles. The planstics and other things that could not otherwise be reused were mixed with mud to make bricks, the food scraps were fed to the animals or composted, and the paper was burnt so the ash could be used in the garden bed. Furthermore, carfeully selcted plants were used to help improve the soil. Some brought up nutrients from deap in the soil, others fixed nitrogen, and all, even the weeds, produced organic matter that helped to improve the quality of the soil. As Yves said, even when removing undesired plants from the vegi patches, trim them back with love, and thank them for their contribution to the soil. Everything grown on the property -- and everything brought up in the form of food -- will return to improve the soil. Whether it is directly broken down, composted, eaten by the chickens or other animals and pooped out or eaten by the humans and pooped out (yes, even the human waste was used as fertiliser). At Sacred Sueños you can see the miracle of life in action.

You don´t need to sacrifice your lifestyle to be more sustainable; you just need to adjust it. My time at the farm was not at all unpleasant or unduely difficult. In fact, it was wonderful.

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