Letters from Costa Rica: the Ecovillage Fueled by Music and Homegrown Food

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox, fellow collaborator with Craig Mackintosh on the Sustainable (R)evolution Book Project.

Editor’s Note: This is Part IV of a series. Click to read Part I, Part II and Part III.

Our daughters in the dipping pool outside our casita

Life here at Tacotal ecovillage—also affectionately known as the “jungle work farm,” reached a natural peak recently as our population grew from 15 to about 40 during our annual members’ meeting. Then to follow that up, we welcomed about 250 guests to a grand wedding celebration for community members, Stephen Brooks and Sarah Wu, on the adjoining farm, Ecovilla Kopali. In addition to all the meetings and celebrations, we traveled to several inspiring permaculture projects: Punta Mona, on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, and Qachuu Aloom in the remote mountains of Guatemala (I’ll write about Guatemala in a separate article ).

As I wrote in an earlier post, the Tacotal ecovillage project would never have happened without the experience of Stephen Brooks, who dove into organic farming back in 1997 when he purchased a 30 acre gem of a property on the Caribbean coast known as Punta Mona. His epiphany had come months earlier in Costa Rica when he witnessed a playground of indigenous children being dusted by a plane spraying an industrial banana plantation. “I knew that if people really understood what was going on, that they would want to change, to do something about it,” he told me.

His intention was to found a center for sustainable living and education that was off-the-grid and dedicated to growing heirloom varieties of tropical foods organically. Years earlier, the remote piece of land had been home to an Afro-Caribbean community of 60 families, who sustained themselves on the food they grew and what they could bring in by boat or foot from neighboring towns. In the 1970s a new road was put in along the coast but stopped about 10 miles short of the settlement. Little by little, the community began to shrink as people left in search of a more modern lifestyle – I wonder how they fared in their search for “progress.”

Padi and Stephen

Today, only 79-year-old Padi remains to tell stories and share wisdom from the past incarnation of Punta Mona (Monkey Point), and he is unarguably a major character at the center. He spends a lot of time on his porch receiving visitors and commenting on everyone and everything happening, and playing many wild rounds of dominoes. It’s hard to capture his Jamaican–type accent in writing (Ticos – or Costa Ricans – on the Caribbean coast of African descent speak English patois amongst themselves), but he is full of sayings like- “You gotta creep ‘fore you can walk,” and “Livin’ life easy—understandin’ it hard.”

Dormitory made of reclaimed wood and other natural materials at Punta Mona

Punta Mona remains accessible only by boat or by a hike of several hours through the jungle, but over the past 12 years the center has hosted thousands of visitors interested in sustainable living. The most remarkable thing about the place for me was the sheer number of edible plant species packed into just a small piece of the now 85-acre property (most of it is preserved tropical forest). La Nacion, Costa Rica’s popular daily newspaper, recently published an article about the fact that Ticos are beginning to lose a number of the diverse fruits and vegetables that were formerly common in their diet. Many of these edible plants have unique health benefits that are also being lost, and Ticos are beginning to suffer more and more from diabetes, heart disease, and other maladies connected to the modern industrial diet. That’s why Punta Mona is so important—by bringing school groups for tours and interns for longer stays, the center spreads knowledge about our planet’s mindboggling diversity of edible foods. Some are native and some imported, but the trees grow incredibly fast in the moist tropical climate and the soil is constantly being improved by the addition of rich vermicompost.

Punta Mona has become one of Costa Rica’s best known organic farms

Walking around Punta Mona with Stephen is like taking a tour of a candy store with a kid who’s managed to open his own. He’s always picking an exotic fruit, slicing it open and saying “taste this, is it not the best thing ever?” or thrusting a crushed leaf under your nose—“just smell this….” Meals were often made with the food harvested onsite: salads with spicy katuk greens and a mandarin lime dressing, yucca, pumpkin with crushed peppercorns, turmeric and ginger, and fresh juices with starfruit and cashew. By the way, if you are interested in edible food plants that are not widely known, the katuk link above goes to a great site called Echonet. My husband Louis is going to be working with Stephen on a new Costa Rican TV program on food and culture next month—somewhat similar to these programs that Stephen has hosted in the past few years.

Lucky for us at Tacotal, a number of plants have been brought on the 5 hour journey from Punta Mona to be put in the ground here, and we’ve been eating more and more of our own homegrown meals as well. During our members’ meeting last month, the discussions about sweat equity and digging a new well were sweetened by the fact that we had tasty meals waiting for us afterwards. My favorite is a Carribean stew called Rundown, made with coconut milk, thyme, chile and whatever veggies, meat or fish one can run down. This year ours was made with pejibaye, or peach palm, an indigenous food which tastes somewhere between a garbanzo bean (chick pea) and a winter squash. We sourced some of the ingredients from the organic farmers’ market in San Jose, and it was great to have local goat yoghurt and cheese and other artisanal foods on hand. It has been hard to get much in the way of organic produce at nearby grocery stores, though we suspect that the veggies we buy at the local town (Orotina) farmers’ market may be organically grown on small farms that don’t have official certification.

Baby starfruit and flowers

In spite of—or perhaps because of– the tasty meals and great music during our meeting, we did get a lot of work done in just two days. This is key because the majority of ecovillage members aren’t living here at the farm, so the rest of the year any decisions have to be made via Internet vote. Each of the eight “pods” of up to four families has a leader, and those eight make up the Body of Pod Leaders or BOPL. The decision-making model is consensus minus one, so that means 7 out of the 8 need to agree. This year our top concern was water, as our current system doesn’t meet the community’s needs during the dry season. We agreed that a new well needs to be drilled, but it’s going to be up to the fundraising committee to come up with some ideas of how to raise the cash—up to $20,000—to do it. Right now the yearly dues paid by members just cover basic maintenance of the property and our communal buildings, tools and truck.

Chilean ‘psychotropical’ band Sonámbulo

Did I mention great music? That was the other major piece of the past weeks I wanted to share. As I described in my first post regarding the creation of Tacotal, while a core number of the farm partners were part of Burning Man camp Blazin’ Raisin, many of the ecovillage members did not know each other before coming together for this project. We have various backgrounds and skills, but one thing that seems to draw us together most is music. There are an inordinate number of talented musicians here and some have been recorded: our most seasoned pro is Human who calls his sound “Mystic Americana.” I highly recommend checking out www.thehumanrevolution.org. Without many of the electronic diversions we’re used to vegging out to in the States, we end up spending most of our free time here jamming and singing together. Those are the moments which make the challenges of being here—namely bugs, snakes and bad roads, which I’m planning to write about next time– all worth it.

Stephen and Sarah tie the knot

In many ways, the wedding weekend had a feeling of a three day music fest, with 150 or so people camping at our next door neighbor/sister farm Ecovilla Kopali. There were about 30 kids dancing along with Tacotal’s musicians, who were joined by several other artists. A highlight was a performance by Sonámbulo, a Chilean band who describe their musical genre as psychotropical (psychedelic meets Tropicália). You can watch a video of them here.

All this with the 2 kids in tow! The only way we’ve been able to manage it is with the loving support of community who have held baby Serenne (who started crawling last month!) or played with Lîla (who is learning to write her name). I feel a tremendous gratitude to be having these experiences and to be part of this new generation of communication, able to share it with you all in the brave new era of the blog, and beyond, with our actions to change the world….