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Costa Rica Dreamin'

Silvan
Mar 14, 2016
2 min read

We just got back from a two-week trip to Costa Rica, and wow was it beautiful. We muddied our boots in cloud forests, spied magnificent birds like the resplendent quetzal and scarlet macaw, lounged on the beach, ate all the tropical fruit we could get our hands on, and only got a little sunburned! And although our trip was purely for pleasure, we did get a little farming inspiration from our stay at Querencia Homestead in Monteverde.

Founded in the 1950s by Quakers escaping the US military draft, Monteverde is a small, sweet town most known for its cloud forest reserve. There, hikers and nature enthusiasts can experience the lush, dripping wonders of a forest on the continental divide, where air masses from the Pacific and Carribean conspire to engulf you in clouds and biodiversity. But this post is really about where we stayed, which was not in the cloud forest but in the valley, on a small, isolated farm.

Tim and Murtha, the owners of Querencia Homestead, have set up an amazing off-the-grid farm that is as functional as it is beautiful. The electricity is hydroelectric, generated from stream water that is piped down the mountain. The water that came through the shower in our guest cabin is heated by the sun. And, the kitchen stove is powered off of cow poop! That's right, methane. Inside the dairy barn is a huge plastic bag with a pipe inside. The methane released from the cow manure is trapped by the plastic and funneled through the pipe to the stove. Simply open the valve to release the gas, click a lighter next to it, and voila! cooking with fire.

Since Jordan and I had neglected to bring groceries on our quite lengthy walk to the farm, we had the added challenge of making dinner using only what was available in Tim and Murtha's vegetable garden. Luckily, being in Costa Rica, we had a lot of options, like kale, carrots, broccoli, limes, cactus, tomatoes, and chayote squash (see first picture).

We were pretty proud of the results; they were delicious! As we ate, we fantasized about building our own farm, and all of the things we could build to make it sustainable, efficient, and all our own. It's hard being farmers without land of our own (I know, we were on a Costa Rican vacation so boo hoo us, right?). We have to constantly stifle the part of us that wants to design, create, customize, and we have to hold off on starting long-term projects since we don't know where we'll be in a year. Someday we'll have a spot of our own to make into an amazing food-growing machine, but for now we are just taking it all in and filing away for future use all the great ideas we've learned from others.