Costa Rica is incredible. It is so beautiful here and I have been seeing plants and animals that I have never seen before other than in a zoo. This morning I saw a bunch of Toucans nesting in a tree behind where I was working. I am located in a little community called Vara Blanca. There are a total of two stores in Vara Blanca and the population is mostly comprised of strawberry and dairy farmers. Vara Blanca is at about 6000 feet so the air is very thin. I almost died trying to play soccer the other day.

 

 I have been getting acquainted with ADE this past week. They are a wonderful group of people who are dedicated to spreading the love of Christ through community involvement and pursuing the education of the community members. Tomas was explaining to me that the reason they focus on Education is because they hope that the community members will be inspired and encouraged to take what they have learned and spread it with other communities. I won't say too much here because you can just go read their website.



Though their primary focus is education, ADE has a handful of initiatives that they are pursuing. This summer I will be involved most closely with the agriculture side of things. Tomas has a large piece of property on which he has been farming and trying out various agriculture experiments that he hopes will catch on in the community. The primary crop in Vara Blanca is strawberries. This is unfortunate because strawberries do not grow naturally here and they require expensive green houses and a whole host of chemicals to make them grow. Tomas hopes that through a blackberry co-op we will be working to start that he will encourage local farmers to pursue more sustainable crops that have healthier effects on the land.

Many of Tomas' experiments are met with disbelief from his neighbors. They think that he is crazy sometimes. That being said, the community members have a great deal of respect for Tomas. He is connected in some way with almost everyone. He is on local community boards and is good friends with all of his neighbors. He has had some difficulty convincing his neighbors that his latest idea is a good one, so he decided to just show them.

We have been working on a pig pen that is made from feed sacks filled with dirt, then plastered with an adobe mud plaster. There are countless benefits to building with earth bags. The materials are virtually free down here, and they are incredibly resistant to earthquakes and other possible hindrances. The picture to the left is the structure before any adobe plaster was added. Below is Tomas' neighbor Lindor smoothing out the plaster. The pig pen will serve two purposes though. He will be housing his neighbors pigs in exchange for their poop. Thats right. Tomas is also creating a bio-digester which will capture methane gas from the decomposing pig poop. This gas will then be piped up to his house which will be used for their water heater and for their gas stove, virtually eliminating the cost of gas from their expenses. The pig poop then comes out as incredibly rich, odorless fertilizer for the garden.

You can't see my rubber boots, but those and machetes are the staple farm implements here in Costa Rica.