Mi Viaje a Costa Rica: La Finca Orgánica

It’s Thursdayyyyy!!! Which means one week and all our big assignments will be done done done!! :))) Today instead of a typical charla, we visited an organic farm out in Heredia, a province, like an hourish away from where we are in El Carmen. The guy’s name was Roderick and he was super cool. His farm was a family farm, and for like 20 years they had used pesticides and insecticides, but then he switched it to an organic farm. I’m not really sure how that all happened, but wish I had asked gosh dang it. Anyways the topic for today was sustainable development. We had talked about previously how monocrop farming can take the nutrients out of the soil and require more and more chemicals to achieve the same crop as the quality of the soil is lost. However, Roderick talked about how farming lots of different things organically is better for the soil and the plants. He talked about how some plants put certain things into the soil that other plants need so by planting them in close proximity it helps them. He also talked about lunar cycles and planting plants. I was kinda confused, but apparently that matters. He grows all types of vegetables in a couple large gardens and then he has another area where he was planting papaya trees and there were white radishes ( he picked some and a bunch of us took a bite, it was spicy but good). He also grows a lot of coffee. But he puts other trees and plants around his coffee plants. His farm does not look like what we think of when someone says farm. But he works so hard!! He plants and harvests it all himself and sells it in the market. He told us that every pound of non organically grown food causes a loss of 7 lbs of soil!!! But that every pound of organically grown food causes a gain of 9lbs of soil! And he also talked about how if you prune correctly and maintain the plants correctly each year your plants will grow bigger and better and many times in large farms they aren’t looking to make the plants healthier and grow better they just want the most product, not the best quality. Someone asked about bugs and he said well I have to be strategic with where I plant what, and I’m pretty sure he said there was one area where he planted something for the ants to eat! And then it served as like a border for the thigns he really wanted to harvest. And he also talked about how you have to expect to lose some of your crop to animals, and that they were a part of this world too and need to eat so yah they eat my crops sometimes. I was like man! That is some way to view annoying animals who eat your livelihood!!

After walking around to all the areas of his farm, his wife gave us all coffee, fruit(fresh pineapple, papaya, and watermelon), and this delicious like banana bran bread which I’m sure is full of good things!! Ahh the coffee was sooo rich!!! And the bread! I legit want that recipe!!!

We then made our way to ICADS for the afternoon Spanish classes. Oh joyyy! Lol No today was actually a really good class. We talked a lot and used the grammar stuff we were going over in conversation. I really like my teacher, Rosa, this week. And we get her next week too! Score!! That might be due to how much my group complained about last week’s teacher…heh…

SUMMARY: (as promised) We went to an organic farm. We learned about organic farming. Drank really good coffee. Went to Spanish class. End of day.

Hope you enjoyed that summary.