Vernal Equinox 2022
Tales of Regeneration in Costa Rica from the past three months…
Can you feel it in the Earth? The growing energy of Spring? How are you celebrating the full moon and equinox? The word equinox comes from “equal” or balance, because in the northern and southern hemispheres we have an equal amount of light and darkness. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it is a time of turning toward longer days, transition to growth and action, transformation from dormancy into life.
Since leaving on a long journey just before the Winter Solstice, I have been traveling and making connections for regenerative design projects throughout Costa Rica and Mexico. During my course work with the Regenesis Institute, I made connections with other changemakers and decided to go meet them in person to learn more about their work and how we may support each other.
I began my journey going to meet a witch in the mountains of Costa Rica on New Year’s Eve. She is a practicing herbalist named Sarah Wu who travels the world teaching permaculture and soulful living. I have long looked up to her as a mentor and knew I had to meet her in person. Her relationship with plants is tender, sweet, based in science and research, and yet spiritual. She is a powerful wellspring of knowledge and delivers a message of her clear love for nature with tact and kindness. Not only did I learn about herbalism and what it takes to become a world traveling permaculture teacher, I met artists from around the world and was able to meet new clients who are members of the Tacotal Colectivo and ecovillage. Almost 30 families and individuals from around the world have come together over the past 14 years to create sustainable lifestyles and grow food forests. The dynamics of creating an off-grid sustainable community are challenging. Most curious about decision making processes, governance structures, I was grateful to have time with individuals and families who shared their experience with me.
The hard part as we can all guess, comes down to money. How will the road be maintained? Wanting to make the community accessible to people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds while still meeting baseline needs for investors in their homes (water, electric, composting toilets or septic systems, wifi??, etc…) How do you build an aesthetic home with natural methods and regionally appropriate materials? How are the common areas managed and cared for without raising annual member fees? These are the real conversations that often make for a slow and challenging process to get things done.
There are so many models out there for HOA’s, community organizations, development codes and regulations. So how do we decide what works best for our own community? Most people I spoke with shared that this has been one big ongoing social experiment, “they figure it out as they go.”
Lost Valley Ecovillage in Oregon is a long standing successful ecovillage utilizing sociocracy methods of decision making, and surely an example to learn from. Speaking with leaders they, they directed me to two books which I highly recommend if you want to learn more:
We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy by John Buck
Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities
While in Costa Rica, I was also able to meet with leaders at Alegria village, an international community with over 145 families during their first HOA meeting. What a beautiful gathering it was! So much potential and energy for creating sustainable communities, and they had created the most beautiful garden designs and educational spaces. In my opinion, an astounding example of what small groups of people can create when we use our financial capital to cultivate community and invest in land and regenerative systems. I am sure there are layers of complexity and challenges the team at Alegria have had to overcome to reach this point, and I hope to engage more with the community in the future, designing food forests, trails, and home gardens.
When traveling through these communities you bump into people you are simply destined to meet. A contact through the soil health organization, Kiss the Ground, set me up to meet Paul Zink, who started the Jungle Project, training farmers in regenerative agroforestry with breadfruit production. Sometimes you are simply in the right place at the right time, because without making plans, I found myself chatting in the kitchen with a guy named Paul, and after a few moments we looked at each other and said, “Hey! I think we were supposed to meet, ha!”.
Definitely check out Paul’s work with farmers in Costa Rica and consider supporting them financially. They recently started to work with Patagonia Provisions selling dried breadfruit powder for backcountry pancakes, they are delicious!
Continuing my journey led me to the cloud forests of Monteverde to stay with my former host family on their farm. I cut my teeth in garden design and community composting systems while living there eight years ago. Ama Belis and her family steward a diversified agroforestry system on about eight acres. They produce coffee, sugar cane, bananas, several varieties of citrus, chickens, eggs, beans, tilapia, the list goes on and on… They have a beautiful place to stay on their property called Casa Kiskadee where you learn all about their beautiful farm while touring the cloud forests of Monteverde.
I hope to return next winter to work on improving their composting system and begin experiments with Syntropic agroforestry, further diversifying their production and improving soil health. Learning from Scott Gallant’s work with Por Venir Design and Syntropic farming, we plan on putting some of these systems into place for ongoing experimentation.
An astounding example of a regenerative system at work is Hotel Valle Escondido in Montverde. The engineering of the hydrology of the site is an example to be referenced for terraforming any mountainous region. Jonah Chaffee and his team at Valle Escondido are putting their beliefs of reverence for nature into daily practice and it shows. Upon arriving at the reserve, you’ll witness most amazing view of the Nicoya Peninsula from the restaurant. They are producing vegetables, various fruits, tilapia, chicken, eggs, their own fertilizer made from forest microorganisms (I tried their forest microorganism kombucha too, yum!), offer educational tours, and much more.
The design of the reserve takes into consideration the ecological and social context of the place. They are certainly a hub for regeneration in the area and I highly recommend visiting and supporting their working model of permaculture.
There is so much to learn from travelling and visiting regenerative practitioners around the globe. Food is medicine, but there is also rich medicine in the whole experience of growing food, of caring for the land, and caring for each other.
With Solstice Sown Designs, we have exciting projects in regeneration coming up in the southwest of Colorado. We will be continuing work with the ranches in McElmo canyon, and across Montezuma County.
We will start planting trees this month, growing edible windbreaks and hedgerows, expanding the food forest and planting more orchards. I’ve been designing new food forests for two residential 1 acre sites in Cortez that we will start building out this season.
In April, I am thrilled to finally head to Vermont to work with Ben Falk and Whole Systems Design. We will be planting out 3,500 trees for diversified agroforestry systems for a month. If you aren’t familiar with Ben’s work definitely check it out, his business in design has inspired much of my career path, so needless to say I am thrilled for this opportunity.
In other good news (the blessings just seem to keep coming!), I was accepted to an entrepreneurial fellowship with Wild Gift. Please check out their website and learn about all of the other amazing humans making positive change in the world. I am humbled and grateful to become part of this amazing organization of environmental entrepreneurs and changemakers around the world, (projects in Nepal with tea production on the horizon?!? One has to dream!)
Returning to the southwest feels appropriate at this Vernal Equinox as life is budding with potential and possibility. We have lots of other projects in the works so stay in tune to learn more! Thanks for reading.
Wild blessings earthlings, sincerely,
Michael McMillan
