Living It Up Lunar Style

Biodynamics and the concept of farming according to the lunar cycle is very cool. Not only can it be applied to agriculture, but also to daily life! Gustavo, our agriculture intern from EARTH University, has a book written by Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe that describes how the lunar cycle can be incorporated in daily life. For example, one section of the book describes days that are best for haircuts, and days when the moon is in Leo or Virgo are best. The two times differ a bit in that Virgo is best for a long lasting haircut, while Leo is better for overall hair strength. I’m not sure how this was measured, or the validity of the claims, but I’m eager to give it a try, especially since I’m in a bit of a need for a haircut. The book has been translated in several languages and the English version is titled Moon Time: The Art of Harmony with Nature and Lunar Cycles.

I’ve been learning so much about Biodynamics since I’ve been here. I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about soil preparation and composting. I had no idea what a science composing is. Farming biodynamically and organically is not only good for our health, but for the health of the planet. The concept of planting with lunar and planetary phases is especially interesting, in part because it connects our food to something greater than just the earth; it connects it to the universe. The ways in which lunar cycles are used in agriculture are based on simple concepts, for example, a full moon will draw up sap from a tree and is therefore a good time to harvest sap, but it is an especially bad time to harvest trees for wood since there will be a high moisture content in the wood, causing it to rot easily. Days around a new moon are ideal for wood harvesting since there will be a low water content in the wood. I’ve also learned that mornings are best for picking fruit and leafy greens since the water content in the leaves and fruit are greatest in the mornings before the sun gets too hot. Evenings, on the contrary, are best for harvesting root plants, like carrots and potatoes, because the plant’s energy is concentrated in the root. Unfortunately these methods are costly to employ on a commercial level since it is inefficient to use labor at a different time each day.

People, like plants, also have certain unshakable biorhythms. Birds rely on their biorhythms to coordinate roosting and food gathering with their partner. Another example is how, inexplicably, certain chemotherapies have higher success rates in cancer patients depending upon the time they are administered. Despite research and promising results, the practice of cancer therapies according to biorhythms is not performed, sadly because it is too difficult to coordinate staffing of such health professionals round the clock. Another example is that people function most efficiently during daylight hours, regardless of change in sleeping habits. Those who work the night shift are often prone to make mistakes and some of the greatest disasters our world has seen have occurred in the hours between 1 am and 5 am, during the night shift. The Chernobyl nuclear explosion, which occurred at 1:23 am, is one such example.

People, plants, and animals all have biorhythms, and such biorhythms are accumulations of behaviors and hormones changes which are regulated by the sun and moon. I’ve learned how these biorhythms involve the sun and how they affect humans and animals, but I’m also now beginning to learn the importance of lunar cycles and how plants are equally affected. Fascinating.

Morning Yoga and a Meeting of Great Minds

Today I led a group in a yoga session for the first time! We have a group from the Rodale Institute, one of the oldest organic organizations in the States, staying with us and this morning some of them caught me coming back from doing yoga in the tower this morning and they mentioned how they wanted do some yoga themselves. After I got mats out for them one of them mentioned how excited they were to have me lead them in a yoga session. eek! I wasn’t planning on leading them! I’m more of an admirer of yoga and most of what I know is what I’ve picked up from guests who pass through. I was a bit timid at first, but I just gave my disclaimer and went ahead with it. Towards the end of the session I was getting more comfortable and walking around helping people to realign themselves and get a deeper stretch in various poses. Interesting experience for me; I really liked it. When I get back home I will look into learning more about yoga. I just love it. My flexibility has increased so much and it’s just such a great way to start the day!

Also this weekend we’re hosting a Cultivating Diversity think group where an interdisciplinary group of people came together to investigate avenues of change in agriculture systems. The great minds present included people from the NGOs, certifying agencies, universities, the ministry of agriculture, farmers, and students from EARTH, the top tropical agriculture university in the world. They were dreaming up ways of creating a future Costa Rica and how to implement changes that would increase self-sustainable and just agricultural systems. And despite the language barrier, I got to participate! Jann, the facilitator, was great. I learned so much about how to get a group of people to be creative and then organize their visions and ideas. Her method involved getting ideas down on lots of colored pieces of paper and then organizing this flurry of ideas onto corkboards. We finished the night with a dinner accompanied with Luna’s starfruit wine and ginger mead and a fermented biodynamic alcoholic drink that tasted like Kaluha. Yum!

In between the morning yoga session and the Cultivating Biodiversity meeting I made, with the help of Rocio, about 8 pounds of ginger candy. Rocio and I spent the entire late morning peeling ginger until our hands felt hot and tingly from the ginger juices. After I was done I though I would never want to eat ginger candy again, but by the evening I was just snacking away. They're quite addicting!

Chocolate Making Attempt Thwarted by Mini Natural Disasters, and How to Keep Pesky Squirrels at Bay

Oh no! Just as I thought my cacao pods were coming along nicely—they almost smelled like chocolate a few days into the process—they began to mold! Everything molds during rainy season! My shoes, my backpack, my jewelry, and now my cacao! And after I remedied the mold issue they began to sprout! The embryo of the bean is supposed to shrivel and die in the fermentation process, not grow! But alas, I guess everything just grows in the rainforest. Also, the cacao beans began to be a breeding ground for little maggots. After assessing the myriad of problems, I had to toss all the beans into the forest area just outside the lodge (aka our non-food compost pile). I had two chocolate recipes to try too. One was a truffle recipe which used the whole bean, and the other was a real chocolate recipe. I have a new fermenting recipe to try for next time, and this one is full proof…I hope.

Also, I just learned how to control pests using a biodynamic method. It involves skinning the pest, such as a rat or squirrel, and charring the skin in a wood fire until it’s just ashes. Then, the ashes are spread around the plants and fields that need inoculation. Gustavo was using it to control rats in our food garden and now we’re going to use it against squirrels in our cacao fields, which are being ravished by squirrels and fungus. I was given instructions on how to char the skin just in case a dead squirrel is delivered to me this weekend when Gustavo isn’t going to be around. The only thing I didn’t get instructions on was how to skin a squirrel. It can’t be hard, right? I dissected rats in bio lab, so this shouldn’t be too far off.

Tree Identification and Cacao

Identifying trees is tougher than identifying short shrubby plants! I went out today identifying trees with Roberto. To properly id a tree, it’s necessary to inspect the leaves, but since I cannot reach them by hand (canopy trees can be up to 20 meters tall) I had to use binoculars. I am not a fan of using binoculars and even using them for stationary objects, like leaves, is dizzying for me. I had to lie down on the ground and point the binoculars upwards, all the while being wary of being bitten by ants. And it's especially difficult to id trees in the rainforest since various trees are crowded together and leafy vines are growing on everything, making it confusing to figure out which leaf belongs to which plant. After spending half an hour identifying an Inga tree in the Fabaceae family (bean family), I narrowed it down to four possible species. Now I just need to wait until it's flowering or fruiting to be able to pin down the species.

I’m also fermenting cacao pods to make chocolate! We got 25 cacao pods from our cacao field. Using his machete, Fernando helped hack open the pods and I spread out the sweet mucilaginous beans onto a straw mat placed at the bottom of a drum container cut vertically in half. I then marched out in the garden, armed with a heavy kitchen knife, and retrieved a few banana leaves to cover the beans so they can ferment in the dark.

Also, funny side note speaking of chocolate. In the morning, after seeing Fernando make himself some chocolate milk using fresh milk, I really wanted a glass for myself. Later in the day I went down to the pool kitchen, where we keep our milk, and filled a little pitcher with a bit of milk. Once back at the main kitchen I set to work mixing in some sugar and cocoa powder. It was the richest chocolate milk I had ever tasted. In the morning I found out that the milk that I used to make my chocolate milk was not cow’s milk but buffalo milk! No wonder it was so creamy! Buffalo milk has a much higher fat content than cow’s milk, which makes it ideal for thick yogurts, cheeses, and butters.

How We Get Our Chicken Dinner

Luna Nueva has really been connecting me to my food source. Because I’ve been in California for so long, where grocery stores are stocked year-round with every possible fruit and vegetable, I’ve lost sight of how our food is grown and where it actually comes from. Even after having been on the farm for two and a half months and knowing that the delicious pork and chicken that I dine on comes from the animals I see every day and adore so much, I have never really seen that middle step between clucking chicken and stove-top.

When Sara Newmark came for a visit with the Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Foundation (who are all such warm and incredible people! I wish they could have stayed a longer) she decided to stay an extra week at Luna, and little did I know that on her agenda was an item that would fill in that missing step in my understanding of food--she wanted to kill, clean, and eat a chicken. Her reasoning was that since she ate a lot of chicken, she should be able to kill one as a symbolic way of validating and completing the cycle of her consumption. Oddly, though I cannot kill a spider, I have no qualms about killing anything that I will eat, especially if it is done in a humane way, so the chicken sacrifice was not too an emotional experience for me, but taking life is serious and I felt heaviness in the air. The whole process was very gentle. Fernando and Yeudy, our animal guys on the farm, brought out the chicken and calmed it a bit by gently stroking it. Sara then said her thanks to the chicken and with the guidance of Yeudy, swiftly made the sacrifice. Tom Newmark, CEO of New Chapter, the vitamin company that owns Luna Nueva, also participated. He said it best when he described the act as feeling as though he just did something that people have been doing for hundreds of years. The chickens were next dipped in boiling water, plucked, cleaned, and quartered. The event ended with a heartfelt dinner. After observing this process I have a deeper appreciation for my food and am more grateful for my meals. If everyone was this in touch with their food than I doubt that there would ever be any waste!

On a lighter note, I want to mention how comical I find it when people ask me to act as a translator for them--if only they knew how rudimentary my Spanish really is! But despite speaking a really crude Spanish, I have developed a means of communicating most anything I need to with everyone on the farm, though I sometimes doubt what I interpret. The day of the chicken sacrifice Fernando and Yeudy asked me if Sara and I wanted to kill a turkey instead of a chicken. They said they needed to know ahead of time because they had to feed the turkey guaro (a Costa Rican hard liquor) beforehand. I looked at him incredulously and thought, “Did I hear him right? He needs to get the turkey drunk prior to its sacrifice?” After a "Como?" he repeated the same thing and I walked away a bit uncertain until Iti confirmed that the turkey sacrificing process does indeed include Costa Rican hard liquor.

In short, Luna Nueva is fostering an appreciation of food that makes each bite that much more delicious.

Many New Projects

Great day! I woke at 4:30 am to do a little yoga in the observation tower at 5 am with Gustavo, our agriculture intern who I’ve recently turned onto yoga. At 5:30 am we descended from the tower and made ourselves a breakfast of farm fresh scrambled eggs and toast with a hot cup of coffee. At six, which is when everyone starts work on the farm, I went out to collect sap from the Sangre de Drago (dragon’s blood) tree. After hearing how dragon’s blood sap is a great way to treat botfly wounds, and after discovering that many of our livestock suffer from such wounds, I decided to try a little experiment and help out the animals. Dragon’s blood sap is a deep crimson color, and as I hacked a V shape into the tree with a knife, it looked like the tree was bleeding. After collecting a bit of the sap, I donned a pair of rubber boots and hiked out to the dairy where the water buffalo are being milked. Since Julie, our mother water buffalo, is a new mother and being milked, I decided to treat her first. I couldn’t find a documented procedure for using the sap to treat the wounds, so I am just trying an undiluted application directly onto the wounds.

On my way back to the lodge, I ran into Steven who was on his way to check out the ginger plants. I accompanied him out into the field and we talked about trying to make ginger candy. Young ginger roots, around 4-5 months old, are best for making candy because they are less fibrous and spicy than mature ginger. After the short hike, I rushed back to the lodge to research ginger candy recipes and to answer a few reservation inquiries.

During lunch I began researching cow milking videos on YouTube for another project I am starting to pursue—videotaping buffalo milking and other happenings on the farm. Rocio, curious about what I was doing, asked how I was able to find so many different videos. She had never heard of YouTube and after a short introduction became an immediate fan. In no time she discovered music videos and even a few karaoke music videos, and by the end of lunch she had me and all the girls singing along to ranchero karaoke.

After lunch I pursued ginger candy making. I had about 3 different recipes to try and Rocio and Ana each had one. To practice my videotaping skills, I filmed Ana and Rocio making their candy recipes. Ana’s ginger taffy recipe didn’t work out because we were using the wrong sugar and the fresh ginger we used added too much water. Rocio’s first attempt ended up burning, but her second attempt was great. After dinner I tried some of my recipes out. One was a really spicy one that I used with just a tiny amount of sugar, the other didn’t turn out like I thought it would, but it was gooey, pink (colored with rosa de Jamaica tea), and just delicious! I then experimented by dipping the various pieces in molten dark chocolate. Tomorrow Ana is going to try a second attempt at ginger taffy and I’m going to up early again to film buffalo milking.

Learning to Make Beer

I learned how to make beer today! We at Luna Nueva are constantly seeking new recipes to introduce healthy foods on our farm. Fermented foods are wonderful for health, and since beer is fermented, and can be considered a food if it is unfiltered, we started to make our own beer! After tasting the first batch of beer I’ve been eager to learn how it was done. Just before I arrived at Luna our first batch of ginger mead, jackass bitter beer, and starfruit wine was made. The beers were made to be medicinal brews—something strong and good for your health since fermented foods, ginger, honey, and jackass bitters all have medicinal properties—but they were a bit too strong! The ginger was a bit overpowering, so the recipe had to be altered a bit, but the starfruit wine was just lovely! It was tart and sweet and a lot of fun to drink.

When Harold, our farm manager, was making a second batch of the ginger mead, I and the other interns, Gustavo and Riza, came to help and watch how it was done. We all donned hair nets and started heating the water and juicing the ginger and limes. The ingredients are so simple! All we needed was honey (it’s was makes it a mead), limes, ginger, and some yeast. I had no idea that making beer was so easy. The only tricky part was maintaining steady temperatures.

First, we heated the honey and then added it to a large vat of hot water. Next we added the ginger and lime juice and let the whole mixture heat for 30 minutes at 68° C. Then we poured the concoction into a sealable bucket and added cold water to make 19 L. After letting the solution cool to 26° C, we pitched in some yeast, while stirring it vigorously, and sealed the bucket. Now it just sits for a week and is later bottled where it will ferment some more for six weeks. Simple!

I can’t wait to try the new batch! I am definitely going to try brewing beer when I get home.

Food and Fun!

A glorious day of food and fun! Today I woke at a leisurely 6am, went on a short jog, splashing my face with water from the Chachagua River at my halfway point, and arrived at Casa Luna by 8am to feast on a breakfast of fresh homemade yogurt, papaya, granola, and bananas that I picked on my way to the lodge. Delicious. Shortly afterward Angelica, one of our lovely staff members, began making fresh tortillas, which I couldn’t resist eating. Savoring each bite, I gobbled up three with fresh natilla. Natilla is sort of like richer version of sour cream; it’s made by skimming the cream off chilled fresh cow’s milk and letting it sit to ferment for a day or two. Irresistible.

Lately, the women staff members have been fundraising for new uniforms and it’s been nothing but gastronomic delight. They began by brewing ronpompe, a sort of Costa Rican eggnog made with milk, cinnamon, and rum. They then froze the heavenly concoction in little plastic bags, turning it into an apretado, or as it’s called in the San Carlos area of Costa Rica, a chirivisco. Chirivisco is the term for any ice-cream-like substance frozen in the plastic bags. Once it’s frozen, you are supposed gnaw off a corner of the bag and then eat the cold yumminess inside. In addition to ronpompe, the girls have been making blackberry, natilla (so rich!), and rum raisin chiriviscos!

Today they added to that list by making coconut chiriviscos. I helped them by grating fresh coconut, which was nothing but pure pleasure since I was instructed to eat the smallest bits that could not be further grated. We had Walter, our multi-faceted family farm member and my former home-stay dad, hack off the outer shell of the coconut with a knife so that nothing remained but a hollow ball of coconut meat. Some of the coconuts had a sprouted seed in the middle, which was delicious! I’d never seen or eaten one before. It was a spongy textured ball of coconut goodness.

The ladies have also been making lunches as part of their fundraising efforts. Today they made hot ham and cheese sandwiches, served with a glass of Coke. I haven’t had a sandwich or seen Coke since I’ve been here, so it was a surprising treat. Another day they made hamburgers! It’s been so fun helping out in the kitchen and learning new recipes. Hopefully when I go back home I’ll be able to make some of the delicious dishes I’ve been eating here, like arroz con leche (a rice pudding), pastel de yucca (a kind of yucca lasagna), arroz con pollo, ronpompe, and, of course, dishes that include lots of ginger and turmeric!

Julie, one of our water buffalo, just had a male calf! Today, at the conclusion of Iti's and my morning walk, we decided to visit the dairy and give our congratulations to Julie and check out her calf. As soon as I came up to the sweet, little calf he came ambling towards me, with his adorably awkward gait, and began licking my outstretched hand. He is like a puppy! He just came up and starting to nuzzle and lick me! I love our buffalo! Julietta, another of our buffalo, also began to nuzzle me as soon as I came up to pet her. Amazing animals! And thanks to our two lovely mother buffalo—Buffy also has a young calf—we have been enjoying fresh buffalo mozzarella at the farm! Simply delicious! We have a dairy that is set up to milk cows, buffalo, and goats. It also has a room set up to make cheeses, yogurt, butter, natilla (a type of Costa Rican sour cream), and other delicious things. Part of the reason breakfast is my favorite meal here is because I am constantly surprised with fresh goat and buffalo cheeses and yogurts.

Luna Nueva has just been teeming with life! When I first returned from my trip to Panama, Iti and I were going up to our rooms late in the evening when she said “Oh, I forgot, we have guests,” and then stopped to turn on the path lights. I wasn’t aware that we had any guests that day and was a little confused until the lights shone on a herd of sheep. Our sheep had been moved to the grassy area next to our individual bungalows--they're kind of like our portable lawn mowers. We then heard a little, yet strong, “bahhhh.” One of our sheep had a lamb! Though it is now a few weeks old, it is still as adorable as the day it was born, snow white and so loveable!

We also have two litters of Vietnamese potbelly piglets! One litter is a month old now, while the other is just a few weeks old. They are so adorable! And the runt of the youngest litter is impressively strong for its size—he’s a fighter! All the guests say they just want to scoop him up and take him home, but sometimes runts end up being the strongest of their siblings.

I have never lived in a place where there is just such a constant and profound display of life. All the plants that spring from the earth and animals bringing new life into the world are a constant reminder of how precious and incredible life really is. In short, being at Luna is renewing, enlivening, and simply good for the soul.

The Attack of the Stingless Bees!

This morning I helped our new agriculture intern, Riza, clear a fallen tree out of the rainforest mysteries trail. The tree, which was a standing dead tree, had just fallen a few days ago, and was already decomposing to dirt! With all the millions of bacteria, thousands of fungi, and armies of termites and other critters, things return back to their elements very quickly here. So many things were feeding off the tree—there was even a crab!

After clearing the path, Riza wanted a photo of himself up in a tree covered with large strong vines. After clamoring up the vines a bit he exclaimed, “What are these?” Remembering that there was a trigona bee hive—stingless bees—on the back of the tree, I told him what they were and not to worry—stingless bees are harmless, right? The tree has a very large circumference and since the nest is on the opposite side of which we were climbing, I didn’t think the bees would be very disturbed. After Riza got down, I decided that I wanted a photo too. As I climbed the tree, I began to notice that the bees were definitely disturbed and quite unhappy. But, since they don’t sting, I continued up worry free so I could get a great photo.

Before long though, I noticed that although the bees did not sting, they definitely had a knack of getting everywhere and biting! Soon I was squealing, “Ahhh, they’re in my hair! They’re biting my scalp! They’re everywhere!” Followed by, “Oh no, what is that?!” It looked like a mosquito the size of my fist, and it was coming right at me! I called to Riza to take my photo fast, made a smile that probably looked more like a grimace, and jumped out of the tree, frantically shaking my hair and pulling bees off my clothes. I scurried away, losing my balance and wobbling all over the place and eventually got all the bees off. Now that I think about it, Steven did warn me about the stingless bees and how they have a knack of crawling up your nose, getting in your ears, and just getting everywhere. Next time, I will never doubt the ferocity of insects, even stingless ones!

Rainforest Tours

Visa Run!

Last week I ran off to Panama to renew my 90 day Costa Rican tourist visa. It was quite a trip! Knowing that I would eventually have to take this trip to renew my visa, I had mixed feelings of eagerness and trepidation since I was to do the journey solo, and traveling alone by bus and border hopping to a foreign country all the while staying in hostels was a new experience for me. Luckily though, I got a blessed mass e-mail from my dear friend and former housemate from Cal, Andrea, about her intention to run off to Panama and do the same thing I intended to do. After a couple e-mails and a nerve wracking phone call about potentially going to Nicaragua instead, it was all settled and we were to do the crazy trip together.

I did this same trip two years ago to renew my visa when I was doing a UC tropical biology program through the Monteverde Institute, so I had a fairly solid idea of what I was getting myself into. I met up with Andrea and her dad in La Fortuna, who then drove us to the bus station in San Jose. From there we took a bus to Puerto Viejo and stayed the night in Pagalu Hostel, the neatest and nicest hostel I have ever been in. The next morning we took a bus to the border and walked across a rickety bridge whose flooring was made of strips of decaying timber. I was very anxious to hurry across the bridge before I got stuck on it at the same time an 18 wheeler truck was trying to pass. When finally at Bocas del Toro, our destination, Andrea and I got a room in a hostel that had a bar attached to it, Mondo Taitu. We were so happy to be settled that we didn’t notice how grungy the place was until after dinner—it was like living in a frat house! But we made do. The only thing that seemed to appease us was the promise of their complimentary do it yourself pancake breakfast.

All in all, I had a blast snorkeling, swimming at the beach, and rooming in hostels with people from all over the world. I loved the medley of accents I encountered; all the Irish, English, Swedish, Swiss, and German was so fun to hear. I also got to practice my Spanish a bit with a Korean guy who didn’t speak any English. I was so amazed how Europeans were often fluent in multiple languages, while all the North Americans I met were sadly limited to only English.

I had a really great time, but unfortunately ran myself ragged and returned to Luna with cold. It is so nice to be back and be taken care of. Lorena made me chicken soup and Iti brought me room service complete with a pitcher of hot honey and lemon tea, strong, just how my mom makes! I’ll be better in no time.

Arenal Volcano, La Fortuna

A Prolific Kitchen and Incredible Ethnobotanist.

I had such an incredible day today! I spent an afternoon with Ana and Neni, two of our lovely cooks, making cookies and jam! We made about 250 ginger cookies, 40 oatmeal raisin cookies, and jarred 100 jars of starfruit jam and 30 jars of guava jam. The amount of food produced in a small kitchen with only four stovetops and one oven is incredible. And the combination of the simmering vats of jams and constant production of cookies made the kitchen smell heavenly! I wanted to bottle that smell and remember it forever. After hours of hard work, and also to ensure the quality of our labors, Ana and I enjoyed chilled glasses of fresh goat milk and cookies—delicious!

Earlier in the week Rafa, our charming and super knowledgeable ethnobotanist, came out to visit. I accompanied him and Steven around the Sacred Seeds Garden as we talked about various plants. It was such a pleasure to follow Rafa into the garden and listen to him explain a little bit about each of the plants. He pointed out a carob tree, sangre de drago, chirca, and spoke a little bit about each of their properties. It was very interesting and right up my alley—I love learning about plants. Although he only spoke Spanish, I seemed to understand everything he was saying, though not without some help from Steven. Rafa pointed out the relative toxicities of some plants and their various uses in different cultures. He explained how some plants are deemed completely toxic simply on the account of one of the many compounds they possess, and as a result are no longer investigated for their medicinal worth. This is unfortunate because some plants, like pharmaceuticals, are toxic in high doses, but at low doses, their toxicity is minimal and their medicinal values are notable. He also noted how plants are not often enough analyzed in their whole forms, but are instead investigated only in isolated compounds. Whole forms of a plant can often provide maximum medicinal value through a combination of complemented compounds that isolated compounds cannot. Fascinating. Seems common sense. Rafa is trying to put together a second volume booklet of information about selected plants in the garden. Hopefully I’ll get to help out with some research for it.

The night before Rafa left, we had a great dinner, which I complemented with a glass of wine at Rafa and his Spanish friend’s insistence. They kept persisting that it would improve my Spanish speaking abilities, though I’m not quite sure it did. All in all, it was a great week.

ethnobotany

One of the wondrous ways Costa Rica will BUG you

I am a lover of all creatures on this earth. And I love bugs. I cannot bring myself to kill a bug, spider, or any insect. I simply love bugs, but yet, for some reason, I get really squeamish when katydids fly in my hair, or especially when cicadas fly at me. Cicadas are the wackiest bug I have seen fly. They bang into lights, walls, and even people, making a big racket as they do. Being hit by one during one of their nose dives feels like someone just threw a rock at you. Tonight, while hanging out in the kitchen and helping serve dinner, a crazy cicada flew in and erratically started banging into pots, walls, the fridge, and every now and then it would suddenly change course and plunge toward me and the cooks, causing us to scatter and duck for cover. All the while, I, the bug lover, let out a little squeal each time it came at me. Although they fly around like a plane with a busted engine, they are really pretty insects. I caught one last night in a glass and showed it to a few of our guests who thought it was a neat sight.

Steven contends that it is okay to kill insects that will inevitably bite you and draw blood, like the unloved horsefly. Although I have never been bitten by a horsefly, I can’t imagine wanting to kill it, but then again, my reflexes at such a moment might just get the best of me. My pacifist tendencies toward insects stem from my belief in bug karma. For example, if you kill a mosquito, you are sure to be bitten by not just one, but at least two more mosquitoes that otherwise would not have bothered you. I have seen it happen before.

One of my favorite insects in Costa Rica is a light green katydid that looks like a brilliant young leaf. Here it’s called Esperanza, which means hope and is supposed to bring luck—isn’t that beautiful! The insects here are just wild! There are silver and green beetles that are as reflective and shiny as a mirror, tiny little beetles that look like someone delicately painted on dots of hot pink and yellow on a slick black shell, and huge Megaloptera that are like gigantic moths that I almost mistook for a bat! I just learned that in the tropics, ants make up 10% of the total weight of animals. I don’t find that at all hard to believe after coming across an ant last night that was as big as my thumb!

An amendment to the last blog: It is not Iti who dislikes Toucans, but her sister, whose awe of the bird came to a screeching halt when she caught one eating a cute little defenseless bird.

Biodynamics

Lightning, Thunder, and Toucans!

The past few days have been busy! Now that I’m somewhat oriented to the farm, I braved the local bus and accompanied a guest to Ciudad Quesada, a nearby town about 45 minutes away. The views of the countryside are incredible! So lush and green. And the bus ride was entertaining. On the way back from Ciudad Quesada a pastor climbed onto the bus and, from what I gathered using my very rusty Spanish, he delivered a passionate 30 minute sermon while promoting his church. Just as we were getting back to Luna Nueva, the skies let loose and the rain began to pound. Amidst the gushing rain, I made to take the guest to her bungalow with the golf cart when Lorena, one of our lovely cooks, called me to the laundry room. Once there, I watched her unfold a ten gallon plastic garbage bag. I thought she was going to stuff some laundry in it for me to drop off on my way, but then she tore it up until it was just one large sheet of plastic. I had no idea what she was going to do with it until she wrapped it around my waist like a skirt and then zipped up my rain jacket for me—she had just rain-proofed me! Everyone who works here is so nice! It’s really like one big family who all takes care of each other, and they do a particularly good job taking care of me, making sure I am well fed, happy, and dry.

In addition to being simply captivated by the rain, I also love the thunder and lightning. Back home in California there are no episodes of lightning like there are here. In the evenings from the dinner table I love to watch the lightning off in the distance. It’s an amazing light show. From the observation tower at night the lightning lights up small sections of clouds against a foreground of fireflies. The thunder is really incredible too. Yesterday on a walk through Juan’s Garden I was happily strolling along, munching on rambutans that I picked off trees when I saw a bolt of lightning that didn’t look too terribly far off. It was immediately followed by a boom of thunder that I felt deep in my stomach—the same way that a loud bass at a concert would make you feel. It was soon followed by another set. When lightning is close I heard that one should avoid clearings and avoid standing next to tress. Since those were my only two options I was at a small loss of what to do. In times of doubt I look at animals and mimic them because they always seem to know what to do. Luckily there were some goats nearby and through the whole encounter they did not seem very alarmed and just went about munching on leaves. I decided to follow their example and not worry about being struck by lightning while I made my way back. It was quite an adventure.

Aside from the wonders of rain, I saw toucans for the first time yesterday! There were about ten of them flying around in the forested area behind the kitchen. I also saw from the observation tower one that was flying over the main house. Although it looked like its large yellow beak would weight it down, it was quite graceful. Iti, our lovely lodge manager, and Steven tell me that toucans in this area are everywhere, kind of like pigeons back home, so to them toucans are nothing spectacular. Iti even claims to dislike toucans because they aren’t the innocent fruitarians that many are led to believe—they eat other birds and their young! I can’t wait to venture into the trails some more and see what other wildlife creatures I’ll see. One of the guests saw a jaguarondi a few days ago. In a twisted way I would love to be face to face with a jaguarondi, but in a saner way, maybe I’d like to just see it from a distance.

On a quick side note, I mentioned rambutans above and I must explain what they are. A rambutan is an incredibly delicious fruit that looks somewhat like a very large and spiny strawberry and when you peel the off the outer peel, inside it looks like a lychee. It also tastes somewhat like a lychee. Delicious! Right now it’s rambutan season so the guys are hauling in crates of it all the time. This is one fruit that I don’t think I will ever get enough of!

Organic Farm

Welcome to My Luna Nueva Blog!

I can’t believe I’m in Costa Rica! It’s been two years since my last trip to this amazing country and I’m stoked to be back. I just started working as an intern at Finca Luna Nueva and having been here only a week and a half I must say that Luna Nueva is incredible. The pictures on the website do not do justice to the beauty and sheer awesomeness of the place. While looking out from the dining area, I really feel like I’m in paradise. For the entirety of my stay at Luna Nueva I will be writing a blog so that family, friends, and those interested in the adventures I am sure to encounter can follow.

I arrived on the same day that a group came down to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was a very fun welcome to say the least. On one of the days we hiked out to the Children’s Eternal Rainforest and as a group we planted 80 trees in a corridor that will soon link two larger areas of forest. It was an incredible feeling to be a part of something that will maintain diversity. It also just felt great to be out walking through mud and forest.

At the moment we have a group hosted by New Chapter staying here and they are all such interesting people. I am learning so much about the power of herbal remedies from them. Today, after trying to help one of the girls who works here, Rocio, with something that looks like a nasty boil erupting on her stomach, I recruited some help from the New Chapter group. In almost no time most of the group got wind of her affliction and came to the rescue with a variety of herbal remedies in the form of antibacterial creams, anti-inflammatory pills, colloidal silver, and even garlic pills. It’s been a pleasure to see them in action.

Yesterday I went on several tours of the gardens and I was amazed to learn about the great diversity of edible plant species in Juan’s Garden. Being so accustomed to romaine lettuce, which tastes much like water, I had forgotten how much character different plants actually have. We sampled lots of plants, some of which tasted like wasabi, cinnamon-basil, and lemon grass. A majority of the tastiest and most aromatic plants, like the basils, oreganos, and mints, came from my favorite plant family, Lamiaceae. Some of the plants weren’t quite as pleasant, namely the jackass bitters, of which I took too big of a bite and had to suffer through the remainder of the tour with a lingering bitter taste in my mouth. I now do my best to avoid the bitter plants despite Steven teasing me because he is a fan of the bitters.

It’s a little surreal that I am going to call Luna Nueva home for the next four months, and maybe longer. Each day, on my walk back from the farm to my homestay, I walk through the medicinal plant garden until I get to a field where I pass chickens, cows, a baby calf, a few meandering ducks, and even a rabbit, whose purpose on the farm is still a mystery to me. It’s always a different set of animals because part of the nature of a biodynamic farm is that both plants and animals are rotated to different spots every so often. Just yesterday a small herd of sheep were added.

Again, I can’t believe I’m in Costa Rica! I love everything about this place: the sounds, sights, smells, heat, rain, insects, food, plants, animals, people. Todos! Everything from the language I can’t quite fully understand to the pesky mosquitoes. Well, maybe not the mosquitoes, but they are much more tranquilo than the ones in California!

Much love to everyone back home and pura vida!

Hotel Luna Nueva Lodge