Breakthrough!

Jan 22
I woke up this morning accepting surrender. Surrender to the Spanish language I am where I am with it. I am not going to be fluent in a day so I need to stop beating myself up about how much I don’t know and start just being. As the universe will have it, that simple suggestion of surrender open and changed my world almost instantly.
Javier took us on an in depth tour of the farm this morning and I followed everything he said, Javier doesn’t speak English. I understood so much and so well I began to translate for people who didn’t understand as well, granted he was talking a lot about biological farm system I know well. He talked about compost, burms, Swales, hydroponics, aquaponics, and the integration of cows, forest, and crop rotations. He also touched on an interesting subject, generational acceptance and understanding. Specifically for sustainable living. This topic has been a bit of a theme on my trip, from the Mexi”cans” with their mission, to the recent high school grad taking a gap year, to the various other individuals who I’ve talked to on the farm that do not follow their parents religion or lifestyle choices. Javier was talking about the challenges he and his wife Raquel have face with their parents and their way of working the land. A commonly accepted way to work the land in Costa Rica is to dedicate the majority of the land to cattle and then mono crop the rest. The graving is not maintained properly to mimic herd migration and so the land gets degraded and hill sides begin to erode leading to the loss of top soil into rivers. It would seem that the loss of top soil/soil period would be ridiculous to farmers, but it is all they know. Javier informed us that it hasn’t been easy to explain why they have chosen permaculture instead of traditional methods. This challenge is a bit contradictory in my mind but this is me making an assumption…sustainable agriculture is a responsible way to ensure future generations are set up for success and in my mind it is the eldest generation that should be caring about the quality of life for their families future, so why is it that more often than not it is the eldest generation that is the most stubborn? It was the same way in Thailand with the Asian elephant, the eldest generation sees positive re enforcement training methods as hericy, worth killing baby elephants over!
With that all said, I look at how blessed I am to have parents that support and evolve with my changes in lifestyle. I am so blessed that they have such open minds filled with love and understanding, thanks Mom and Dad.