We are planting 1,500 trees!

Believe it or not, there are over 1,500 trees in this nursery!

I became inspired to write a new post because I realized that planting 1,500 trees is actually a pretty remarkable thing. We have 5 to 6,000 trees already so I didn't think much about it at first but when I saw the nursery when all the trees were ready, I became a bit overwhelmed.
Because preparing the trees is difficult enough but planting and then caring for them is a whole order of magnitude more difficult.
We have to cut the grass so the small trees don't become overwhelmed, we have to fertilize them so they can survive the hot and dry summers and we have to prune them so they get a good shape for harvesting. Not to mention we are grafting between 1/2 and 1/4 of the trees so that they are more productive and disease resistant.

Secret in front of the vivero before the seeds sprout.

I just completed another fun project. I don't smoke cigarettes but knowing that I could grow tobacco in this climate, I decided to do just that. I got some seeds from a local curandero and a couple of nice looking plants came up with very little work. After harvesting, I strung them up in my house and let them cure for a few months. I had no idea what I was doing, I had just heard that you had to cure tobacco before smoking it.
So I cured it, dried it, rolled a cigarette and smoked it. And it tasted pretty good! I had no idea what a cigarette tastes like so I gave it to a local guy. He smoked it and confirmed to me that it tasted like a cigarette - so I'm pretty happy about that.

Doesn't look like much but now I've got more tobacco than I can smoke.

Tobacco




Finally, a bird's nest I found in a fence post, actually a living tree which is planted
as a big cutting. The latin name is glyricidia, also known as madre de cacao.

                        

Things Fall Apart

Carlos amid the ruins of the trapiche - you can see the juicer and the boiling vat in the background

I read a book once called "Things Fall Apart." It was fantastic, written by an African author named Chinua Achebe.
I don't remember one thing about it except the title and that it was profound and deeply moving.
But the title, that title really sticks with you.

Especially, after you've lived in Costa Rica for awhile. On the farm, everything falls apart, quite literally, unless you make preserving and protecting your structures a full time job.

The big old falling apart cauldron

Latest to fall was the trapiche, a structure dedicated to the joy of sugar. The trapiche is where we juice sugar cane and then boil it for half a day to make "dulce," the original organic brown sugar. It is the site of many a happy afternoon spent scraping caramalized sugar off the side of the huge boiling vat and almost losing a tooth to extremely sticky sugar.

Termites have been gnawing away on this building for years. We did a half-assed repair a year ago with untreated bamboo, not seriously expecting it to hold. The bamboo did OK, it was the original rafters that finally collapsed.

Cutting down a huge palm

We had to cut down a tree and a palm that were on opposite corners of the trapiche because they drop a lot of leaves on the roof. This gets wet and rusts the tin roof and before you know it, you have tiny holes everywhere in your roof.


But, mercifully, it is not just about things falling apart. It is also about things growing.

Pineapples with cardboard for weed suppression

 We planted these pineapples about a year ago. They will start bearing fruit soon. The piles of leaves you can see in the driveway, (yes, that is our driveway not a meadow. If you look closely you can see tire tracks) is covering the persistent and invasive plant that we inadvertently planted years ago, not knowing its many faults. There are still a few spots of it left and it require a stern hand to control it.

Our recent harvest of peanuts - only a small part of a bumper crop

 Humberto is cleaning cacao beans after spreading out some peanuts that he harvested earlier. If they are not put out in the sun immediately after harvest, they will start germinating.

Moringa sprouts - muy valiente!

We

These look like fractal patterns - the tiny sprouts looks almost like full grown trees.
These are moringa cuttings - after a couple of weeks in the ground they are all beginning to sprout. Soon we will have a moringa plantation! Even Humberto heard that moringa is a useful herb - he told me today that it can cure 60 different maladies.

Anna raking cacao beans.

                                                         


On my way down to the trapiche I talked to Anna. We were both happy that after days of rain and clouds we had a little sun.

Carlos' new dog - he is a sweetheart

the church looks a little naked without the huge palm over on the side. We cut it down today.Wasps, scorpions, biting ants and termites all made their home in this palm.

Miloo looking gorgeous as always

this plant is called monca and it has a variety of medicinal uses Those are cacao trees in the bags.

Our sleek new minimalist design for the fermentation roof.

The trapiche, missing its roof. The tree in the foreground and the big palm in the back have both been cut down.

the boiling vat - we can fit 50 gallons of sugar cane juice in here.

Chocolate Seminar in San Anselmo, California

Jim and Keli are presenting a seminar in San Anselmo on December 15th, all about chocolate - what it's like to live on a cacao plantation in Costa Rica, what is involved in growing and harvesting cacao and how to make chocolate. It includes a chocolate tasting and a free bar of their amazing chocolate, handmade by Jim and Keli.

Go here for more details...

This Is It! Announcing Coto Brus 1

Finally, after years of research and work, we have developed a process to produce high quality beans. These are beans that any bean-to-bar maker would be happy to use - well fermented, well dried and with a flavor that mixes luscious chocolate with tropical fruit notes.

This is all thanks to Dan O'Doherty, of Cacao Services, a cacao consultant from Hawaii, who spent the month of September at the Chocolate Farm, teaching me how to ferment and dry cacao, as well as best practices in regard to fertilizing and pruning the cacao plantation.His knowledge is comprehensive and deep. Every aspect of growing cacao, fermentation and drying and making chocolate was improved by his tutelage.

Dan, hard at work opening cacao fruits.

We have made chocolate from the results of this collaboration and it is good!

We call it Coto Brus, after the river that flows through our valley. This will be the new name of our beans as we market it to bean-to-bar makers. Our beans are already being used by Samaritan Xocolata in Costa Rica and Manoa Chocolate in Hawaii.

It is important to let the beans age before making chocolate. This is just one of the basic but very important things I learned from Dan. We have chocolate now that was made with Coto Brus 1, the first batch of beans that Dan and I fermented together. There are three distinct types of chocolate made with Coto Brus 1.

this is what we hope our trees will look like after our planned intensive program of pruning, fertilizing and grafting

The first  is made with the beans immediately after they were dried. This chocolate has a more acidic, sharper flavor and the fruity notes are not as developed. But the beans were more heavily roasted so the chocolate flavor is more pronounced. This chocolate is named "Coto Brus 1a".

The second is "Coto Brus 1b", but the chocolate was made after the beans had aged 6 weeks. The fruit is more pronounced, with strong notes of cherry and strawberry and the chocolate a little less, due to the lighter roasting.

The third is "Coto Brus 1b mixed", mixed with some chocolate I made in June with our original fermentation technique. This is Keli's favorite, because it mixes the fruity notes of Coto Brus 1 with the more chocolatey elements of the June chocolate.

the drying rack, modeled by "the farmer's daughter"

2013 New Years Harmonia 80%

It wasn't planned but we did our first melt of the year today,  January 1, 2013.  We melted our Harmonia batch which is the batch we make at the Chocolate Farm with xylitol.
I chose these beans carefully before I used up all our xylitol.

We made this chocolate in Dixon at the Nut N Other Farms where we get our almonds and walnuts.  It's a great space to do our bars in because there is a huge kitchen island that Jim can use for tempering.

We hope to go ahead and prepare all the chocolate we have into bars.  We'll list each batch(maybe).
 My New Years resolution was to not lick the bowl for this batch.

This batch is sold out but if you're new to the site and are someone who prefers chocolate with no sugar, email us and we'll keep it in mind next time we make chocolate.

Untempered

We just made a small batch of untempered chocolate today.
It is made with organic brown sugar and a little vanilla and cinnamon.
Some of it has hazelnuts (from Elaine's family's farm!) and some of it has peanut butter (my favorite.)

I wasn't planning on making it all untempered but as I started getting ready to temper it I discovered that I could not find my tempering tools. Keli had requested one tray of untempered and so I just decided that this was a sign to make it all untempered (not to mention that it is a LOT easier to make untempered chocolate!)

Homegrown for Diamond Heart

Here we are in California.

We have wrapped up our first batch of chocolate and the pictures below demonstrate the variety we have available.

Freshly roasted nuts and seeds

 We have not melted and wrapped the xylitol bars yet, but I know there are a couple of people who prefer these bars who can't have sugar and I'm not forgetting.  You'll be the first to know when they are ready.
. 
You can place orders by emailing Keli or Jim if you have our email addresses or you can email us at keljichocolate@gmail.com.

 As you know, we do things on a very small scale. The beans from the trees, the climate in Bonanza, the fermentation, drying, roasting, tempering etc, are all a combination of science and art with varying factors.  The value in our bars is not how perfect they are -  although we try, there is no such thing as a totally consistent outcome. But rather that we guarantee all the ingredients are the best possible quality, produced with attention to sustainable farming practices. Since we are farmers and growers these factors are very important to us and what makes our bars unique.  In fact, the variety of tastes, all good and interesting, vary according to the batch, which is why we name each batch and list the ingredients and the story behind each batch of chocolate.

Below is what we have available from our first melting and wrapping session.  It's the 'Home Grown" batch named so by Jim because it is one of the rare batches we make with the sugar we grow at the farm.

We made 4 of each kind in the small size $5.50 each
and some large pure chocolate bars $12.00 each.
one or two large with fillings and some untempered ( for those of you who know and and love the untempered)

All ingredients organic and beyond.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds and Chili--quite spicy, and full of crunch--4 small bars, 1 large untempered
Roasted Cashews--4 small bars
Orange juice sprouted Raw almonds--3 small bars
Antioxidant Boost dried blueberries--2 small bars
Roasted Hazel Nuts--4 small bars
Bonanza peanuts--3 small bars
Pure Chocolalte--8 small bars and 4 large bars
Pure Chocolate untempered--2 large bars plus some extra stuff (ask me)

The peanuts in the upper
right are our own "Bonanza peanuts"

 

Home Grown Disaster

We are simultaneously very proud of this batch and very sad about the way it turned out. It is made with our own sugar and 70% cacao. The taste is very nice but unfortunately we had one of those mysterious disasters which befalls anyone crazy enough to try and temper chocolate in the tropics.
(Tempering is highly dependent on humidity and temperature. And in the tropics, both of those elements are usually hostile to a successful tempering.)
Everything went very well. The fermentation of the beans was good, the roasting was good, all went well with the grinding and mixing, the sugar was grown on our farm and it seemed like the tempering went well. But when we opened up the rack that held the bars overnight while they cooled we could see that we had a severe case of blooming (blooming is when the chocolate turns white and the texture becomes chalky.)

And we couldn't tell why. We have had chocolate making sessions that had similar conditions and the chocolate came out great. But not this time....

Fortunately, we only attempted to temper a small part of the batch. We are bringing the rest of it to California where we will temper it under better conditions.

UPDATE!!!

We are now in California and we have tempered the rest of the Homegrown batch and it is beautiful! Just another example of how easy it is to temper in a temperate climate and how hard in a tropical climate.

Nothing to do with chocolate - I just like this picture. Marcos is the happy farmer with the big jackfruit

Harmonia

We named this batch Harmonia because everything went so smoothly. And that is not always the case when making chocolate in the countryside of Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, we will not have too much of this batch available for sale because the majority of it is spoken for by Keli and a few others who need sugar free chocolate.

This batch is 80% cacao and 20% Xylitol with a bit of vanilla.

Anna's Roast

Anna is our next door neighbor at the Chocolate Farm. In fact, her and her family are our only neighbors for quite a stretch. You can go for a mile in either direction and not meet anybody except a cow or a worker trudging up the road to their work on one of the ranches in the area.
We trained Anna to help us roast cacao. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to roast a pound and a half of beans in one of our cast iron pans. So even roasting two pans at a time it still takes a long time to roast enough beans for a big batch.
Anna's kids grew up, of course, on their farm and they are used to helping out with all the chores. So when Anna goes to work they quite naturally help out. They know how to do winnowing already because they winnow the family's rice and beans. They are very good at getting all the shells out of the beans.
I like to use a hair dryer because it is a little quicker but it can also blow away some of the cacao.


This batch was 70% cacao and 30% organic evaporated sugar cane juice. (Not our sugar cane - we saved that for a batch called "Harmonia.")


Batch #1 was only ground for 4 hours but is still quite smooth. Batch #2 was ground for 8 hours. Both batches have very subtle additions of vanilla and cinnamon. We could only tell the difference with a side by side comparison. They are both very smooth with a hint of tannin at the end.

Anthony and Julieta winnowing in the breeze

Anna and her daughter Kimberly roasting cacao in our kitchen

Winnowing with a hair dryer

Our Big Meeting

 We don't have any pictures to document the landmark meeting we had with Hugo Hemmerlink, the premier organic cacao producer and exporter in Costa Rica.  It's too bad we don't have pictures because this is such a big deal for us. It has been three years of working to perfect our fermentation and drying production on the Chocolate Farm in order to produce beans meeting the standards for his company. He will then make chocolate liquor or chocolate from the beans and sell them to chocolate makers in Europe and the U.S.  

We talked about the different ways our chocolate will get out there to chocolatiers and the different certifications needed to meet the requirements of the various buyers.  The first one, getting the “organic” cerfification is first on our list.  Though we will not do this for now, mainly because the expense of the certification compared to the amount of beans we can sell does not make economical sense.  Rather then pay the $2000 for the certification, we actually paid for worm castings fertilizer for the trees and this year plan on a special forest derived organic mulch/fertilizer as well as compost tea all harvested from the primary forest on our land.  We’re not organically certified but we do go above and beyond any requirements for being organic and hope that we will attract people who can appreciate this. 

Prayer Batch

Prayer was a name we came up with because we had some beans that seemed to be so good we felt it is the best fermentation we have ever had.  But you never know how all the other factors will shape it, so we just prayed.  And it is an amazing batch, in fact i think it's the best we'v ever made.

These beans had a darker color then most of the beans we produce and it turns out that it's because they were left out in the forest for some extra days (by accident) and so probably what happened is that they fermented for longer.  It's kind of like cheese, sometimes mistakes make the best cheese, and it can't be repeated.

70% made with organic Dulce, just the sugar cane boiled and deyhdrated.  Here's pictures of the dulce going into the dehydrator

"Jeffrey Chocolate"

Giovanni and Jeffrey discussing pruning techniques

Hello Jeffrey!

While we have been making chocolate this time we have been honored with a guest by the name of Jeffrey Castro Arroyo. So we are naming this batch “Jeffrey” because the chocolate is infused with his good humor and energy.

The fermentation for these beans was a little shorter than usual because we wanted to make chocolate this week and we only had a short time at the Chocolate Farm. This is the first harvest of the season and we wanted to make chocolate NOW. The taste is rich and chocolatey with just a hint of bitterness at the end. So mellow that we didn't have a problem making this batch 80%. Our first ever at 80%.

I think that we are going to have some great tasting chocolate.

We took a part of this batch and added more sugar to make some at 65%. This was also an interesting experiment since we only ran the grinder for an hour extra with the extra sugar. I think this created a problem with the tempering process. The chocolate started getting stiff at 83 degrees when normally it will not start to stiffen up until it gets to about 80 or 81 degrees.

The tempering process is always hard here. Because of the climate, at 8PM the temperature outside is still close to 80 F. That means that inside the house it is a little hotter. We have sometimes had to temper the chocolate outside the house in order to get it down to the required temperature.

We didn't have any fillings this time. No peanut butter, no hazelnuts, just “chocolate puro.” We used local organic sugar, called “tapa dulce.” We added some cacao butter from ChocolatAlchemy.com and that's it for the ingredients – cacao, organic dehydrated cane juice and cacao butter.

Repairing the Drying Rack

Jim and Carlos working hard

That is a big rack!

Pouring concrete, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow.

 Concrete forms, Costa Rican style.















The Secadora is our drying rack for the cacao which has been fermenting.  We still use the same rack that Nacho the original owner used, although it has needed work each year.  This week it finally stopped rolling out. The concrete the rollers move on finally started crumbling away.
 We have been using two shelves that roll out up to now.  But with all the care and special fertalizer we have used over the last three years we are expecting a huge harvest this year and are fixing the rack so that not only the two shelves work but the lowest third level on the ground can be used as well.  We'll also have to buy another horse for bringing the cacao from the forest.  Miloo is too old for this much work and the guys have been telling us for a while that it's too much work for him and we need another horse.
   Carlos is our one and only carpenter in the area and very dear to us. He has been away on a job working construction in another part of the country.  We saw him last Sunday while taking a trip to the river in the village of Balle and he was telling us how cold it was up in the mountain where he was working.  Something happened and he decided to quit and come home.  We're so happy!!!  and he looks happy too.  He's mixing all the cement by hand and re-making the tracks for the racks to slide on.  Giovani and Humberto are washing one of the racks, so you can get an idea of the size.  Lots of space for lots of Cacao.

Red Light Batch

 The proud parent shows off the latest batch of chocolate.













We made this batch two days after the Fan batch. These beans were fermented for a shorter time. We liked the taste of these beans a lot and the chocolatecame out great.
The tempering also came out great which is a marvel as the temperature was very close to the 81 degrees that the chocolate needs to come down to. Keli was out with a headlamp lighting me as I tempered the chocolate with the tile that use for tempering balanced on a concrete block. It has to be done at night because during the day there is no way to get the temperature that low.
We had to go outside because it was just too warm in the house. And we had to use a red light on the headlamp so that bugs wouldn't be attracted and fall into the chocolate. Hence, the name, the Red Light batch.

The Fan Batch

We are rebooting our blog so we can keep track of the different batches of chocolate we are now making at the Chocolate Farm.
On May 12th we made chocolate for the first time in a while. The beans were dark in color and had been fermented and dried by Giovanni and Raul while we were in the US.
We roasted the beans in a cast iron pan. Cacao content is 75% (but tastes like 80%.) We used  Rapunzel organic evaporated cane sugar (imported from Whole Foods in California.)
Cacao butter is from chocolatealchemy.com. The fillings we have for this batch are coconut and raisin and roasted almonds, spicy hearts and some sunflower seed butter fillings just for us (because we left those untempered.)
And we added some vanilla and cinammon to the whole batch.
This batch has a slightly acidic quality which will fade over time as the chocolate ages (just like wine) and the flavors mellow.
We are calling this batch “the Fan” because we needed all the neighbor kids to fan the chocolate to help cool it down enough to reach the critical tempering temperature. In this picture it looks like they are fanning Jim but they are actually working hard to get the temperature down just one stubborn degree. It needed to get to 80.5 degrees F and it seemed to be stuck at 81.5 degrees F.   Perhaps because the ambient temperature was 79 degrees!

Final Installment of Lara's Blog!

It has been long promised and long awaited - here it is, the final installment of Lara's Blog.

Lara at home in front of the cacao drying rack

Chapter 4:

I think this may be close to week 5, but I'm losing track,  haven't been in  ´the city´ for quite some time. But I did have a visitor from San Jose--Taylor Overturf!! The time with her was great! I had a moment where I reflected and had to ask myself, if someone told me that I was to have ONE and only one social engagement for an entire summer with someone my own age and who I knew before, what would I think? or do? well, I certainly got very chatty for a couple days, and let's just leave it at that.

Taylor and Lara at the waterfall

She got the real country experience-- making chocolate (our second batch with oh so many sweet flavors: dark and milk, with cashew cranberry, roasted almond, roasted cashew, roasted peanut, cacao nib with and without cinnamon, little heart shaped molds with toasted pumpkin seeds and cayenne pepper grown and dried in the garden, etc), milking the cow, taking a horseback ride with our wonderful neighbor Dianey to an undiscovered waterfall, harvesting a banana bunch of ten layers of bananas with two sacks and our horse Miloo through the cacao forest, yucca soup, rice, beans, our own yogurt and cheese, and of course a couple snakes, a mini scorpion, cockroaches, and and and.

Melting Chocolate

She had to watch me, calmly, as I began to freak out a little more than usual about an infected bug bite on my arm...turns out its a ´nacido´--gross name, I know-- and not that thing that lays eggs under the skin. Just went to the doctor to get antibiotics. Something I'm learning is that I don't have to be physically uncomfortable to the extreme in order to do the extreme work I want to do. I can wear gloves, but don't, put on a mosquito net hat, or not, and so on and so forth.

The garden is bursting and all the beds are full. This morning after getting the bananas (the tree was huge that I chopped down and out of the middle a little snake came hissing out at me--only added to the Indiana Jones-like Sunday Taylor and I had experienced) we transplanted a bed of tomatoes, strung up some more beans and tomatoes, transplanted a row of white pumpkins and a small bed of hot peppers. Things are looking better and better. Soon I'll focus more on special projects like making chicha  (locally fermented alcohol) with whatever fruit we have: corn/ “maiz”--traditional--, pineapple, overripe quadradoes, which are sort of like bananas. I'll also make bio-char, still working on implementing a better composting system, making things from the beeswax we are getting at the coast in a few days, and continuing our weekly kombucha batches. In this climate any kind of fermentation is interesting. Jim and E even went into the forest for two hours to try and harvest cacao juice!! my god, I'm telling you all, this stuff is gold. One sip and you just can't help smiling.

Now that is a bursting garden!

Horseback riding has become one of my favorite pass-times (pastime, I get it now). I rode to work at our friend Willy's place last week and had a crazy time trying to get back in the pouring rain. I'd never ridden that horse before and it totally trusted me and I trusted him...it didn't stop raining for hours and as it began to get dark I had to rush out. Within minutes my boots were filled to the brim with water and an hour later I arrived at the river crossing...it was way too high for cars and I had no idea how deep in can be in order for horses to cross...especially with me on the back. The first time we checked it out, Miloo turned around--of course he would know better than I would. After a few minutes of resting and contemplating the situation up the hill in the running dirt and mud road, we tried again and went for it...there was a moment we almost got flushed  down the river...I think Miloo was even swimming. but I survived and the hills were covered in fireflies as the white fog surrounded me and the palm trees lining the road. Nothing else out there. Sometimes I can't help thinking, where the fuck am I? It's beautiful, that's all I know.

Rafting, oh that was about two weeks ago. Fantastic, that's all. I'm so behind on journaling that I think I'm not even gonna try at this point. I'm doing well still but excited to get back to the farm after our trip to the coast and have it be quiet again--just Keli, Jim, and me. Then I'll have a few weeks to focus on my last projects, including adopting a half acre of the cacao plantation for care-taking: pruning, and cutting off the infected pods.


Chapter 5:

Okay, falling far behind and its almost the end of July!

I have about three weeks left and I'm just returning from a sort of crazy spontaneous different vacation week on the coast and in the mountains. The boys are gone, I got time by myself, I socialized (or tried) with people closer to my own age (early 30s is as good as it gets), spent hours in waterfalls, pools and the ocean, got super sunburned, finished two books, drew a lot, surfed and healed my infected arm with antibiotics which made me feel all funky. It was rocky but refreshing to move around and break the habitual farm work and life. I actually feel like I'm aging--did I tell you people thought I was thirty/think it all the time? I don't think I want to appear thirty quite yet...

Other highlights include a few waterfall-jungle hikes and climbs in primary forest. There is so much incredible water here. I saw wild turkeys, blue jean frogs, toucans, iguanas. Even for Tico standards I think I look a bit homeless at this point. All three of us look more haggard (?) than most of the farmers. My hair is blond again and somehow turned curly/dready, I'm covered in bites or blisters, dark or red from the sun, my clothes are terribly stained from oil, banana and sugar juice, dirt, you name it. Mostly I enjoy it. Oh, and today, after returning from Panama after only a few hours (where I found some freshly dried tobacco and lots of middle school kids in uniforms making out on park benches), I finally bought my first machete, which I think I deserved now that every single Tico I've worked with has, without fail, called me "valiente" by the end of the day.

Now I'm ready to get back to the farm. The car is full of wet smelly clothes, cuttings, uprooted palmitos (heart of palm), and groceries from the giant farmers market in San Isidro. I´ll be working in the cacao forest more now and continue in the garden.

Chapter 5:
I feel like an old turtle, wrinkled-necked and stubborn, sticking my head out from below my shell. panza. Here I still am, getting quieter and quieter on my end of things. I guess this may be the closing letter for this chapter of my life. And what a whirlwind it has been.

I'm in town again, as you might have guessed, having just returned from a day at the local botanical garden. After wandering through a place like that for a few hours I realize what a geek I am for how much I love plants. But it does, too, remind me of my desire to study landscape architecture. It's funny, but it really seems like most of my interests were visible such a very long time ago. I'm thinking now of the photo mama placed in the front of our family cookbook for me: me, white blond hair in woolen tights attractively covering my diaper and two fists tightly clinging to the blender whisks, covered head to toe in chocolate.

And yes, that was me this past week all over again. Monday we made our third big batch of chocolate, of which I will hopefully bring some back with me. We even tempered it this time (getting the right crystal structure to ensure slower melting). The peanut ones are especially good and made with peanuts from a neighbor´s farm.

I realized that I finally have been accepted into the neighborhood-valley not just as Keli and Jim´s guest but as a friend of the locals. I crossed the river to visit a family who offered me all their fruits, cacao, banana, mamonchino, cookies and typically oversweetened black coffee. And then I visited Walter´s house. He has 11 siblings but lives in the house he grew up in almost as if it were abandoned. It's rice season but it's been raining a lot so the floor of his entire downstairs was covered from wall to wall with drying rice. It looked a bit like a scene out of a Marquez short story. He picked me some sapote to taste and I returned fully loaded up with goodies.

Sunday, Dianey took me on a motorcycle trip across the valley to a friend of his. This couple lives on goverment parcelled land and I felt very silly and humbled to be their guest. They have a stall-like house with a mud floor and chickens wandering around and aside from their land, have little else. But they live in abundance too and I was overcome with the gifts they gave me to carry back. Then we stopped for some chicha at a woman´s porch and hung around before returning in the rain.

Final Chapter:
A foggy morning, a bright green frog squished flat on the road, the sound of boiling water and the smell of farm coffee. My last morning at the Chocolate Farm and yes, I am feeling nostalgic. It's been 10 weeks already, at times slow--giving me the feeling that I'm actually aging--and at others simply a whirlwind. My life here, despite the many phases of this passing summer, has taken on quite a shape of its own, and it has become so present in so many ways that whatever came before it actually feels far away. It's funny how "home" can stay untouched and still remain, but my memories of Costa Rica only came to life once I made this experience happen. So, in a way, this time has been the most present yet, especially considering the extreme contrast and disconnect from my "normal" life. In other words, the fact that my hair is now curly, my skin is hairy, tan and luscious and rarely scrubbed are only the physical responses to a new environment. Let's just say that waking up at 5:30 AM naturally every morning, eating a raw snake once in a while, peeing into a bucket, spending a half hour cleaning beans or rice before cooking them, reading by candlelight and checking under my bed for snakes religiously every night before I go to bed are new habits that I've grown accustomed to.

My brother, in a recent email to me, likened my experience to Odwalla's Super Food - “crazy awesome stuff so condensed that it's almost overpoweringly interesting, and while ingesting it, you know that you're getting the most compact form of a vast multitude of experiences.” So, my time here has been like a super food, and not just produced “maybe an orange. Or a kiwi. Strange, rather vibrant, exciting, but just that -- one fruit.” I would have to agree 100% aside from the fact that I've been trying real hard not to liken beautiful and new experiences to familiar and utterly commercial products. Though I have to say that Odwalla must have a very good rep since Ky, a fellow volunteer here, likened my absolute favorite juice (cacao nectar) to Odwalla also. I believe that in his terms that was equally high praise.

One thing I know for sure is that I would never trade my experience here in the campo to another's travel vacation in Costa Rica. The opportunity to live as self-sufficiently as I have here is worth every dirty sock, every sip of vinegar-like-tasting chicha, every black fly bite and molding everything. Things tend to be more complicated here but the times of rest are all the more sweeter. I will greatly miss the delicious fruits and delicacies I have tasted here, the wonderful people I have met, the general generosity and neighborhoodly feeling. And I will take with me the skills I have learned, and the knowledge of basic processes and the patience it takes to follow through on any of them: the pleasure of making churriadas (harvesting corn, scraping the cobs, grinding the corn by hand, frying the batter with salt or dulce), of making cheese (milking, heating the milk, cooling it, stirring it, adding cultures, shaping it), and of course the immense delight of chocolate (harvesting, fermenting, drying, toasting, grinding, dehusking, grinding, grinding again, pouring, cooling, and finally eating). Just like it is with anything else, something worked hard for bears sweeter fruit. It is no different here—only that one has to beat the birds to the ripe papayas.

Birds love to eat our fruit!

The garden has been my steady companion and perhaps, in this way, a reflection of my greater experience here. It is no surprise that a garden's mulitude of activities have long been used figuratively to rely all sorts of life lessons (“reaping the benefits”; “sewing the seeds of one's own destruction”; “inch by inch I'm gonna let this garden grow”; “rooting oneself”, etc.). I enjoy learning full processes and cycles just as I enjoy turning compost, mixing soil, sewing seeds, transplanting, watering, harvesting and finally eating vegetables. And so I am happy to see that every bed in the garden now has a crop growing, the vivero is flourishing and cucumbers, celantro, celergy, tomatoes and lettuce have already become our daily bread.

Lara's Blog Chapter Three

Chapter 3:

San Vito once more on my third week reunion. Greeted by the darkest clouds I've seen in days up on the hill after the 9km climb on the dirt road. The two boys (sixteen years old and from Sonoma) just arrived a few days ago. I've already become an old timer... At times I feel a bit like the nagging or annoyed-annoying older sister but it's hard to live in such close quarters and share everything all the time.

The Boys

Things get better and more intense by the week. I definitely feel settled in here which is great. I'm also a lot more covered in bug bites (the worst of which swell up my eyes for a few days) and a couple more bee stings. I've gone on a beautiful horseback ride with the other gringo in town, Willy, and took a brief two-day trip with Jim and Keli to the beach near Uvita and Dominical, which was beautiful. We were the only ones on a perfect beach. It looks a lot like Hanalei bay in Kauaii. We covered ourselves in sand, tried surfing, collected pink and purple shells, ate good friend plantain, fish, and homemade ice cream.

Pineapple plants

This morning I planted two rows of pineapple “hijos” (the baby shoots that grow around the mother plant) and helped Raul clear the “monte“- giant brush-weeds to expand the garden.
The chilies and tomatoes came up, I harvested some cucumber and learned how rice is grown by visiting our neighbor's property across the river. I'm learning about the seasons, the crops, the little tricks about the local plants and planting from the passing neighbors and workers, and even the kids. We made sugar and it was amazing: pressing the cane to make cane sugar juice and then boiling it in a large cauldron for hours with a big fire oven underneath. the dulce (brown cane sugar) and the miel (soft, honey-like dulce) are a daily dessert.  

Kids on sugar!

 

                    Boiling Cauldron of Sugar Cane Juice

I'm eating very well. I walked more than 6 km through ´die Pampa,´ as we like to say in German, to buy two dozen eggs... and of course I got loaded up with corn bread and avocados. It's the season for avocados and I think all the locals are worried we’re running out of food so we are gifted them by the dozens as well.

When we are low on food it's time for some food gathering. And I actually feel a bit like an animal foraging when we enter the forest with a horse and some rope and empty sacks, machetes and bamboo poles. Yesterday we got plantains, quadradoes (basically fat bananas), bananas, pejibaye and bread fruit nuts. And of course we indulged in some chocolate fruit while walking through the cacao plantation. It gets me high. I'm telling you, it's the best thing I've ever eaten. And of course the “morpho” butterflies are totally out of control in there with a wingspan of at least 5 inches and phosphorescent, or at least iridescent, colors - purple, blue, green.

Okay, so these are the highlights. Of course there's also lots of muck, snakes, cockroaches, blisters and mold around too, but that’s all overshadowed for me. Thank goodness.

Lara's Blog Chapter Two

Chapter 2:

We just left the higher mountain area after it started pouring rain for an hour because we were worried the waterfall and river would flood the dirt road before we got out. Some Israeli friends of Keli and Jim's live up there and we got some kombucha mushrooms to take home. Now we’re in an agro-economic co-operative where 26 California college kids are doing a project... the first huge group of gringos I've seen since the airport. This area is not at all known for tourists. and I'm loving the rural life.

We successfully made mozzarella the other day with milk from that morning! And then at night we made pizza with it. My diet is the definition of local and I'm really beginning to learn more about trying to be self-sufficient. I'm learning to be very resourceful and inventive with uses for things. I finished sewing curtains for my room, planted a few beds of squash and zucchini, many beds of seeds and my mustard and collards sprouted today!

                                                                



OH! Today we finished our first batch of chocolate! After getting my face, arms and hands covered in chocolate from licking off all the utensils and sampling all along the way and then driving on curvy dirt roads for and hour and a half I felt pretty sick but my god, that chocolate is GOOD. Dark and milk, roasted almonds, vanilla bean and cinnamon. I want to invest in the equipment and start making it in the states. The cacao nibs themselves after roasting and de-husking or shelling the beans are to die for. All very rustic of course. “Home-style.”

I'm getting to know the neighbors poco a poco and they are wonderful. The workers are very shy to talk to me except one who made me think of the 12 days of Christmas song... the first day an avocado from his yard, then two, then four pejibaye, then two woven palm frond pyramids... then he got laid off for a while. The jokes are still going on of course.

Oldemar, one of the workers on the farm