Who Wants to be a Farmer?

When we first arrived back in Costa Rica a few weeks ago I was making an effort to get our blog caught up to the present. I was doing fairly well. We came back here so we could spend a month or so looking after a farm near Perez Zeledon in the foothills of Mount Chirripó, the tallest peak in the country. It’s funny how reality turns out to be very different to what we imagine. Before we came back I had an idea that once we were on the farm it would be easy to establish a routine; that did turn out to be true but not the kind of routine that I had envisaged. Our time here has turned out to be so full that I have not had any opportunity to write since the moment we arrived. The reality of farm life has been much busier than we had anticipated. In the occasional moments where we’re not busy doing something I’ve not had any energy to sit down to write. Now in our third week of looking after the farm we’ve finally got enough of a routine worked out that I am attempting to capture some of our experiences here. Although it has been hard work it has also been an incredibly rich and informative experience for all of us and I’m really excited to share all that we have learned. However, I’m getting ahead of myself and should start at the beginning…

We had made our way back to San Jose after leaving Colombia and booked ourselves in at a condominium in a nice part of town. The girls enjoyed having access to a pool and play area for a few days while we settled back into things back in the country where our journey first began. It’s very different to being in Colombia: a calmer pace and very different atmosphere. The next part of our journey was going to be a long bus ride from San Jose towards San Isidro del General. With everything packed up again we caught an Uber to the Tracopa bus terminal on the other side of San Jose. In spite of the traffic we managed to make it there with just enough time to catch the midday bus. We’d been to the bus terminal once before in our first week here in January when we made the journey South towards Manuel Antonio. This time it all felt a lot easier, partly because we knew our way around the bus terminal and were better prepared for the journey (water, snacks, devices charged, etc.) and partly because of all the travelling that we have done in between. It’s interesting to look back and to hold the two experiences side by side to see how much difference experience makes.

We were relieved to discover that the journey was much shorter than we had originally thought. It was going to take around 3 hours. That’s still a long time to be on a bus with two children but it started very well as they were happy to sit together for the first part and so Rachael and I actually got to sit together and have a conversation! That doesn’t happen very often. The bus journey took us along the InterAmericana which is the main road that runs right through Costa Rica, from Nicaragua through to Panama. It climbs up into the mountains where we had our stay in Cosy Cabin, our first introduction to the wildly different climate offered at this altitude. We soon found ourselves again passing through vegetation and landscapes which looked more like something you might find in Europe. About halfway through our bus ride it started to rain and continued to do so for the rest of the journey.

Arriving in San Isidro del General we got off of the bus and collected our bags then went in search of a taxi. Surprisingly there were none waiting around the bus station. I think that in Colombia we had got used to the fact that anywhere that there was an opportunity to catch a passenger there would be taxis waiting so it was a surprise to find none around. I went to find one and managed to flag down a van. We knew that we would need a 4×4 to get us to our destination and so the driver called another car in the same firm who came to collect us. Loaded up into our truck we set off towards the farm.

After about a 15 minute drive we arrived at the familiar gates to Finca Las Koalas. We went through but as we approached the river to cross over our driver stopped and had doubts about the safety of going through. Following the rain the river was running a bit higher than usual but getting through the river and up the rough track to the top of the farm was the reason why we had insisted on finding a 4×4 taxi. However, our driver wasn’t willing and obviously we couldn’t force him to drive through if he didn’t think it safe so we ended up having to unload all of our bags and stash them under a tree at the side of the river as it was still raining. It wasn’t the perfect start to our stay. There is no mobile reception down by the river so I couldn’t call Sophia to get assistance and so we set off on foot up towards the Rancho where we had stayed before. It’s a steep climb and carrying my large backpack and at times Rosa as well I was pretty tired when we finally got there. Meanwhile Rachael had been waiting with the rest of the bags. I’d passed Diego (who lives and works on the farm) on the way up and he’d offered to go down and help. Moments after we had arrived at the Rancho and dropped off our bags he pulled up outside with more of the bags strapped to the back of his motorbike! The funny thing was that he had happily ridden through the river no trouble which put our 4×4 taxi driver to shame.

Once we were all up at the Rancho we started to get settled in. It was the first time in our travels that we had returned to the same place and it was strange to have that feeling of familiarity. When we were here before back in late January it had only been for a couple of nights and this time we were preparing to be here for a full month. However, our trip to Colombia had prepared us for longer term stays and we felt much less enthusiastic about the constant moving and short term stays that dominated the first 3 months of our journey.

This was going to be a unique and very special opportunity for us. With so much of our interest and enthusiasm being in food and land use we have often thought about trading in our current lifestyles for something more rural and to be involved in food production. This was part of why we had come away in the first place, so that we could test and trial other ways to live. Selling up and moving into farming is a big jump. It’s a huge change and a very big risk as well if you don’t know what you are getting into. I always remember during the early part of the pandemic having a video call with my friend Diogo in Brazil. We were talking about exactly this problem. He told me how a lot of people in Brazil decide that they want to leave city life and so they sell up and buy somewhere in the countryside. Within a year or so it has generally worked out badly and so they go back to the city and tell other people that story of failure. The problem with this is that it perpetuates a story in which moving into farming is going to lead to failure but the real problem is that people are going into it without the skills they need to succeed. Part of our conversation was around how what we really need are short-term opportunities for people to transition into and test this drastically different way of life. So perhaps they could first try a month, then go back for 3 months, 6 months, a year and so on. This is a much lower risk strategy. You don’t have to sell up your home and risk everything. It’s strange really that people do; in any other field if you were thinking of changing job you might take some time to retrain, do a bit of volunteering and generally test the water.

Since we first decided that we were going to take this opportunity to look after the farm I have repeatedly thought back to that conversation. I think that we are incredibly lucky to have serendipitously found the exact circumstance that Diogo and I had been discussing!

The first week that we were here was going to be an intense one. Sophia and Marc (her husband) were planning to go away travelling for a little under a month. We had one week in which to complete a full farm handover – plus we had 2 nights booked up at a place along the road for Rosa’s birthday! So we were on a very tight schedule indeed to learn everything that needs to be done to keep a farm running. On our first evening here we came up to the main house to have a few drinks and supper and discuss what needed to be done. Afterwards we went back down to the Rancho to get some sleep in preparation for a very early start – I was going to be getting up at 4:45 so that I could come and learn the morning routine! I had a good if slightly broken night of sleep. In part because the soundscape at the Rancho is intense and amazing! It’s a very open structure and it’s nestled in amongst the tree cover in the foothills so you go to sleep and wake to a chorus of tree frogs, a multitude of insects and then birdsong in the morning.

From that first morning it was full speed ahead. The morning routine begins at 5:30am going down to check on the animals, feed the horses and do the morning milking of the 3 goats – Lily, Heidi and Lucerne. Diego completes the milking which gives a little break for breakfast and then we resume at 7am. The milk needs to be processed while fresh so that generally involves heating and bottling it. Over that first week I would also be learning how to make yoghurt and a wide variety of cheese from that delicious goat’s milk. It was a lot of information to absorb; each cheese consists of a variety of steps which can take anywhere between 1 hour and over 12 hours. During that time you aren’t having to constantly work on the cheese but rather might have to leave it for an hour while a process completes and during these spells we would head off to cover another area of farm operations. I found that at any one time I had a lot of timers and reminders set on my phone to keep track of everything.

The farm has a diverse spread of operations. The goat milk and associated dairy products is just one side of it. There is a ‘polytunnel’ which houses the market garden and from there and also from the gardens surrounding the main house I had to learn which plants went into the weekly salad mix and where I would find each one. There are teas and bunches of herbs which need to be made up each week to order. At the lower part of the farm there are bananas which are harvested monthly and then some go to the animals and any surplus has to be cut up and dried which is another product available to the growing customer base.

Fortunately for me this was all surprisingly familiar territory through my years working at Forager. Everything that needed to be done in terms of the plants felt very familiar, from picking the fresh mixed salad to the drying and processing of other ingredients. These were all things that we had spent years doing. The biggest learning curve by far was dealing with the animals and the dairy products of which I had no previous experience. However, I still found that a lot of it was transferable in the fundamentals; it still boiled down to the same basics, that there were fresh perishable products (milk, fruits, leaves) which either needed to be sold or needed to be captured in some kind of safety net for sale at a later date. This is the underlying basis for any kind of food preservation and so it helped at least to be able to see that framework for the work in hand.

The downside in that first week was that the only way that it was really workable for us as a family was for me to take the time to follow Sophia around the farm and try to soak up as much as possible. It was very information heavy and to take the whole family around for that would have been extremely difficult as a lot of the detail would have been incredibly boring for the children. It would have made it much harder to retain the details of what needed to be done. So for that first week we ended up living quite separate lives with me trailing around the farm attempting to commit a plethora of processes to memory and Rachael spending her time looking after the girls. Whilst this was a bit of a strain it really couldn’t have worked any other way. We accepted that I would have to learn everything in the first instance and then we would have more time over the following weeks for me to relay those processes and details to Rachael and the girls.

The exception to all of this was the evening routine which we established in that first week and has continued to be the highlight of most of our days throughout our time on the farm. Each afternoon we would trek up the hill from the Rancho to come and put the animals to bed. For that first week we did all of this under the guidance and supervision of Sophia. We had to collect the milking gear from the house along with a couple of bananas for the horses. Then down to get each animal into its pen for the night, distributing food and hay to see them through until morning. At the same time the milking had to take place so there are 2 milking sessions per day, each 12 hours apart.

A few days into this hectic and extremely tiring schedule we had also booked ourselves into another stay just a short drive from the farm. It was Rosa’s 5^th birthday and we were fulfilling a promise of a swimming pool for her birthday. We were lucky that we had managed to find somewhere so close and in truth it was a blessing that in the midst of everything else we were doing that we didn’t have another long journey to make. We arrived at the airbnb down the road and quickly settled into spending some time in the pool. I should probably mention at this point that I was struggling at least a little with an injury that I’d picked up early one morning which prevented me from jumping right in the pool with the rest of them. Early one morning I had been taking my coffee before the morning milking when I heard a large wasp suddenly approaching. I had been at least a little traumatised by the sting that I’d received (right in the centre of my forehead!) from a ‘warrior wasp’ during our time in Barichara so I instinctively jumped up from my chair and made to get out of the way quickly. However, our patio area was covered in a slippery moss which was still wet from the previous night’s rain and so as quickly as I’d got up I was flying through the air and heading back downwards. I landed with my full weight on my ribs and must have cracked them as they are still causing me some discomfort now, 4 weeks after the event. This was of course only a minor setback and there is nothing to be done about cracked ribs other than wait for them to heal. We still had a birthday to enjoy!

For those 2 days the girls made the most of having a pool again for a short time plus there was a bonus. There was a lot of dogs. Most of them were a little over-enthusiastic and needed to be kept on her side of the property but there was one older dog, short and rather round, who immediately made herself at home in our part of the property. The girls decided to call her Barrel. Whilst Zia loves cats, Rosa loves dogs and so this was an unexpected but very welcome birthday bonus. Fate had given Zia her cat Loli for her birthday in Bogotá and now Rosa had been gifted her birthday ‘Barrel’. We enjoyed having a couple of restful days back together as a family. We did suffer one small birthday disaster with Rosa’s cake. Rachael had spent the afternoon before her birthday making a lovely chocolate-orange cake. Once it was finished but awaiting icing Rachael had put it on the side and covered it with a tea towel. However, we are in the tropics and there are a lot of ants. The following morning I lifted the cover to find a cake which was covered in microscopic ants who had carved a network of tunnels throughout it! Lesson learned, nothing is safe here. So that morning also involved a trek off to the shops to purchase more ingredients so Rachael could set about making a replacement cake. Fortunately the second attempt actually came out even better than the first one so we had a happy ending after all! It was the second time that we’ve had a birthday abroad and once again we’d had to do our best to get together a selection of gifts whilst trying to maintain at least a little secrecy around them. We’d got together a selection of gifts though and managed to find all the other essentials like balloons and candles for the cake. Hopefully, it was yet another birthday that our girls will never forget.

The following morning I had to be up and out early as our little stay away had fallen on a Thursday which is the weekly market day. It was essential that I got to see this part of the weekly routine and so I had agreed to get up and head back to the farm first thing to cover this important part of the handover. The bonus for me was that I got to walk some of the area and enjoy some fantastic scenery along the way.

Market day involved getting together all of the products from the processes that I’d been learning through the week. So I was off to pick the salads, wash them, weigh them and bag them up. Pick bunches of herbs and tie them off. Then we had to collect various cheeses and yoghurts and get it all bagged up and ready to go. The orders go to a local ‘feria verde’ which is a drop-off and collect set up which works very efficiently from a producer perspective. Then there is another drop-off to a local restaurant where we met a couple of customers who buy directly from Sophia. The rest of the orders that go out each week are usually taken by Diego on his motorbike to customers in the nearby villages.

With market day behind us we just had a few more details to iron out over the coming days before Sophia and Marc would set off on their travels at which point we would be heading up to the main house and taking over the supervision of the farm along with the preparation of all the products and responsibility for the animals. By now my head was pretty much full to the brim with all of the details that I needed to retain. The farm is about 5 years old and so in that 1 week of handover we had to very quickly pick up everything that had taken 5 years to develop. At this point it was fingers crossed and hope that it all worked out…