Today we went to Life Monteverde where we went on a tour with Don Guillermo. This tour was really interesting and opened my eyes a lot to what it is like to run a farm. In the coffee harvest season they need more workers than they do in other seasons so a group of people come from Nicaragua for just the harvest. They have to uproot their lives for a few months and come to Costa Rica to work. Don Guillermo said the group that comes from Nicaragua is all from the same community so they come as a big group.

The farm does a lot to become sustainable. One big thing I noticed was all the ways they benefitted from the different animals. They had goats for milk and cheese. Don said they chose goats instead of cows because they eat less and produce less methane gas. They have two types of chickens, one for eggs and one for meat. These chickens pens are filled with the parchments of coffee beans. They also have pigs for the meat, and use their manure for various things such as composting.

Throughout the tour we saw a lot of interesting technology and contraptions that assisted in making the farm more sustainable. They had a biodigestor that separates the methane gas from animal waste so they can use it to cook. They also use a big bottle to kill beetles. These technologies seemed so interesting to me as they were something I never would have thought of doing, but helped them so much in being a sustainable farm. When going through the tour Don said that in order to be sustainable you have to be innovative and creative. You have to find multiple uses for things. As an example he made us list 10 reasons why one of the trees was important. This really helped me to see how creative they really are at this farm as they were things I never would have thought of.