Life Monteverde was one of my favorite days. Our tour guide was great, seeing the farm was great, and the lunch, which was literally farm to table, was out of this world. Although I wish that I found out that the chicken we were eating was from the coop we had just seen AFTER lunch so I didn’t feel as bad. I still ate it though.
We got a glimpse into what their life is like, and it is pretty simple. Things like farming sustainably and allowing tourists to see their crops give them joy. They also work together as a community, which we saw through the painting of the school. We enjoyed getting covered in paint to help support the community; I had a lot of fun and felt really good after. I love how everyone joins together to do community service and help the things that need it. It allows for a better, more connected community.
They touched upon some issues with farming, one of them being lack of rain. Usually, the wet season should have started, but because of climate change, farmers can not always rely on the rain to water their crops. So, they built greenhouses with controlled water systems to water the plants, which is then reused. These farmers waste nothing. If a crop dries out, it gets fed to the animals or put into compost. This is a way of living sustainably.
For issues like lack of rain, engineering comes into play. Engineers have to figure out a system to get water to plants when there absolutely is none. For instance the water tank and water spouts that drip onto the plants in the greenhouse. One other thing our tour guide mentioned was having trees around, which can hold a lot of water, like this Guava tree we all climbed on today.
Ok. If I were the child of a Tico farmer, I would dedicate my life to teaching others around me how to farm sustainably, by saving water, composting, and reusing materials, just like how the farm showed us today.