Phytochemicals: The Key to a Longer and Healthier Life

Phytochemicals: The Key to a Longer and Healthier Life

By AJ Nolan, apprentice 2022

“The health of soil, plant, animal, and man is one indivisible whole.”

-Eve Balfour

There is not a doubt in my mind that living at Rancho Mastatal for the one year apprenticeship has contributed to extending and improving my life. I have been lucky enough to enjoy countless thought-provoking discussions, meaningful manual labor, and untethered access to healthy, local food.

In this article, I will focus on one aspect of our healthy lifestyle – food. Our foodshed is quite small and we always have access to seasonal fruits and vegetables. Using a refractometer, we have compared the nutrient density in the produce from our small foodshed to conventional supermarket produce. The Brix readings we get from our local, organically farmed produce are significantly higher than average Brix readings obtained from the supermarket produce. The Brix value indicates the number of soluble solids present in a sample of food. A higher Brix value indicates an increase in plant sugars, which can translate into a higher number of bio-available nutrients. Why does our hyper-local produce have more nutrients than supermarket produce? Phytochemicals.

Phytochemicals are compounds that plants make to help them defend themselves, facilitate growth, and communicate. Every plant on this great green earth makes phytochemicals. Stressors like temperature, drought, harvesting, and toxins cue plants to make phytochemicals. Plants then use these phytochemicals to communicate with their kin, warning them of nearby pests and pathogens. Plants are stuck in the ground and without these phytochemicals, they would be defenseless. They work as preventative medicine when they are a part of our diet. Phytochemicals neutralize toxins, aid in cellular cleanup, and retard the growth of cancerous cells. There are currently no daily dietary requirements for phytochemicals like there are for minerals and nutrients. This is a catastrophic oversight as phytochemicals are essential for optimal health. Phytochemicals lend flavor, color, and taste to every fruit, vegetable, grain, meat, and dairy product you’ve ever eaten.

There are over 50,000 known phytochemicals. The most widely studied group of phytochemicals is called polyphenols. Polyphenols lower the risk of coronary heart disease, improve vascular health, and reduce inflammation through antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. When combined with a healthy gut microbiome, phytochemicals can perform essential cellular maintenance. Resveratrol is a polyphenol found in blueberries and red wine that promotes the death of tumor cells through its strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Lycopene, found in tomatoes, influences intercellular communication and immune system modulation. Flavonoids are a subgroup of polyphenols that specifically inhibits the activity of enzymes associated with inflammation. Quercetin is a flavonoid pigment that is found in citrus, onions, grapes, and tea that inhibits the activity of enzymes linked to inflammation. It also aids in reversing diabetes as it blocks the uptake of glucose and triggers the destruction of existing fat cells.

Many phytochemicals act as antioxidants, thus reducing the amount of “reactive oxygen species” (ROS) or free radicals. All the cells in our body are constantly using oxygen to burn energy to fuel their activities. This oxidation process creates free radicals. Free radicals can cause tissue damage if they remain in our bodies for too long. This buildup can lead to chronic ailments such as autoimmune disorders and cancer. Antioxidants help in disposing free radicals, halting the acceleration of chronic diseases. What we need in our diets is a steady supply of these phytochemicals that act as antioxidants. Diets that are plentiful in whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and colorful fruits and vegetables contain antioxidant phytochemicals necessary to maintain our long-term health.  

Certain farming practices can influence the number of phytochemicals in plants. Conventional agriculture utilizes excessive amounts of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, inhibiting a plant’s ability to make phytochemicals. A study conducted by the British Journal of Nutrition found that organically grown foods contained 20 to 60 percent more phytochemicals than conventional farmed foods. Degraded soil undermines phytochemical production, leaving crops more vulnerable to pests and diseases. This leads to a greater use of pesticides that end up in our food and negatively impact our health. To increase phytochemical production in plants we need to rethink the way we farm. Regenerative agriculture practices that build soil health are key. These practices include minimal tillage, implementation of cover crops, composting, the utilization of soil amendments, and effective crop rotation without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The way we treat the soil directly affects the plants health, which in turn affects our health. How we choose to farm shapes what we become. We are what our food eats.

Sources

“What Your Food Ate” by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé

“Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon

“The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments” by Nigel Palmer

“On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee

Read Past Blog Articles

Improving Soils in the Humid Tropics of Costa Rica

Amending Calcium-Deficient Soils – A Tropical Permaculturist’s Approach

Eating Local: Reconnecting to Food

Endeavors to End Propane: Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Self-made rocket stove at the Ranch

By Tim O’Hara
Ranch Core Team Member

Endeavors to End Propane:  Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Cooking food can make it tastier, easier to digest and absorb nutrients, and safer and healthier to eat.  Cooking at the Ranch happens multiple times a day, and on some days, pretty continuously throughout the day.  We generally have a lot of hungry bellies to fill!  Over the decades we have been steadily reducing our use of propane to meet our cooking needs.  Propane is a refined product that comes from crude oil or natural gas.  The negative environmental impact from its extraction and refinement on communities and the earth are well documented.  We have lessened our dependency on this imported product (Costa Rica has few crude oil resources and a moratorium on oil drilling) through the production and use of our own biogas, the utilization of solar cookers, dehydrators, and hay boxes and perhaps most importantly by incorporating efficient wood burning stove technology into our culinary domain.  

Our woodshed

Wood is renewable and abundant in and around Mastatal.  That’s not to say that wood can’t and isn’t managed poorly in many parts of the world where it is used for cooking.  For us, fortunately, we have a plentitude of this resource in a country that does a commendable job of taking care of its timber resources.  We have almost limitless supplies of firewood coming from our woodshed, local small-scale bandsaw mills that operate in the region, and our own agroforestry systems.

Common open cook stove

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 3 billion people worldwide still cook using solid fuels such as wood and dung in open fires and on inefficient stoves.  Poorly designed stoves and age-old cooking practices can produce high levels of small soot particles and other pollutants that penetrate deep into our lungs.  Exposure is particularly high among women who cook indoors and their children resulting in 3.8 million premature deaths a year from pulmonary illnesses.  The extensive use of wood for cooking can also contribute severely to deforestation and its associated devastating social and environmental impacts.  It can also consume precious and considerable time to gather and haul.  

ACE One in action!

These worrisome facts have led us to build and invest in efficient wood burning technologies and food production methods that allow us to sustainably and safely use this local resource to cook with.  Our alternative cooking workhorses are our 5 rocket stoves; 3 purchased ACE Ones, and two adobe/cob stoves designed and built in-house.  These stoves produce little to no smoke based on a design that features an air intake or fan that produces extreme heat in the combustion chamber that ignites and “burns away” any smoke that is produced.  This can be referred to as “complete combustion” and reduces or eliminates soot from the cooking process.  The ACE One stoves use small pieces of wood whereas the home-built versions use slightly larger pieces of wood.  These efficient stoves burn smaller quantities of wood and produce less or no smoke while retaining the many benefits of cooking with this local and accessible resource.   

One of Ranch’s agroforestry systems

When possible, efficient rocket stoves can be coupled with a well-managed agroforestry system that through the extensive planting and pruning of nitrogen-fixing and food producing trees can yield a steady supply of accessible firewood and the food that will be cooked on the rocket stoves.  This is yet another example of the closed-loop systems that we oftentimes strive for on our farm.   

Adobe rocket stove being built at Ranch

Rocket stoves can be small or large, take many shapes, and can be made from a wide variety of materials.  What’s common to all of them is the their ability to efficiently produce extremely hot combustion chambers.  To improve performance, your rocket stove chamber can be insulated and your burning surface sized and designed to effectively support your favorite cooking pot.  You can even buy rocket stoves for camping these days though if you’re a do-it-yourselfer or on a tight budget, we’d encourage you to design and build your own.  There are plans all over the internet.    

Our cob oven

In addition to our repertoire of rocket stoves, we have a self-built cob oven that we use for pizza parties and other baking endeavors, 3 Wonderbags, a solar and electric dehydrator and of course our magical biogas stove.  We’ll tell you more about these in a future article but in the meantime I’d encourage those that love simple solutions to check out the wonders of the Wonderbag and see how you can help transform a family’s life in Africa while saving a considerable amount of cooking fuel.

Let us know if you have any questions and come and check out are array of alternative cooking technologies if you find yourself in our neighborhood.  We love to share our experiences and hope that this has found you well well.

Simple rocket stove being built in community of Mastatal

Just KIS Me: A Neighboring Project focused on Plants and Indigenous Culture

Just KIS Me: A Neighboring Project focused on Plants and Indigenous Culture

By Kealy Rudersdorf

About eight years ago, Kealy and Ivannia were talking about how they wanted to continue to be strong, badass women. They wanted to support one another and thrive, and step outside the stereotypical woman’s role that is often seen in the Mastatal community. Kealy was once again visiting for a few months from the States and was leaving in a few days so plans needed to happen soon!

The previous year, they had decided to go to the river at night to catch shrimp together--the snakes and darkness under the new moon never scared them off.  This year, they were going to bushwhack to the top of La Cangreja National Park mountain. If you have gone in recent years, this was before the path was maintained and the hike was truly an adventure in the jungle. They needed a guide, as neither had ever been. Ivannia suggested her cousin, Solin, who was incredible with the machete and always full of jokes. It was bound to be a great day!

That day marked the very beginning of KIS Botanicals, as Solin described different uses of a variety of plants and Solin and Ivannia shared stories about how their family used the different plants they found along the trail. It was an immemorable day, filled with laughter, love, and the sharing of stories - the same energy we strive to bring with us into KIS Botanicals today!

What is KIS Botanicals?

KIS Botanicals is a growing herbal business, up the road from the well-known Rancho Mastatal. We are focused on the preservation of plant knowledge and culture in the Mastatal/Zapaton region of Costa Rica. As Solin and Ivannia say, our ancestors have a beautiful interwoven history with plants from the rainforest; our goal is to awaken and share this history.

In our project, we make a series of plant-based, herbal products (to heal the skin, aide in sleep…), using recipes we learned from our grandparents and community members. We also provide educational programs for locals and tourists through medicine making workshops, medicinal plant tours, and food-as-medicine classes.

PRODUCTS

Our artisanal products are inspired by tried-and-true recipes. All of our plants are hand-harvested and our products are handmade – by us!   We have access to nearly 100 different medicinal plants that Solin farms sustainably, using traditional agriculture and permaculture techniques.

We currently have 8 artisanal herbal products that we absolutely love! These include a skin healing salve, a muscle and bruise salve, a sleep aide tincture, a tincture for colds and flus, a cough tincture, a bug repellent, an immune booster tincture, and a bug bite relief roll-on.  There are many more products in the works, for example an aphrodisiac spray, an anti-fungal spray, stomach calming tincture, energy clearing spray, anti-anxiety tincture, etc. With so many plants to choose from, it’s hard to know where to start! As our apothecary grows, we will continue to add to our line of products. 

When we start to make a new product, first, Solin and Ivannia remember plant uses they’ve witnessed throughout their lives. In addition, we frequently talk to community elders or remember conversations from years past. With these memories and conversations, we make a list of plants. We spend time trialing recipes and researching to make sure our products are stellar.  The stories and memories are shared on the back of our products, so you too can share in the story!

Currently, we are selling our products at our wonderful friends and neighboring projects: Rancho Mastatal, Villas Mastatal, La Iguana Chocolate and La Choza del Mundo. 

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

We are excited to offer a variety of educational programs. Come, partake in our programs - we can’t wait to learn with you! Here are our current and future offerings: 

A Cultural and Medicinal Plant Walking Tour:   Come walk leisurely with us while we share with you our local history and culture. We will bring artifacts and stories from our grandparents' lives and describe the uses of many of our medicinal plants.   We will provide a tasty and traditional treat or drink! 

Medicine Making Workshop:  Together, we will enjoy a short leisurely walk to explore medicinal plants.  We will share with you an ancestral recipe (or two!). Tradition will be combined with modern herbal techniques.   You will leave with an herbal product, made by you! 

Food is Medicine – A Traditional Cooking Class:  Come to a cooking class, using traditional techniques and foods.  Over a wood burning stove, we will share a traditional recipe (or two!), laughs and stories.

In the future, we plan to offer an intensive two-week long course on cultural and medicinal plants. We will offer the opportunity to learn from us and other community members, as well as play and experiment with our farm of medicinal tropical plants. Your teachers will be primary-source voices! 

Once we are properly on our feet, we plan to provide classes to the local schools.  We will teach students about how their/our ancestors used plants to cook, to clean, and to heal.  Students will learn new and old techniques with hands-on lessons and tutorials. We hope that they take these lessons back home with them and share their enthusiasm with their parents and grandparents, calling forth memories and providing inspiration.  We are SO excited about providing this service to our community. 

Who is KIS Botanicals? 

The original KIS Botanical team consists of three people: Ivannia, Solin and Kealy. Ivannia and Solin are cousins and lifelong members of the Mastatal / Zapaton community and grew up learning about the medicinal plants in the area.  Ivannia is a wiz in the kitchen. She is the one responsible for processing the plants, making the products, and giving thanks to the plants as we compost them.  Solin has been working with plants his entire life, being handed a machete as a 2-year-old. The depth of his plant knowledge, understanding of nature, and love of plants is key to KIS’s success. Kealy has been visiting the Mastatal / Zapaton area for over 11 years, and Solin and Kealy are now married with a baby. Her role in KIS is to research plants, formulate recipes, share her knowledge of making shelf stable herbal products, translate our programs into English, promote KIS with marketing, and give the plants extra love.

Why we started KIS Botanicals?

From the words of Ivannia and Solin:  We started KIS because we saw our generation and the following generations pull away from plants and the environment.  We witnessed the high schoolers obsessed with their new cell phones and motorcycles, littering the street with their chip wrappers and soda bottles. Our community was changing dramatically. Starting in the late 1980s, houses received electricity, running water, and phones, but also within that same generation, the community received access to the internet, cell phones arrived, and all of a sudden there was almost a motorbike or car per person in town. In most of the United States and Europe, these changes happened over several generations.

 We have witnessed a huge disconnect from our ancestors and the understanding of how they lived in harmony with the rainforest. This younger generation has mostly left the area for other opportunities after high school, leaving the community void of a generation.  With KIS Botanicals, we hope to show that our ancestor’s way of life continues to have value. We aim to re-awaken our ancestral plant knowledge in the younger generations with our products and educational programs within local schools. We also want to be an example of how to be a successful, locally owned business, making our local economy stronger and more diverse. 

How to help us?? 

We have come a long way from 3 friends bushwhacking to the top of the La Congreja mountain to making KIS Botanicals a reality.  To be successful in preserving and sharing our ancestral knowledge, we need your help!! This is what would be most helpful to us:

 When you visit Costa Rica, come to the town of Mastatal to buy our products and learn with us by signing up for one of our educational programs.

 Help us spread the word. Tell your friends and family about us. If they plan to visit Costa Rica, encourage them to take a workshop or tour with us and check out our products.  

 DONATE!  Keep your eyes peeled.  Shortly we will be fund raising to build a Ministry of Health approved processing kitchen.  We would greatly appreciate your assistance in reaching this goal!!

 Send us love and positive energy.

 Like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram @KISBotanicals

 We can be contacted at KISBotanicals@gmail.com.

 Thanks for your support! We hope to see you soon.

With love,

Ivannia, Solin and Kealy

The Wonders of Vanilla

The Wonders of Vanilla

by Diana D, 2019 Apprentice

Vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world. Being sold for between $600-1200 per kilo, that is more expensive than silver!

What makes it so precious?

Vanilla comes from the largest family of flowering plants, the orchids, as well it is the only orchid that produces pods. Every stage of vanilla bean production needs to be completed by hand, making it one of the world's most labor intensive crops.

This orchid originated in Mexico, it's cultivation is being practiced from Mexico to India . Being producers and exporters to the world market these countries each produce up to 200 tons of vanilla annually. Madagascar is by far the largest producer of vanilla, accounting for over 80% of global production. Although the value of vanilla is very high this has had some unfortunate repercussions for vanilla farmers as crime and theft of their valuable product has increased. This has led to instability in the lives of the farmers. Natural disasters have also affected them deeply, wiping out entire crop yields for the year. With such a delicate and refined production system It could take up to 7 years to regenerate the vanilla and return to the same levels of production. As with any single crop production system, it is a high risk strategy to rely on one crop for all of your income. There is a growing awareness of these issue for vanilla farmers and some new more sustainable and resilient techniques are being adapted.

To learn more interesting facts about vanilla, its history, creating a sustainable way to grow vanilla and support the farmers read this great article. This article was written by the first company to have an integrated, sustainable, vanilla supply that began transforming the Malagasy vanilla business in 2006. 

My interest in vanilla arose when I started to take care of it and pollinate it as part of my morning experiential learning tasks at Rancho Mastatal. The production of vanilla is a fascinating delicate and attentive process that if done successfully is extremely rewarding. I am able to experience the growth of the vanilla plant, the pollination of it's flowers , and after many stages of fermentation, curing and extraction we are able to enjoy the amazing product of this magnificent plant.

During my year long apprenticeship here in Costa Rica, I am able to immerse myself into the plant kingdom as well as learn the essential skills for self sufficient homesteading. I also get to apply and practice other skills such as carpentry and natural building which will allow me to lead a more sustainable lifestyle .

Vanilla is only one of the many fascinating things I have learned about here. I warmly invite you to come visit us in Rancho Mastatal in the rainforest of Costa Rica. There is so much to learn about how we can improve our lives within our communities and in harmony with nature. How we can all provide our own food and support our community with their projects. 

What I have learnt from the vanilla plant is that I would love to grow it on my own land, it's prices are rising so why don't we grow it for ourselves? Let's take little steps to self sufficiency by growing our own food as much as possible and by supporting the companies that treat the farmers well. 

Leon (2017 Apprentice) drying vanilla

I hope we keep growing vanilla and benefit from the heavenly smelling pods in our delicious deserts.

On that note I'm off to prepare a vanilla cocoa wine! 

P.S This article contains the basic hooch recipe, check it out if you want to learn how to make delicious homemade hooch :)

Blessings,

Diana D

Dairy Dairies: How to Make Cream Cheese with Dairy Kefir

Dairy Dairies:

How to Make Cream Cheese

with Dairy Kefir

By Ryan Roberts

2019 Apprentice

That's right folks, we're making cheese with the champagne of yogurts.

Dairy Kefir is so interesting to me because it embodies stacking functions - like alchemy, it's possible for 1+1 to equal 4. Milk, grains (scoby) and a days time and voila, you have a delicious base product better than the milk you started with. It's now lightly carbonated, stable in the fridge, resistant to microbial incursion, lower in lactose, tangy, creamy, probiotic and great for your gut.

Furthermore, that stable base product, can be used to create a wide variety of different specialty products that carry with it those unique value-added characteristics that we impart with our time, energy and expertise. During our last diary entry, we discovered Dairy Kefir Creme Fraiche, which you can read about here . This time we'll be making luscious, spreadable and customizable cream cheese out of dairy kefir.

In our first diary entry we discussed dairy kefir's characteristics and how it's made. You may recall that the dairy kefir scoby acidifies the milk as a defensive (or offensive) measure against other microbial life, which have difficulty surviving with such a low pH.

I've discovered for myself, though I don't claim to be first, that we can utilize that acidity to accomplish what is usually done with rennet, vinegar or citric acid: separating the curds (fats) from the whey (protein). Though the exact function of this process is unknown to me, the result appears to be the same. Left for a few days at room temperature, reveals to me that the dairy kefir will separate on its own. But there's a trick!

While leaving the scoby in the milk will speed the process of acidification, we want to be able to easily separate the scoby from the curds and from the whey. We do this with a sieve that catches only the grains, allowing the kefir to flow thru to your ready container. When the kefir is left to ferment longer and it separates, it makes it difficult to capture the curds and grains separately.

Instead, I remove the grains from the dairy kefir prior to separation. The dairy kefir will continue to acidify, though slower, but you'll be left without the headache of hunting thru the curds for your grains.

So starting with the previous step, here are the steps. Now that you have your dairy kefir and scoby separate we can begin:

1. Make your dairy kefir. Follow the instructions laid out in my first blog entry here (link 1st blog).

2. Remove scoby and place in a container with fresh milk.

3. Secure cheese cloth around the rim of a tall container. Make sure there is room for whey to drip to the bottom and accumulate.

4. Pour dairy kefir into fine cheese cloth hanging over the container.

5. Wait 24 hours, allowing time for the remaining whey to drain from the curds. I repeat this process a few times till it quits draining from gravity. The remaining cream is our cream cheese. The live-culture whey can be used in a variety of ways, including starting new ferments by inoculation, using as a probiotic protein supplement, and for cooking with in soups.

Dairy Kefir Cream Cheese

Whey - delicious for soup stock

6. Spread the cream cheese out on a pan with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle in salt and your choice of herbs or dried vegetables. Imagine sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, onions… yes please!

7. Now fold the cheese onto itself, repeatedly, which helps to mix the ingredients in evenly.

8. Place in a container and serve. Buen Provecho!

How to Make a Simple Hooch

How to Make a Simple Hooch ?

by PJ Barton, 2019 Apprentice

Hooch is the name we use to refer to our own homemade alcoholic beverages. In this blog I am going to explain how we make our delicious home brew. Interested in Fermentation? join us for our upcoming workshop THE ART OF FERMENTATION.

During the peak season at Rancho Mastatal we drink around 15 gallons of Hooch a week. We brew our Hooch in Corny kegs, these are great as they are made of stainless steel, they are easy to clean and easy to maintain as you can easily purchase all of the replacement seals.

Our Corny Kegs

For thousands of years humans have been fermenting for recreational, spiritual and medicinal uses. Fermentation allows us to safely store ingredients without the need for refrigeration and prior to the advent of electricity it was the primary way to store certain foods and drinks. Although hooch is an alcoholic beverage, it can also be brewed for medicinal purposes, by adding herbs and spices with the desired properties. By actively harvesting fresh fruits and yeasts from our surrounding area, creating and exploring new brews, we are able to connect to our environment in a fun and practical way. Hooch is a great way to use up fruits which are already naturally fermenting and processing them into something enjoyable to consume, turning our waste into something useful.

Yeast is a culture that is one of the base ingredients for making Hooch. It feeds on sugars when we mix it with sugar and water creating carbon dioxide and alcohol. We can buy commercial yeast strains, which are sold for brewing or we can harvest our own wild yeasts from our environment. Different wild yeasts will impart different flavors and characteristics to our homemade brew, try experimenting with these wild yeasts and see which ones produce flavors you enjoy most!

Harvesting Wild Yeast

To harvest wild yeasts from fruits and flowers

1. Collect them in a sterile jar and leave in a dilution of 20 percent sugar to water (eg 40g of sugar to 200ml of water).

2. After 48 hours (although this will depend on the ambient temperature), sediment should start form on the bottom of the jar, bubbles will start appearing, and your solution will begin to ferment. this is a sign of a healthy solution!.  

3. Remove the fruit or flower from the liquid.

4. Continue feeding with sugar every day for a week and you will have you own yeast culture that you can use to start brewing with.

Basic Hooch recipe

This basic Hooch recipe is really simple and uses 3 simple ingredients. You can add fruits or herbs to extract the taste that you desire. There are many opportunities for experimentation when you start making your own alcohol and hopefully you can create delicious beverages to enjoy with your family and friends.

Simple recipe to make your homemade hooch:

        For a 2 gallon batch

·        2 pounds unrefined cane sugar (we use Tapa Dulce)

·        2 gallons of water – 1 gallon tea

·        2 cups of wild yeast solution (see above instructions on how to harvest wild yeasts)

Tapa Dulce

How to prepare:

1. Melt the sugar into a gallon of hot water, until the sugar has dissolved.

2. Mix in the remaining gallon of water to help cool off the sugar water, make sure you cool it down to 100F degrees. This process is creating a wort in which you pitch the yeast.

3. Once the liquid has cooled down pitch the yeast. Stir it well and transfer it to a container with an airlock for a minimum of 1 week before consuming

   

This is a standard hooch consumed on the ranch other enjoyable combinations such as coca, vanilla and ginger or oranges, cinnamon ginger. In every available resource there’s a new taste to explore.  Enjoy and have fun experimenting

Want to learn more? Join us for a day workshop or a longer residential workshop

Gardening and Permaculture practices at the Ranch

by Diana Dagash

2019 Apprentice

our front gardens

Here at the Ranch the year long apprentices have various roles and functions that support the Ranch community. By taking on responsibilities and managing certain areas we the chance to learn and experience those areas on a deeper level . Part of the educational model created by the ranch team is a monthly rotation of these so called life skills. Each apprentice transitions their life skill to the next apprentice, passing on all of the relevant information to their colleague in order to complete the various tasks associated with each life skill.

One of the life skills is currently called the Garden Gnome. I would like to share some of my experience and reflections from doing this task every morning for a month. The garden gnome is in charge of maintaining the front gardens. This is referred to as our zone 1 garden using permaculture lingo. It is the area that is in closest in proximity to the most frequently used space- the main house. In the Zone 1 gardens we grow herbs, annual and perennial crops such as mustard greens, katuk, Haitian basket vine, hibiscus, cucumbers, squash, yard long beans,wing beans, radishes, sweet potato, moringa, basil, oregano, mint, parsley and curry leaf and other amazing tropical goodies which we use in our kitchen everyday. Having these crops growing in close proximity to where we spend most of our time allows us to easily provide the daily maintenance of this space such as watering, harvesting and weeding.

In Rancho Mastatal we approach gardening through a permaculture lens. By mimicking the patterns in nature we are able to create micro climates in which our crops thrive. We create systems that have many functions and support other systems in their functions, allowing them to thrive in harmony with nature. We apply a range of those practices at the ranch and we continue learning and experimenting with new possibilities.

Given that we live in the tropics we have two opposite seasons, about half the year its is dry and the other half rainy. Although the dry season has its own challenges I can only speak from my own experience taking care of the garden in the rainy season, for instance i believe that in the rainy season there is a lot of weeding whereas in the dry season there is a lot of watering!

As the rains increase in volume and frequency it is a time when everything begins to grow rapidly. The jungle fills up with even more green vegetation, popping out of every space available. It rains consistently every afternoon , sometimes all day and night. The soil is saturated . It is a happy time for ALL living things to thrive, including some of the more challenging species like mold, fungus and insects. Some of our crops were over taken by fungus or eaten by insects, others became over saturated with water as they were lacking sun and/or air flow. As with every challenge, i found an opportunity to research and experiment with natural recipes for pest and fungus control.

with the onset of the rains, mushrooms started popping up everywhere

My days started early in the mornings with a walk through the garden, observing the plants and checking the soil moisture levels. As I walked I noticed plants that seem to be struggling and tried to identify what might be affecting them. This is then communicated with the garden manager so we could discuss further ideas and solutions. We researched potential natural insecticides and fungicides that could help solve these issues.

Here is some of what we have learned and the practices we apply here at the ranch.

We are surrounded by amazing medicinal plants growing all around us, thriving under the jungle canopy or occupying disturbed pockets. These plants contain medicinal properties that can benefit humans as well as plants.

For example turmeric contains  anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties beneficial to humans and when planted among the roots of a tree, benefits the tree with those same properties This is referred to as companion planting. By planting diverse species next to each other they are able to support, protect and ultimately benefit one another. This can be as simple as providing shade or wind protection. Not only can companion planting by a useful tool in our belt to fight against disease and pest pressure but we can also use the properties of some local herbs. Here are some examples of what we have been doing.

1. Jackass bitter - the most bitter herb known, contains antifungal and antiparasitic properties. Spraying this tea onto diseased plants can repel insects and prevent fungal issues.

2. Inter cropping aromatic herbs like oregano, lemon grass and basil with certain food crops can confuse and  repel insects with their scent and prevent disease with their antimicrobial and antifungal properties.

3. Using the shade of the cucumber trellis to help shade and shelter more delicate herbs underneath them.

4. Using peanut grass as a living mulch to crowd out weeds and provide nitrogen to the soil underneath some of our taller perennial crops such as Katuk and Cranberry hibiscus.

5. Planting Marigolds everywhere to reduce nematode populations, there is controversy about the effectiveness of this though.

Working in the front gardens has also made me reflect on the ideas of closed loop systems. As i am partially responsible for management of the kitchen compost. I really like the idea that there is no such thing as waste. Everything can be transformed into something useful. All of our food scraps are composted creating a finished compost that can then be added back to the soil to enrich it, closing the loop. 

Another big part of the practices we apply when it comes to the food forests is observation of the environment and meeting the land's needs by mimicking patterns in nature.  Thanks to all the researches and life long practices in the agro forestry and gardening world, a network of knowledge has been created for us to share our experience and knowledge. We are continuously learning and working towards improvement of our systems.

 With each piece of land we carry the responsibility  for the history, present and future of it.  It is up to us to create a relationship with our land, to observe it's  needs and potentials.To be stewards of the land and assist it to become a healthy ecosystem in which we can humbly live and feed ourselves.

This experience, of being an apprentice at Rancho Mastatal, has opened my eyes to a new world of possibilities, inspiring ideas, regenerative solutions, discovering new ways  to live lighter on the planet and in harmony with nature .

 I am inspired by the movement towards an ecological , sustainable lifestyle and feel grateful to be a part of a project that focuses on sustainability, permanent culture and agriculture.

 I invite you to share your experience and discoveries with growing food in the lowland tropics.

What interesting practices have you learn about recently?

 Which annual crops did well for you in the tropical rainy season of Costa  Rica?  

 What kind of companion planting worked well for you?

 Would love to hear from you!

Blessings,

Diana D.

For more information about Permaculture consider joining us for our Permaculture Design Certification. For info about being an apprentice please go to the apprentice page. Here you will find in depth descriptions of what life is like in Mastatal.

Vegetables & Greens that Thrive in the Tropical Rainy Season

By Amy Dodds,

2019 Apprentice

When the rainy season arrived, it started with a sense of relief - dry season went on longer than expected and our trees and plants were scorching in the heat. For myself the cooler air was welcome comfort, and the rains a reminder of home and getting cozy. Mornings were beautiful with the sight of the sun rising through the dewy mist.

But very soon our zone one vegetable gardens with our recently planted greens began to suffer - the sheer force of the rains and the humidity brought fungal and mildew issues. Faced with the reality that our beans and delicate greens were going to die out, I thought about the potential of using cover crops, such as sweet potato, for the rest of the year. But this did not seem to fit in my idea of what permaculture asks us to do: observe and interact with the environment we are situated in and use that to our advantage. With this in mind, we at Rancho Mastatal have been planting crops that thrive both in the intense heat and thumping rain. Below are some of the most popular vegetables that we are growing in the Ranch that are suitable for the rainy season:

Cucumber:

Cucumbers have been abundant in our garden this season with us pumping out quick pickles nearly every day. Not bad for a community feeding 30-40 people daily! Thankfully, cucumbers like warm, humid weather. We grew ours by seed on a trellis to allow for more air flow and for the fruit to stay above ground.

Okra: 

Described as among the most heat-tolerant vegetable species in the world. It is planted for its seed pods which can be cooked, pickled, eaten raw, or included in salads. It does become mucilaginous so do consider this if you're sensitive to the slime.

Kang Kong spinach:

This leaf green is native to southeast Asian and is delicious stir-fried with soy sauce and garlic. It is a semi aquatic plant, a creeper that grows in or near the water on moist soils, so it is ideal for our climate.

Hibiscuses:

Both Green and Cranberry Hibiscus are delicious perennials that thrive in the warm and wet. They self seed easily during dry season so when the rains come you have a whole bunch of babies to keep your salad zesty and fresh. The leaves do contain oxalic acid so cannot be consumed in large, consistent quantities.

Chaya: 

Also known as tree spinach this is an excellent perennial green native to Mexico. It's leaves are edible once cooked, like spinach. It's easy to propagate by cutting and loves the heavy rain. 

Malabar spinach:

Malabar spinach is another heat and moisture-loving spinach-like green. The succulent leaves can be eaten both raw and cooked. We have only a few plants so we are trying to improve the population. We use a trellis to support its tendency to vine. 

Winged bean:

Also known as Goa bean and princess beans, these are sweet protein packed vegetables that do well in heat and humidity. They can fix their own nitrogen when the bacterium Rhizobium is in the soil. They are best harvested young and tender, and great raw in a salad.

Other more delicate greens we are growing in our nursery as they don't require as much water, such as Arugula, mustard greens and Asian cabbages. 

By having our covered nursery space we are able to grow things under cover that otherwise would not do so well outside, we are also experimenting with making some movable covered spaces for out outdoor garden beds….. we will update you with progress so make sure to Like and Follow us on Facebook & Instagram

From Tree to Bar: How to Process Raw Cacao

From Tree to Bar: How to Process Raw Cacao

by PJ Barton, Apprentice 2019

Living in the tropics I found myself surrounded by cacao trees, which was something you’d dream about as a kid. “Chocolate trees” But like so many things we’re used to consuming we don’t have the knowledge of how to process a raw material into something we can use, within the society we live convenience has removed us from the source. A simple act of making something gives us a connection to our environment. Walking through a supermarket we are surrounded by products readily available with a seemingly endless supply leading to a mass consumerism in our present society. This unsustainable consumption stems from our lack of involvement in the food we consume. So let us connect through raw cacao.

Throughout history so many cultures have cultivated cacao. From Mesoamerrica through to Europe. Its a world wide sweet enjoyed by millions, like most things the origin was much different to the present. Dating back 1400 BC chocolate was fermented into alcohol. It was a common commodity throughout Mesoamerica and the seeds were thought of as a gift from Quelzaledol, the goddess of wisdom.  It was actually used as a currency.

Processing raw cacao pods into beans is easy, tasty and fun!!

Processing 

After harvesting the seeds which should be a yellow or bronzed color you crack open the pods to reveal a white flesh seed with a brown centre.  The fruit itself is commonly eaten in Indonesia and reminds me of a mangosteen.

Scrap the seeds out leaving them to ferment. Place in a bowl and leave with a lid to keep off flies. We used banana leaves. To help the fermentation, yeast can be added we put kombucha to inoculate the ferment. During this process maintain temperatures of around 40 degrees and gradually increasing to 50 degrees. It’s not dependent on this I’ve made cacao before by just leaving it alone but by monitoring the temperature you’re going to create an optimal environment from the enzymatic reaction breaking the acidity of the bean.

After the beans have fermented for 4 – 5 days spread the beans out in the sun to dry the beans. This can also be done using a low heat in the oven but let’s harvest the energy of the sun which will enrich the bean. This can take a few days. The outer shell will be easy to break and the raw cacao is ready to use as desired.

Alternatively you can then roast the nut in a wok or in the oven paying close attention not to burn the seeds. It will start to crackle and a fill the air with an intoxicating aroma of chocolate. Leave to cool and break off outer shell. These roasted chocolate beans can be used how ever you desire.

Chocolate doesn’t grow on trees but if we understand the process it suddenly feels like it. Using ingredients from there raw form makes us more conscience intertwining us with the food we are consuming leading to a sustainable outlook towards life.

In Mastatal we are fortunate to not only grow our own cacao but also live next to a family run buisness, The Iguana Chocolate. Why not come and stay with us as a guest and do a tour at the local chocolate farm!

Dairy Diaries: How I Make Dairy Kefir

Dairy Diaries: What is Dairy Kefir and how do I make it?

By Ryan Roberts, 2019 Ranch Apprentice

 My name is Ryan and I'm part of the apprentice team at Rancho Mastatal for 2019. I've been navigating my lactose-intolerance since I was a child and gluten-intolerance since I identified it approximately five years ago. In this and the following installments of Dairy Diaries. I'll be exploring dairy kefir, in my personal effort to find ways to make dairy products I enjoy healthier, more digestible and more delicious.

I have a mixed understanding of my dairy sensitivity, in part because throughout my life I have chosen to accept the consequences of consuming dairy products that I enjoy such as cheese and ice cream. Over the last few years, in an effort to better understand the nuances of my sensitivity, I've taken to experimenting through exposure and carefully observing my reactions.

Since arriving at the Ranch, I've taken a fascination with dairy kefir, a cultured milk product which we make regularly as a base for salad dressing. My interest was piqued upon discovering that the salad dressing failed to upset my sensitive stomach.

Dairy kefir is tangy, effervescent and probiotic, closely comparable to yoghurt, with origins in the Caucasus Mountains of Eastern Europe. It is made using a dairy kefir SCOBY, which stands for a "symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast", which are often called "grains" in the case of dairy kefir. Dairy kefir grains look like clumped grains of rice that are yellowish white. They tend to clump together in spongy, somewhat tough little colonies.

The SCOBY consumes the sweet lactose in the milk, converting in into lactic acid and multiplying the microorganisms beneficial to the health of our stomach, intestines and the whole ecosystem of our body. This makes it possible for folks with a sensitivity to lactose to consume delicious milk products fermented with this SCOBY.

It's delicious, it's great for you, and I'm excited to share that it is stupid easy to make and maintain.

It really is as simple as adding the dairy kefir SCOBY to your milk and letting the little SCOBYs get to work. When you are ready to consume your freshly fermented kefir, strain out the grains using a fine mesh strainer and a spoon, wash your container lightly and reintroduce the SCOBY and a new batch of milk.

The Process
1. Clean your container, using boiling water for your first clean. Let the glass cool.
2. Put a spoon-full of dairy kefir SCOBY into your container. 
3. Pour your milk into your container, taking care to minimize splashing.
4. Place a lid over the container, creating only a light seal to allow CO2 to escape.
5. Let sit for desired level of tanginess.
6. Pour fermented milk and grains out through a fine mesh strainer.
7. Gentle rinse your container, ensuring you clean areas where the milk is splashed above the milk line.
8. Use a gentle scooping motion along the bottom of the strainer to find your grains.
9. Place them back into your container, refill with milk and lightly stir the milk with a clean spoon.
10. Enjoy your dairy kefir!

Here are some considerations when raising and caring for your dairy kefir babies:

Temperature:
Warmer temperatures accelerate the work of the dairy kefir SCOBY significantly. Here at the Ranch, we let our kefir sit for 12 hours to 20 hours through the heat of the day and the temperate evening. Generally after 12 hours, we put the fermented dairy kefir in the refrigerator overnight, but leaving it over night has led to a tangier, more desirable final product and an easier process.

Time:
The longer you let your dairy kefir SCOBY work, the tangier, thicker, more probiotic, and in my opinion, more delicious the kefir will become. Sit time varies based on your preference from 12 to 48 hours, depending on temperature. Refrigeration will allow you to store the kefir for up to a week. Note that while this significantly slows the metabolism of the SCOBY, the enzymatic activity remains active, breaking down the milk into more bioavailable and nutritious bits for our stomach.

Sanitation:
Like many ferments, the SCOBY creates an environment for itself that limits the growth of competing organisms through increased acidity and the production of ethanol (though in dairy kefir the alcohol is negligible). This means that the risk of contamination is limited to that which remains outside the milk. The best way to mitigate any rogue elements is to wipe away any splashed or remaining milk that won't be under the liquid. Other than that, thorough cleaning of the container for the dairy kefir is unnecessary - a simple water rinse will suffice.

The SCOBY:
The little yellow white SCOBY is actually quite durable and resilient, so don't worry about being terribly ginger with them. The only thing we want to avoid doing is pressing the grains through the fine mesh, which will cut and damage them. Prevent this by using a light scooping motion along the bottom of the strainer.

The SCOBY is also resilient to being left in the milk. If you want to take a break from the dairy kefir, you can do so by refrigerating the SCOBY in milk for weeks at a time. Every two weeks replace the milk with a little bit of new milk. It doesn't needed much.

The SCOBY will also grow in size and multiply. When you begin to find more grains, you can remove them and place them in a separate container to make even more kefir, or better yet, gift them to a friend! Dairy kefir, like many ferments, is the gift that keeps on giving.

So go forth and spread the love: for your taste buds, your gut, and your friends.

Check out Ryan’s other blog on dairy kefir crème fraiche

If you are interested in fermentation why not join us for our upcoming tropical homebrewing workshop?

Sources:
Rancho Mastatal Food Skills , Dairy Kefir, Laura Killingbeck

Brazilian Journal of Microbiology
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3833126/#!po=0.595238

How to Make a Simple Woven Basket

How to Make a Simple Woven Basket

By Abby Kuchar, 2019 Rancho Mastatal Apprentice

One of my favorite hobbies is working with natural fibers. Soon after arriving here at the ranch as a new apprentice, I was eager to experiment with weaving a simple basket. The Ranch has an existing collection of beautiful baskets, which play an important role in storing food, while maintaining necessary airflow in this hot, humid climate.

Although I tried researching online the traditional materials used in this area for basket making, I was not able to find any specific plant recommendations. Instead, I began to explore what was readily available around the property.

Each day we enjoy delicious salads composed of greens  such as katuk and the tender leaves of sweet potato vines. The result is a compost heap continuously stocked with both stakes and long, flexible vines.

Katuk, Sweet Potato vines, some examples of vines used for basket weaving.

To begin, you will want to gather eight straight(ish) katuk stems that are around the same size and a large bunch of sweet potato vines. 

Step 1: Preparing the Katuk

 Strip the branches and leaves off and enjoy them in a delicious salad.

Next, trim off the ends so that you are left with eight 10-12 inch long pieces (or 25-30 centimeters).

close enough!

Step 2: Prepping the Sweet Potato

 The preparation of the sweet potato vine is very similar. Simply remove the leaves and the smaller vines off the sides.

I then coiled the vines to keep them tidy and “train” them into being in a tight circle, much like coiling up a garden hose.

I’ve set the thinnest one to the side to use first

Step 3: Weaving the Basket

For clearer instructions on these next few steps, I’d recommend checking out Jon’s Bushcraft tutorial on willow basket making  here. Full disclosure, I was able to make a functioning basket, but the materials were a little fiddly. It’s much easier to see the steps with clean and crisp willow branches.

Start by laying out the katuk branches in a cross shape, 4 by 4.

Yes, my finger nails are very dirty

Next, take the thinnest, most flexible section of sweet potato vine and wrap around each spoke in a clockwise circle

Like I said, fiddly

After going around a second time, split your spokes in half (two katuk branches together) and begin weaving “over, under”

Voted off the basket

After another go around, split your spokes again so that you are weaving between each individual katuk branch

Continue weaving around and around. When you run out of a segment of sweet potato vine, simply lay the next piece on top of the end of the first one and continue on as normal.

After you have reached the desired size for the base of the basket, begin gently coaxing the katuk branches upward

This part can be a bit awkward. Avoid snapping your branches, but if it does happen, the weaving should still hold them in place.

When you reach the desired depth of your basket, it’s time to snip off the excess. Usually, the remainder of the stake is woven back inside the walls of the basket, forming the top edge. However, the katuk was not quite flexible enough, so I chose to use additional sweet potato vine to create a top edge.

I got my inspiration from a basket found in the main house which has some kind of plastic cordage.

Step 4: Have a local teach you how to make a proper basket

After completing my own attempt of a simple basket, I was fortunate enough to meet the older man in town who is responsible for making all the beautiful baskets around the house. He very kindly offered to show me the vines that are harvested from the forest, as well as tips for improvement for this extremely useful craft. Stay tuned for Mastatal basket making 2.0!

The Basic Pantry Analysis: Design, Food, Sourcing

The Basic Pantry Analysis:  Design, Food, Sourcing

By Laura Killingbeck, Porvenir Design's Food System Designer

The Human Diet as An Ecological System
Cuisine is diet that's unique to a physical place and a human cultural group. We can taste the patterns of modern cuisine in the melding of characteristic ingredients into characteristic forms. Wheat noodles with tomato sauce points us in the direction of Italy. Fermented spiced cabbage leads us to Korean kimchi. Even amid tremendous variation, and even as these cultural foods are exported, appropriated, and evolve in different ways in different places, we are still able in many cases to recognize a cultural and geographical narrative embedded within relational patterns of flavors and forms.

Across the span of human agricultural history, cuisine sprung from ecological relationships—people ate what grew well in their area, and they grew what nourished them. Humans shaped the morphology of plant, animal, and microbial species by selective breeding; in turn, these foods changed the physiology of the human body. Cultural groups vary widely in their tolerance and desire for certain foods—these are genetic adaptations to their peoples' long history of evolution with specific cuisine. The co-transformation of people and food species was exquisitely mediated by the opportunities and limitations of the ecological niche of the place where they lived. Growth was balanced and calibrated within an ecological feedback loop of regenerating resources.
But in recent human history, globalization expanded our access to place and people, while simultaneously breaking this ecological feedback loop. We travel, and food travels; neither is linked, necessarily, in place. People are still connected with the world, but now we are connected differently. This shift is transforming the evolution of cuisine in unprecedented ways.
 

If you imagine the path of human ecology as a train traveling down a railroad track, globalization is the conductor turning the train onto a new track. Human relationships with food are now evolving in a different direction than they did before. The foundation for cuisine is no longer an ecological relationship between people and place; it is an economic relationship between people and business. Businesses grow or produce food and ship it around the world, where chains of distributors buy it and warehouse it in grocery stores. Surely this is not the only way that food works, and local food cultures still thrive in many areas. But it is a style of human-food interaction that is growing and replacing such local cultures. As we become increasingly separate from our direct relationship with the ecological patterns that once mediated food and diet, we become more deeply fused with a new, abstract, relationship with global commerce. The foods we like to eat often have less to do with healthy ecology, and more to do with macroeconomics and marketing.

We know there are a lot of problems with this. The Western Diet (aka, global cuisine) is correlated to chronic disease and poor health. Mass agriculture depletes soil and species diversity. Industrial pesticides and fertilizers damage ecosystems. There is a lot more to say but I don't have to say it—on some level we know, all the time, that this is bad. And even as we know, we still eat global-industrial foods, because we're hungry, its what we know, and its what's there.

Post-Harvest Permaculture Design
Permaculture design is essentially applied ecology for human development. It studies and teaches how life relates to place, with the object of sustaining that life and that place. A lot of the literature within Permaculture Design centers on the infrastructure development of building, landscape, and agricultural systems. It most often highlights the agricultural side, with ideas and methods of learning how to integrate human agricultural systems with the larger ecology of life on earth.

But interestingly, the focus on agricultural systems within Permaculture Design methodologies often only lightly brushes post-harvest food handling and cuisine development. The general thinking is that once people understand food production as a functional part of ecological systems, they will be able to grow more food. This has been very successful for many people, with one caveat—growing plants, animals, or microbial species that are edible does not mean you are growing food that is ready to eat. A a plot of wheat and a chicken pecking bugs can be wonderful parts of an agricultural ecosystem, but if you want a chicken sandwich there is still a lot of work to do.

Over the last nine years I've worked with two farms and education centers who dedicated themselves to the process of farm-to-table food production—one in temperate Massachusetts, and the other in tropical Costa Rica. This allowed me to study and practice food preservation and processing across climates, and see the similarities and differences that unfolded.

At Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica, even very common foods, like malanga, tiquisque, cuadrados, pejibaye, and chaya were all new to us. And what do you do with a sudden hundred pounds of ripe bananas? At Round the Bend Farm in Massachusetts, we needed to preserve large quantities of food seasonally to last the winter, in a way that was totally different than in the tropics. We also transitioned from a home-scale cooking facility to one which could serve hundreds, and had to scale our systems up to meet new demands. At both organizations, it took us a lot of time, and a lot of trial and error, to acquire the skills, tools, and labor to do these things. And to do these things efficiently, it took structured seasonal planning. The teaspoon of ginger you need now in your recipe had to be grown a year ago, then harvested, dried, powdered, and stored. We had to learn how to organize ourselves in relation to local food, in ways that were intrinsically different from how we used to organize ourselves in relation to globalized foods.

The human element of how we interacted with food based on our personal and cultural backgrounds was another huge piece of the puzzle for local eating, especially in Costa Rica. We craved western-style bread products; people didn't always like Costa Rican cuisine; some people were afraid of new foods like fermented bananas. Eating locally meant coming to terms with the cultural references for desirability of foods we had brought with us, in relation to the ecological and cultural backdrop of a new country and climate. We had to adapt ourselves to new styles of cuisine, and adapt that cuisine to ourselves as newcomers.

Most of my work in Costa Rica and Massachusetts was to create, systematize, and implement post-harvest food processing and preservation strategies based on farm foods. I also worked with numerous farm owners, communities, and homesteaders who were and are in the process of divesting from their dependence on global-market food supplies. It is through these relationships and experiences that I began to notice consistent patterns in the challenges people faced in transforming their farms into food. I started comparing patterns of limitations and successes that people were reporting, with those of the organizations I was working with. I used permaculture design to organize these patterns into a systematic format that I could use to consult with people about how to achieve more efficient and accelerated farm-to-table food system success.

I call this consultation service the Basic Pantry Analysis. The title and process drew inspiration from many collaborators in the fields of permaculture design and farm-to-table cuisine; in particular the work of Costa Rican ethnobotonist Rafael Ocampo, as well as that of the Sat Yoga Institute. A similar process focused on family nutrition has also been promoted by the Instituto de Nutrición de Centroamérica y Panamá (INCAP). My version of this process is based on my experience working with farms and communities, and is an adaptation of a wonderful wealth of collaboration among many individuals and organizations.

The Basic Pantry Analysis
The Basic Pantry Analysis matches the ecological needs of your land, with your cultural and personal frames of reference, your dietary needs and desires, and your resource capacity, to form a “basic pantry” of ingredients, whole and value added, that you will use to develop your own dynamic cuisine—that is, the meals you eat every day to sustain yourself in the place you live. This process is useful for anyone who wants to accelerate their ability to grow, process, and eat local foods.

Your Basic Pantry will be designed through a combination of personal decisions and desires, which inform a multitude of what are often very simple tasks. Those big ideas and those little tasks are what build the complex whole. The consultation service is divided into four primary parts: Vision, Layout, Basic Pantry, and Adaptation. The scope of service varies depending on the client's needs and desires.

Sample Outline of Basic Pantry Service
Please note this varies based on client needs.

Vision
This is the overall concept of your cuisine. Exploration of goals and values, and how those relate to your capacity. Make decisions about priorities for ecological, cultural, dietary, financial, factors.

What the client receives:

    •    A one paragraph vision statement for your cuisine.
    •    A one page analysis of the factors and values that contribute to that vision.
    •    A sample set of meals you could expect to eat over the course of the year.

Layout
This is the architectural layout of your plan—it shows clearly how different food elements and tasks fit into your cuisine over time.

What the client receives:

    •    Daily, weekly, monthly, and/or annual list of post-harvest food tasks for your mature food system.
    •    Analysis of tools and infrastructure.
    •    Analysis of skills and labor needed.
    •    Basic five year analysis of how your food system transitions through time.
  
Basic Pantry
You need lots of ingredients to make meals—this is the list of those ingredients, whole and value-added. I work closely with the agricultural team to make recommendations about food species.

What the client receives:

    •    Sourcing and Growing list
    •    Processed and Preserved foods list

Adaptation
Your Basic Pantry Analysis is a starting point, not an end. It will grow and shift and evolve as you and your land do. This section is a structured feedback loop to help you grow and shift your cuisine based on your priorities.

What the client receives:

    •    Design concept follow up questions
    •    Blank harvest, processing, and/or other charts for feedback
    •    Supporting appendix—contains client-specific documents on further skills and strategies, and/or other supplementary documentation as needed.

For more information on costs and deliverables of this service please write our team at info@porvenirdesign.com.

For information on food related workshops at Rancho Mastatal please see go to our Workshops page.