The more I released my need to know exactly where I was going, the more life seemed willing to show me. Not all at once. Just enough for the next step.

Taking time to care for our tools facilitates relationships with them that change the quality of our work.

La Fermentación es un proceso catabólico de oxidación incompleta, por el cual ocurre una transformación de los alimentos.

I am watching something pretty remarkable taking place almost every day here in Mastatal, Costa Rica, and that is the magic of team sports.

If we intend to design a culture where the permaculture ethic "fair share" is embodied - where the needs of all beings are met- it is necessary to learn to live simply, taking only what we need and distributing the surplus fairly- the abundance that nature so graciously lavishes upon us.

There is a word I once heard called Solistalgia. It’s meaning is similar to nostalgia, but it is for a place you are already in. It is feeling lost and missing even when you are “home.”

In a world vying for attention in all directions and in oh so many ways, the importance of directing yours towards intention remains ever important but seemingly less inherent.

Congrats on being accepted! As you are preparing for this crazy beautiful adventure, here´s a list of things we wish we knew before coming to the Ranch.

My goal here is to catalogue and display some of the wild critters that we are exposed to while living in our little jungle homes.

To be able to initiate changes that may someday become radically transformative it needs places starting with small, reformist changes. Rancho Mastatal has proven itself over more than 20 years to be one of those places.

After only a few months living at the Ranch, I have observed my experience of eating good cheese transform from mundane to something approaching ecstasy. This has lead me to reflect on our personal and collective conceptions of value.

There’s no escaping from the fact that we are in the midst of a social, economic, physical and mental health crisis. We have been waking up to this fact at an increasing pace and the majority of people can see that a change is essential if we don’t want to enter another mass extinction of our own doing.

As you pass through the gates at Rancho Mastatal, you step into another world. A place where perhaps the hands you hold at evening circle are the very ones who built the structure you'll sleep in that night.

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.

Soap and permaculture go hand in hand. Making our own soap meets our environmental and sustainable goals, and beginning to do things for ourselves instead of relying on the big companies.

Due to the unique circumstances of the past two plus years, I never seemed to find the time to write what I hoped would be a yearly blog on the books that I read. The two times that I’ve done this in the past we were stateside visiting family, with a bit more time to dedicate to catching up on what seems to be an ever growing list of “books to read”.

Imagine two completely opposed ways of seeing the world and today’s environmental issues.

Last year I wrote a short article about the books that I read while visiting my family last fall in the United States.  I received a handful of positive responses after we posted it to the Ranch’s blog and as a result I thought that I’d go ahead and repeat the exercise this year.  The books are in the order that I read them.  I would recommend and learned something important from all of them.  A few of them impacted me profoundly.  I will try to incorporate the lessons that I learned in many of these books into my personal and work life.  

During my annual visits to see family in the United States, I oftentimes have the opportunity to catch up on some reading that regularly alludes me during the busy seasons here in Mastatal.  More than any year in recent memory, I felt as if I hit the jackpot with the titles that I was recommended, came across, and picked up this fall.