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A View Over the Cloud Forest of the Talamanca Mountains

Toyota Land Cruiser is the ticket in and out for guests

The Las Veultas Lodge, Costa Rica

The wild night time ride in the land cruiser was a miscue to what to expect.  Once inside, the lodge pictured below, you find a comfortable warm dwelling with the most welcoming innkeepers you can ask for.  The lodge is run by 5 siblings and their mother, their father having recently passed away.  The Seelye’s are Americans transplanted to Costa Rica decades ago.

Andy the only son quickly gave us the orientation and their creed:  To live sustainably, frugally, but comfortably and even luxuiously.  While off the grid, they do not reject technology but harness it if it can promote sustainability.  There is music, great food and dancing.  Oh what dancing.  Andy and his sister Janye are fantastic salsa dancers and dancing lessons are included.

The first amazing lesson in sustainability.  The lodge pictured above is made from lumber cut from fallen trees on the 250 or so acres of the estate.  When Andy found suitable fallen trees, he would set up camp and with his chainsaw cut lumber.  Similarly, the lodge is heated entirely by firewood cut from fallen trees.  At the rate trees fall on the property, Andy figures that they’ll never have to cut trees for lumber or firewood.  Andy not only cut the lumber but he and his sisters built the lodge completely themselves.

The self designed hydro power generator

The second amazing lesson in sustainability. The lodge has its own hydro-electric plant.  Andy designed his own hydro power generation system which harnesses a mountain stream without the need for a dam and the environmental changes they present.  You can watch a video of Andy explaining his power plant.  This is the cleanest energy you will ever find.

Obviously the lodge has all the fresh water it would need.  Mountain streams and 6 months of wet season see to that.  But how to make hot water?  In answer, Andy’s father designed a convection system which heats water as a byproduct of the main wood fired heating source.  Copper pipe is coiled around the fire barrel which creates enough convection current to push the water up to the tank on the second floor.  There it uses gravity to provide water pressure to the sinks and showers.

Today, sewage is handled at the lodge via conventional septic drain fields as you would find on any farm.  But one of the projects Andy was at work on was a system which would convert sewage waste to methane gas which could then be used for cooking and heating.

A cow standing in the pasture with a view to live for

For food they have chickens for eggs and cows for milk.  In the picture at the top of this post you can see one of the trout ponds that they stock each year with hatchlings.  And while there are vegetable gardens, the north facing location and high elevation limit the yield of fruits and vegetables.

For as much as they sustain themselves, outside income is still necessary.  For food that can’t be grown, materials that can’t be hand made, gas for the vehicles and chain saw.  Such are the challenges to complete self sustainment in our modern world.  Fortunately for us, the Seelyes share their home and their vision as a commercial venture.  For however briefly we can participate in a great and long term experiment in sustainable living.

Andy Seelye is one of the most ingenious and industrious person I have ever met.  I’ll wager that not 1 in 10,000 of us could match his level of self-taught engineering nor match the drive and determination of he and his family.  Nor can all 6 billion of us on earth expect to have 250 acres of reasonably productive land.

So the Seelye’s work is like the work of other artists; works we cannot copy but from which we can be inspired and learn.  First we can be aware.  Simple, sensible changes in our consumption habits can make huge differences when broadly adopted.  The Seelye’s show that sustainability is not mutually exclusive with comfort and even luxury.  A more sustainable lifestyle is not some austere, joyless world.  It is warm and light, comfortable with good food and music.  Second, technology and ingenuity are our friends and tools towards greater sustainability.  For example, distributed clean generation of electricity such as Andy devised can be replicated more broadly.  Whether wind powered, hydro, or biomass.  We should expect more not less from a more sustainable future and technology and inventiveness can deliver that.

The Seelye’s amply demonstrate that sustainable living and joy in life are not mutually exclusive!

Margot on What If

Here are links to videos of some of the rounds.

Margot on Monty, Round 1
Margot on Monty, Round 2
Taylor on Double Play (Archie)

Arturo, organic coffee farmer of Costa Rica

When Caroline and I were on our ecotour of Costa Rica earlier this summer, one of the stops we made was in the town of Santa Maria.  Here we visited a coffee coop processing plant and we met Arturo, an organic coffee farmer in the town.

As you can see, Arturo looks every bit what you might expect a Costa Rican coffee farmer to look like.  But when he spoke his english was fluent and his message was simple and passionately delivered.  “Get to know who is producing the products you consume and support those who are doing the right things.”

Those right things were in his case encouraging sustainable farming practices in his local community.  We all have heard of “shade grown” coffee, but I admit I wasn’t exactly sure what that was and why it is better.  What I should have remembered, is that coffee is a so-called monoculture.  Monoculture is the practice of growing the same species year after year on the same ground.  Coffee is a plant that takes a long time to mature (something like 3 years) and is productive for a long time (30 years or so).  However, when the same type of plant is grown year after year without biodiversity, it tends to impoverish the ground.  So over the decades, mass production of coffee has required that the plantations expand into new ground which typically means the cutting of rain forest.

Mature coffee plant in organic shade grown plantation

Shade grown coffee then refers to including taller shade trees in the coffee plantation which introduces more biodiversity into that plantation.  However, coffee varieties that grow in the shade may have less yield than sun tolerant varieties that have been more recently introduced.  So while the shade trees introduce diversity which can renew the soil and extend the life of the plantation, the possible lower yield will lead to higher prices.  You can read more about shade grown coffee on Wikipedia here.  By purchasing shade grown coffee you are contributing to sustainable farming processes and slowing the destruction of additional rain forest.

Sustainable farming is separate from organic farming.  Organic practices may further reduce yield but at the benefit of reducing harmful run off from the plantations into streams and rivers.  Arturo, explained that even in Santa Maria the local river is nearly dead due to run off of the fertilizers used.  Unfortunately, it is a hardship for small farmers in Santa Maria to switch to organic farming.  It takes something like 3 years to achieve certification.  According to Arturo, the premium paid for organic once you are certified is barely enough to make up the difference in costs and yields.  None-the-less, he is working with a small but growing group of farmers in the Santa Maria area to promote organic practices.  Our support in purchasing organic coffee, like shade grown, will help make organic farming the norm in the future.

Coffee sprouts are planted in plastic bags with compost to get started. After a year these will be planted in the plantation fields.

Arturo also talked very favorably about the Fair Trade system.  His comment was that it was one of the best programs ever developed and has helped enormously in promoting sustainable coffee farming in his area.  This comment prompted me to do more research on Fair Trade which I really hadn’t considered as much in the past.

According to the TransFair website, the principles of the Fair Trade system are:

• Fair price: Democratically organized farmer groups receive a guaranteed minimum floor price and an additional premium for certified organic products. Farmer organizations are also eligible for pre-harvest credit.
• Fair labor conditions: Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited.
• Direct trade: With Fair Trade, importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.
• Democratic and transparent organizations: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to invest Fair Trade revenues.
• Community development: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, quality improvement trainings, and organic certification.
• Environmental sustainability: Harmful agrochemicals and GMOs are strictly prohibited in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers’ health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations.

TransFairUSA is a Fair Trade certifying organization in the US.  They are one of a group of Fair Trade Labeling Organizations world wide that review and certify that products are produced and traded according to these fair trade principles.  The certification from these organizations is what allows packaging to display the Fair Trade label.  You can read more about them at www.transfairusa.org.

I also looked into my favorite coffee provider, Starbucks, and fortunately found that they have been purchasing Fair Trade coffee for 10 years and have announced a plan to become the largest purchaser of trade coffee this year.  You can read more about Starbuck’s ethical sourcing programs here.

On our trip, we had the opportunity to follow Arturo’s core message.  We got to know one of the producers in Santa Maria of one of the products that we consume.  By purchasing and consuming coffee which is sustainably produced, organic and traded on fair trade principles, we can help those producers who are doing the right things.