EARTH & US: Critical mass in Barichara
“We’ve reached critical mass!” said Joe a few days ago.
Almost daily at the Bioparque lately, crowds of people have been showing up. One day there were five Earth Regenerator volunteers, plus Camila and Vicky, Margarita, Paul, and three other local folk. I was delighted that Paul and Margarita got to talk a little about biogas digesters; Paul was open to the idea of constructing one without the expensive package from Sistema.bio which I had looked into last year.
Margarita, who has been visiting people on farms with biodigesters, prefers to have a “minga” (group work party) where a lot of people can learn and be empowered to build their own. That motivated me to look more deeply into design plans. The design can be truly simple: a greenhouse plastic tube lying in a prepared trench, with an intake pipe for feedstock, an outlet pipe for effluent (fertilizer), and a tube to conduct biogas to the kitchen.
Paul brought along Juanita, a yahe (ayahuasca) shaman who wanted to talk with Joe about holding ceremonies of gratitude to Mother Earth in the Bioparque. She looked familiar, and she remembered me from having attended the World Peace Day/Fall Equinox gathering I’d organized in the Bioparque last September! Joe was quite pleased that she had come to propose a ceremony. She suggested having a ceremonial fire and Joe thought it might be great for a full moon night. It was less than a week later that Joe, Paul, Juanita, and a few others prepared a ceremonial site with a fire pit!
Volunteers arrive
A bit of magic happened: as I spoke to people around town, asking if they knew of a place to rent suitable for volunteers, I met Claudia Perez. She just happens to own a guest house down the street from Joe, and was tired of managing it as a B&B. She was willing to rent us a charming little house with 5 beds for a reasonable price!
It’s wonderful to share dinner with such brilliant and fascinating people as Joe, Chad, Charles, and Alpha…talking about everything from regenerative visions to crypto-currency to harrowing bus rides in Latin American countries to great works of art. Penny is a bit more reserved, but has a ready laugh. Walking up the narrow stone streets six abreast in the moonlight with no traffic had a dreamlike feel to it. How did I, at age 75, get to hang out with these amazing people in their forties?
We had our first gathering of Joe, Penny, Chad, Charles, Jakob, Alpha, and me: Joe welcoming the “out of town” Earth Regenerators, all of us primarily English-speaking. We agreed to meet weekly this way to build our connections and goals. Already we’re starting to do podcasts!
Visit to Las Albercas
Joe spoke of our “walking his dreams with him” when we all visited Las Albercas and the land of neighbors Joep and Julia, culminating in the Bioparque, with almost 30 people. As we hiked for 4 hours through this territory, part of which is yet to be purchased, Joe showed us the former stream-bed and wellsprings which used to produce water year-round.
One of those had water in it due to the recent heavy and frequent rains. By “reading the pattern language of water,” Joe has been able to see the natural locations for springs and pools of water. This area has a 7,000 year old culture of trade networks using the “Camino Real” and other indigenous pathways. He invited us all to be “founders of the Ecoversity,” and we tossed around ideas such as a newsletter and podcasts with interesting people, including each other.
Introducing the Earth Regenerators on Site!
Penny, Joe’s new partner, moved here just a few weeks ago from Boulder, CO. She does a type of cranio-sacral work and has volunteered with the “Islands of Coherence” project of the HeartMath Institute. She sees the connection between healing of traumatized people, and healing of the Earth. Penny followed Joe for several years online before they got to know each other in person.
Jakob, from Germany and in his twenties, is keen on regenerative finance , ecological building, and creating a zero-waste ecoversity on the land known as Las Albercas (in negotiation for purchase at this time). He is a free spirit who goes barefoot as much as possible and loves to dance and play football.
Chad, here from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has a PhD in Social Aspects of Science and Technology and another in Sustainability; he understands complexity theory, spiral dynamics, cryptocurrency, and much more. He believes in Earth Regenerators as involving “head, heart, and hands.”
CharLes, who is staying at Joep and Julia’s place a little distance from town, is an expert on water collection and conservation. He has studied how desert people find, store, and transport water without use of fossil fuel. He lost friends in the California fires and was living in Europe during the pandemic lockdown. CharLes believes that when we create small interventions and watch what happens, we can learn how best to intervene in the water cycle. He writes: “I develop community-based water conservation programs that integrate rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, onsite stormwater management, applied soil microbiology and agroforestry techniques. I am deeply inspired by the wisdom of indigenous water management and have studied traditional water management systems around the world including the Arabian Peninsula, Rajasthan India, Sonoran and Mojave Deserts. I hold a MSc in Integrated Water Management from the International Water Centre in Australia.”
Alpha, founder of the Water Coalition and the Climate Water Project (climatewaterproject.substack.com), envisions a “Project Drawdown” for water. While living in Ojai, California, he has been teaching about the “small hydrological cycle” and organizing watershed councils. On Earth Regenerators, under “Carry the Conversation,” Water Education, Alpha has been laying out a schema for understanding water, in its three phases. I’ve learned a lot from him. He decided to come to Barichara partly since Charles Upton is here. His offbeat sense of humor amazes me.
Paula, from Romania, has lived in Baranquilla, Colombia for the past 7 years. She says she felt drawn to Colombia ever since reading the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude). Having followed Joe’s work for a few years, she is particularly interested in regenerative finance, and wants to learn all she can about regeneration; planning to stay 2 weeks.
Merritt, from Connecticut, is a psychotherapist who works with youth around climate despair. She is the mother of an 8 year old son and will be with us for only a week. Elise took to her like a duck to water.
Syntropic Agroforestry
For two weeks, Paco from Brazil is visiting. He taught a 3-day workshop on Syntropic Agroforestry (SA) in the Bioparque shortly before I arrived. He is back now (by popular demand) to continue the work that began in the Bioparque.
He is also leading walks around various farms, offering practical ideas and implementing them. One of the farms he taught at this time was Paul’s, which I had visited last summer. Paco emphasizes the importance of the SA principles of density, diversity, and stratification. He recommends a lot of “chop and drop,” trimming off branches from trees to help build up the soil. The best time to do pruning is now, while it’s still the rainy season and trees grow rapidly. During the dry season, the shade is more of a priority.
On another walkabout, this one at the land of a wealthy retired banker, Paco planted a young avocado tree right at the base of another tree, which will help offer some shade from the strong sun; he lopped off branches from nearby trees and made a “mulch” of tree branches around the newly planted tree, then added some fique (grown for fiber) and nopal cactus close by. Paco taught us that all of these nearby plants share nutrients.
Visit to Agua Santa
The next day we went to Agua Santa (Sacred Water), the marvelous organic shade-grown coffee farm of Carlos Gomez and his wife Maritsa, while Paco took a day off. Joe has long been friends with this sweet couple, and an admirer of their work. They helped form a 14-farm coffee collective, Café Humano; Carlos has helped many other farmers with his knowledge of water flows, composting, biochar, and plants. Located in the vereda of Santa Helena, water scarcity is often an issue.
Carlos explained, while his wife translated into excellent English, how they built a series of “arcs” of stones in a small streambed, acting like leaky dams that slow and spread the water, allowing some to continue flowing down; they’ve also constructed many small ponds, some with lotuses. All but one of these is unlined, helping to replenish the aquifers. After months of searching, they had located a wellspring and the water from it is clean enough to drink unfiltered.
Providing shade for coffee plants are plantain, laurel and limon trees. The polyculture includes fifteen different plants: red beans add nitrogen, and various aromatic herbs help keep away destructive insects. Swales on contour, like the land smiling, hold water in the landscape.
We saw their bokashi compost operation, which produces finished compost in just a month due to frequent turnings. This is mixed with biochar, a highly porous charcoal, before being added to their plantings. Biochar is made on-site in three different types of burners, all of which allow for wood gases to burn off in an oxygen-poor environment. They also brew up activated microorganisms.
Carlos hires teens from other farms, who learn his advanced techniques of growing without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and teach their parents. Joe pointed out that this is another aspect of the Ecoversity.
Carlos’ neighbor, Juan, is building his home on a nearby farm. He showed us how he has been constructing ponds and waterways, in the serpentine shape of a snake, following the keyline, with a 2% drop in elevation in order for water to flow. Snakes are considered sacred as they are an indicator of the presence of water. A sediment-trapping pond forms the “eye” of the snake. Each unlined reservoir helps recharge the aquifer. Juan and his wife have the goal of not just farming, but educating, and evolving culture.
Said Joe: “Let us honor the ancestors by giving children a chance for a tomorrow.”
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