Finca Carolina: The Inception

To understand how Finca Carolina came to be what it is today one needs to back up in time, how long? (I must be getting older) let’s say about 14 years. Approximately 1994-1999 at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I studied Anthropology and Environmental Studies and graduated in 1998. However, for me and many other friends with whom I am still close will say that it was the friendships that we made that we value the most today. Lifelong alliances formed for many of us during this period. This was a period of questioning all elements of what we called the establishment or The Machine. Many of the downfalls of industrialized society were becoming more and more apparent each day. Ideas and information from classes about environmental degradation worldwide, unjust foreign policy, the failure of the War on Drugs inspired lengthy conversations that often lasted all night often fueled by red wine and brownies. As we looked at what our modern world had to offer: work like hell for somebody else for somebody else until you’re 65 years old, get your retirement, and head to sunny Florida; we simply were not inspired to follow this route. I personally felt then and feel to this day that we as the human race are capable of much more. One of the highlights of our group of friends was that we possessed a tremendous range of talents including great artists, musicians, writers, and teachers. Incredibly enough, during the years following this era this list has grown to include a number of UNC-Chapel Hill degree carrying farmers, carpenters, furniture builders, and a blacksmith. Dreams of community and working together cooperatively entered the discussions on many nights. For some, those dreams faded after graduation while for others like myself they just wouldn’t go away. I turned to agriculture, particularly organic agriculture as a way to reconnect myself to some of the basic cycles of Nature.

During the course of my undergraduate experience I had an opportunity for which I have always been and will always be grateful: A study abroad semester in Belize. Unlike most Study Abroad students heading off to places like France, England, Spain, etc, I decided to enroll in a program focused on natural and cultural ecology in Belize. I immediately fell in love with the tropics: the fruits were so inviting and delicious and there was always a new fruit waiting to reveal itself to me. In Belize, I met so many wonderful people who were hardworking, resourceful, and ready to share whatever they may have to offer. I also begin to learn about the dynamics between the North and the South, or developed versus developing nations. I traveled to banana plantations where toxic chemicals were endangering the health of workers and entire ecosystems. I saw also in Guatemala indigenous farmers forced to farm marginal, incredibly steep mountainsides while lush agricultural valleys were planted with pineapples and coffee for export. I met so many people who despite tough economic conditions seemed happier overall than many North Americans who had literally all they could possibly need and more at their fingertips. As I looked at the hands of the Belizean people, young and old, and then looked at my own, the hands said it all. My hands were soft, not a callus on them, for they had held little more than books and pens at this time. The hands of the Belizean men and women and women told a different story of hard physical work with their long since hardened calluses. I became inspired to want to learn to work with my hands, to do things that my own education had simply not included. An early mentor for me, Emmeth Young, in the Belizean village of Gales Point Manatee taught me how to build African drums and began my instruction in playing them. I continue to build and play African drums to this day. I also started to learn to use a machete and learned to recognize many of the tropical crops I would later grow at Finca Carolina.

Return trips to Central America brought me to Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua continued to fuel and feed my passion for the tropics. It was Costa Rica, however, that captivated me the most and found myself imagining a life for myself there. Robert, one of my closest allies, entered a sustainable agriculture program of study at Central Carolina Community College and two years later was managing a small organic vegetable farm called Green Toe Ground (The pristine Toe river borders the farm) in the mountains of North Carolina in a gorgeous valley called Celo. He was four years into running the farm when I showed up for what was to be a brief visit but turned into a farm internship that lasted two growing seasons. My experience with farming at that point had been some volunteering at Sustenance Farm, near Pittsboro NC; and I had completed a Permaculture design course in New Mexico under the tutelage of Scott Pittman. At Green Toe Ground I learned the ins and outs of running a small organic farm. Cover cropping, composting, crop rotations, natural soil amendments, nutrient management, companion planting, and green manuring were among the concepts and practices I learned at green Toe Ground. Robert had also been to Costa Rica on numerous occasions and we continued to dream about buying land there to start a self sustaining farm, ecological education center, and ecotouristic business endeavor. When we decided to make a land scouting trip down here in the winter of 2002, our third partner, Dave, who had also traveled to Costa Rica, let us know that if we found some great land that we was in too! Through different means and travels we had all experienced Costa Rica and Pura Vida and had all been captured by it. We were hooked.

We were three guys with a dream: to create a paradise like garden with an existence directly intertwined with Nature. To go to sleep each night listening to a myriad of insects, frogs, owls, night birds, and many others. To awaken early in the morning to sounds of troops of howler monkeys informing their whereabouts to neighboring troops or perhaps a noisy flock of screeching, iridescent, green parrots. To create a space in which all art forms thrive and individuals create and achieve great things because they are doing each day what they truly love to do. To work together towards common goals. To cultivate healthy food on healthy soils. To learn from the local people the skills we would need. To celebrate indigenous culture. To develop small businesses in order to generate money for life’s necessities that cannot be grown or raised on your land (unfortunately in our modern paradigm, life without any money is exceedingly difficult). To invite researchers of the natural sciences to help us identify, catalogue, and protect Neotropical biodiversity. To create a space which someday might instill a heightened appreciation of Nature in the people who visit it. This was our dream and all we needed was the land on which to build our dreams.

So in January 2002 we embarked on a journey to find that piece of land….