Welcome to Atitlan Organics on the north shore valley of Tzununa on Lake Atitlan in central Guatemala. This is one of the least populated of many villages surrounding the lake. Public and private boat service is offered from village to village all day. The views are stunning. There are 3 large volcanoes bordering the south side of the lake and daily active volcanoes in the distance. It's not uncommon to see a few puffs of smoke coming from Mount Fuego.
We are now about a 4 hour shuttle or chicken bus in from Guatemala City or 2 hours from the old city of Antigua. From there you take a boat from any of the main villages and when you dock, be prepared for steep slope climbing and offers of tuk tuk rides.
The farm is located about 10-20 mins up a steep rocky road. The lake and looming volcanoes at your back provides an inspiring view.
Here's a basic introduction to the farm and some of their philosophies.
If you are willing to volunteer, set yourself up at the newly built Bambu Guesthouse and be sure to catch Shad's Friday morning talk and tour. Along with his wife Colleen, Shad has been on this land since 2010. Him and his farm came recommend from friends across the globe from Sri Lanka to Canada. Within a few minutes of hearing him speak about his motivations and mantras coupled with his friendly, easy going and accepting tone - it's easy to see why.
Their 3 main focuses are:
1 - Grow, eat, and sell food shared among families.
2 - Experiment with different seeds, plant, and animal combinations and adapted breeds.
3 - Education and volunteering.
The mantra they went with in the first 5 years went something like, "Sustainable life needs to sustain itself."
As this goal eventually started to materialize, Chad talked about finding some moral and ethical problems with that focus. As his sustainable life began looking good with most of his food coming from his own land and expenses were finding a balance, the lives of his farm help and local partners left little room for their own land, family, education, and general life.
His new mantra began to evolve into, "If my sustainable life prevents others from living sustainably, I'm not sustainable."
This brought about change from the typical farm life with people working 4 days a week so as to allow time for them to work with their own families and within the community. They also entered into a even and open profit and surplus sharing system.
Along with his local family partners and fellow permaculture teachers on the farm, they are working a challenging hill side plot which they terraced out with swales and somehow made room for multiple animal houses and garden beds. When they first arrived the land was uncleared and had no water features although they are located near a small running mountain river. As one repeated permaculture catchphrase goes, "The yeild of the land is only limited to the developers creativity."
They are working about half of 2 1/2 acres at the moment and living in a lovely little permanent concrete foundation house with an semi open kitchen, back garden and storage shed. They also are building an open air education and main function centre along side an outdoor farm kitchen where we usually have breakfast.
"It's not how beautiful an area looks, it's how beautifully it functions". Above we see small nursery planting boxes made out of whatever material that works.
One of their most profitable features are the goats which are grazed in different spots daily along the mountainside. Here we have the perfect goat nutrition combination. Goat tree, which is any nitrogen fixing plant coupled with mulberry and sugar cane.
A healthy chicken house doesn't smell !
Good times are had in the egg laying chicken house. It's sectioned into two halves with younger chicken in the front with one small pig and mature egg producing chickens in the back along side larger pigs and a goat. Half its height is walled off with lots of room for airflow around the top. There is a front and back door to allow room for different outdoor scratching and pecking areas as to not over-stress one place. The floor is covered with straw and watered down daily as well as sometimes turned. The natural chicken fertilizing and ground scratching combined with that of the pigs makes for an ever growing deep compost soil floor which can be dug out when needed for adding rich soil to growing beds and gardens.
Above are some of the meat birds. Their feeding troughs, made from bamboo cut in half, are place in different areas outside along with watering plates as chickens have a tendency to fertilize more where they eat and drink.
Where there are taro plants there is water. Here we see one of many small swales that run along the contour lines of the land. 80% of the time across all climates, swales; which are basically run off water ditches, improve the quality of the land by helping to evenly distribute water and soaking nutrients into the soil as well as raising the overall water table and leaving less erosion or wasted runoff.
I also learned that when picking taro for its nutritious and filling edible parts, it's best to pick not when the leafs are at full head bloom but a few month afterwards when they start to shrink and wilt. This is when the edible root is largest.
The pigs on the farm are happy, healthy, helpful, and pregnant. This was not always the case though. It seems there is a very real body of evidence for the idea of introduced animals need time to adapt to the bacterial functions of the land and vice versa.
Above you can see through the fence a small water hole which the pigs stomp down and role in which helps seal small ponds and areas wanting for collecting water.
An interesting point that Shad brought up during the tour was a way of looking at problems close at hand and around the world. By asking oneself, "what is the ecological function of (fill in the blank) " we start looking at things in different ways - especially things we perceive as inherently bad. For example, what is the ecological function of mosquitoes? Are they the way people, plants and animals vaccinate themselves between one another? Without them what other parts of the ecosystem would suffer or benefit?
This led on to talking about how things that at first are fruitful and good can often eventually turn destructive and bad. A thirsty plant with the water left on it for days will eventually turn into a wilted mess in an anaerobic pool.
The point? Always observe with an open mind.
Bonus, the surrounding villages are full of interesting ideas. Below we have a plastered wall filled with plastic bottles that are packed solid with plastic bags surrounded and held together with chicken wire. You can keep a plastic bottle for bags in your kitchen or take one around with you for picking up garbage. Just pack all the plastic down with a stick. This wall should last a few hundred years no problem.
Later this week I'll be showing you the construction of the Bambu Guesthouse as well as some of the daily chores, interesting projects, and more detailed functions of the farm coming up soon.
The wife is very happy there is a black cat around ;)
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