Meet Marco Lopez and the Osa Regenerative Farm. What is regenerative agriculture? It sounds like a good thing, but what does it look like in practice? And what does it mean in the middle of dense tropical rainforest?

While I was visiting Osa Conservation, I had the opportunity to volunteer on their regenerative farm. The first thing I learned about regenerative farming: it requires intense, unyielding, back-aching work.

You are probably thinking, well, of course. Farming is essentially labor-intensive in every way imaginable. Something about this farm was different. It wasn’t the same maneuver, the same harvest, the same planting row upon row. It was, rather, an immense garden bursting at the seams.

The first thing you notice when you enter the farm is dozens of rows of crops. That sounds about right, yes? Well, look a little bit closer. Each and every row is different from the other. There are tall green shoots, short stems, shaggy leaves, drooping vegetables like cucumbers, an overabundance of bananas, peppers of every imaginable color, ginger, herbs of every shape, and even vanilla beans. That’s just one row. Now look to your left. You will see dozens more rows with the same prolific variation.

Our job as volunteers was to harvest the cucumbers and remove all of the roughage from the root to the leaves. The vines, leaves, and roots were quite content to remain in the ground, thank you very much.

Very quickly, we learned why it was essential to remove the entirety of these cucumber plants. There were ginger sprouts already eagerly poking through the ground and looking for light!

The ginger has been there since before even the cucumbers were planted. They waited patiently while the cucumbers reached their green fingers out of the soil to the birth of the sturdy, bulbous green and water-laden vegetable. All the while, the ginger had been slowly growing and getting ready to poke its own green fingers into the open air. These two, somewhat disparate plants, grew together. They helped each other (until they outgrew each other). (Please note these are the words of a curious observer, not a real botanist.)

My fellow cucumber-harvesters and I stood up to survey our labors that felt hard-won under the oppressive tropical sun. When I looked around, I was painfully aware that we had just tended to only one of many dozens of rows that leafed and flowered as if to say, “okay, my turn!"

Our fearless leaders, Chonga and Marco, shared with us that they had started their day on the farm at around 3 in the morning. That was roughly ten hours before we stood there, drenched in sweat after just an hour of working. While we regained our electrolytes with fresh coconut water, we watched Chonga and Marco simply turn to the next bed and tend to the harvesting and composting efforts required by the next set of verdant plants.

I learned from this experience that regenerative agriculture is a labor of love for life itself. The resplendent leafy plants, fruits, and vegetables that make it to the table nourish the human beings on the Osa Peninsula. The rotting and deceased fruits find their way into ripe compost piles that become the rich beginnings of new soil and create layers upon layers of ingredients for the next life to come. Even in death, the conditions for life are created again.

The glory of growing food in this way is the diversity of life that is supported. What is the key to life on planet Earth? Biodiversity. The flourishing of a multiplicity of living beings. That’s it.

We need each other. And the only way we can support one another is by tending gardens that help each other. From soil, to seed, to shoot, to flower, to fruit, back to soil — and then the next shoot, stem, flower, and decay. It is a cycle that never ceases. It is true abundance: the essential nature of Mother Earth.

Thank you Marco, Chonga, and the many others who help feed the beings of the Osa rainforest.

We continue our journey on the Osa Peninsula at the Osa Conservation Tree Nursery. I had the pleasure of the meeting the arborist, Mairon, or Titi, as he prefers to be called. Titi is passionate about trees. He showed me around the expansive tree nursery where Osa is growing a 280 different tree species.

These saplings will eventually be taken to one of the 300 partner farms that Osa works with to support the development of riparian corridors. Their goal is to regenerate the native landscape to support wildlife, farmers, and those who depend upon the farms. Having a wildland corridor that connects through a farm, allows farmers to grow more lucrative crops such as vanilla beans or honey. As they tend to pollinators or vanilla bean vines, the bees and plants themselves then become a part of the regenerating forest. Each farm becomes a circle of care.

Back at the nursery, Titi is focused on planting hundreds of seedlings and tending to their initial growth under close observation. Osa works to revive even the most stubborn of tree species such as the Magnolia Hueteri, that is known to be difficult to cultivate at first.

When I stood in the nursery, I felt hope for a life on this planet that continues to be green and vibrant. Even in the great uncertainties of life on this planet as it seems to devolve in front of our very eyes, I think of these trees, ever continuously planted in an effort to feed future humans and monkeys alike. One day, I hope to be able to return to see some of these trees as they reach old age. Perhaps, centuries from now, they will be regarded as some of the old growth elders that have witnessed the regeneration of all life on this planet.

The Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica is a land of ecological resplendence. Not only is it well cared for under the protection of Corcovado National Park, it is also looked after by a biological corridor and conservation campus called Osa Conservation.

I had the immense pleasure of traveling to Osa Conservation last summer to spend a week learning about all of their work in conservation, native plant regeneration, and biodiversity protection. It was a life-changing experience.

The EarthStory Podcast continues in our third season featuring an enlightening conversation with the campus director of Osa, Eleanor Flatt. Eleanor shares about what it is like to live in the rainforest and what Osa is learning about biodiversity in their continuing work. Eleanor started out working in Costa Rica for a two month internship. Fast-forward ten years: she is still living, working, and advocating for the renewal of biodiversity in this extraordinary place.

Stay tuned for more videos sharing the work of the Osa Conservation Tree Nursery and Regenerative farm in the coming days.

Happy Winter Solstice!

We are observing the longest night of the year by revisiting a collection of music, stories, and poetry contributed some of our storytellers. On this long night, we are holding space for the darkness, the waiting, and the possibilities that can only emerge from the dark.

With gratitude for the co-creators of Solstice Stories:

Story sharing by: Youssef Ismael, Alrie Middlebrook, and Vicente Moreno

Music performed by: Michelé Crowder, Viveka Hall-Holt, Tess McCarty, Zoë García, and Grace Alexander.

Poetry by: Robert Hasselblad and Will Rand

Katherine Boland is an artist and advocate for the climate. Based on the southeast coast of Australia, Katherine experienced the terrifying impacts of the bush fires that gripped global headlines in 2019. As a multi-disciplinary artist, Katherine creates evocative work that holds space for the coexistence of beauty and devastation. Her work focuses on shining light on climate change and the ecological crisis we are facing globally.

This episode also features a few excerpts of “Burning” by Grace Brigham. Grace composed “Burning” to reflect on the perilousness of the fires in the Amazon rainforest and Australia between 2019 and 2020. This piece was never premiered due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EarthStory Podcast returns for a third season beginning with the artistry of Théodora Jonsson. As an artist and archeologist, she explores the geology of the Pacific Northwest listening to the poetry of the land. She creates art and sound in response to her deep listening. Her creativity is a duet, of sorts, with the world around her.

Théo collects tree saps and resins from around the world. She reduces them into paint resins to use for painting and printmaking. It is like she is painting with the tree and the tree is painting with her. It is a true collaboration.

As a multi-modal artist, she practices printmaking and glass blowing from sound vibrations. She observes how shapes transform when they move through water, rock, and ice. She also explores natural transformation from heating, cooling, and tension, learning from eons of evolution as well as how climate change affects us today.

In our conversation, Théo shared stories from her childhood exploring the Pacific Northwest with her family on foot and in the water. In the video below, Théo shares her work and artistic process from inside her studio above a resplendent meadow overlooking the Skagit Valley.

Our world has lost a giant. While we mourn the loss of a truly remarkable human being (and fellow primate), we will strive to be a part of her legacy. Jane taught us that we are all a part of nature and nature is a part of us. We are all interconnected in this great world’s web of life and no matter how we try, we cannot separate from it. We share this video today to honor Jane’s life and to invite all of us to rise to meet her legacy of hope and restoration of a better world for every living being. We all play a part of Jane’s dream for our world.

Thor Hanson is a delightful storyteller who keeps his eyes and ears close to the ground. After researching plants and animals all over the world from Tanzania to Costa Rica, Thor has come home to his own backyard biology. In his latest book, Close to Home, Thor shares stories and research uncovering entire new species discovered right in his own backyard and in the backyards of others around the world. He invites us to consider how we can better share our homes with the many other life forms who also inhabit our spaces, whether we already know them or not. As a lifelong conservation biologist, Thor shares with stubborn hope that we can be a part of the restoration of our Earth’s wellbeing simply by tending to native ecology and taking care of each one of our neighbors: bugs, birds, plants, and humans.