Self-sufficient-farm diary #1: Base situation

This is going to be the start of a series on how we are trying to build up self-sufficient-farming in Costa Rica.
In this part I want to lay out the situation I was met with, when I came to our finca.

Greenhouse

We have a greenhouse, which is about 8x12m big. It has a closed roof but a dense net on all four sides adapted to the climate, because the main purposes of the greenhouse are to block out the heavy rains of the rainy-season and to keep out intruders in lizards. They especially like the inner heart of young plants, killing it in the process. With temperatures of 20°C to 30°C there is no need to use a greenhouse for higher temperatures.
In the greenhouse there was one half  set up with a variety of vegetables with a perma-culture setup.

Bananas

There was forest of Bananas already existing. Some sort of Banana, the locals call "quadrados", which are used for cooking similar to potatoes, that are nearly not sweet at all. Most of them were big already and we harvested the first shrub shortly after my arrival. The second kind of bananas are sweet ones. they were still little, when I came here.

Water

The property has two parts, that are tropical rainforest. In both there are fresh-water sources. They already had pipes and a solar-panel installed, but it was not working yet. The plan was to use the water for everything, that we do on the farm to save money, be independend if it should be getting complicated with the water recources in the future and to have clean water to drink and cook, because in Costa Rica, they pout clorine in the pipes to keep them clean, making it not a great experience to use.

Animals

There only where a cat and a dog, no animals that are useful for self-sufficency.

Outside-field

They made on outside field with a tunnel out of a metal-grid with chayotes and some yuccas. Chayotes look like green apples and can be used for soup or be cooked in the oven and yucca basicly is the tropical version of a potatoe.

Fruits

They had started planting a few trees. But all of them were smaller than one meter. We want to have big variety of fruits. The trees they planted included lemons, pomegranate and star-fruit.


So this was roughly the base situation I was met with, when joining the project. Let us see how far we can take it and what kind of problems we face on our journey:)
Location: Costa Rica

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