Hello fellow Permies!
My wife and I are offering our Costa Rican Mountain Retreat and Homestead for sale. We thought some of you might be interested as we have incorporated so much of what we have learned from this site into the development of our property.
Here is our website:
http://www.mountainretreatcostaricaforsale.com
I would like to share some additional information that doesn't appear on the website that will be of special interest to Permies in particular.
I will attach a few photos of the house, gardens, orchard, barn etc. here but please check out the website as there are many more photos there.
We built our homestead and beautifully crafted wooden house with permaculture principles in mind. All of the wood used is very resistant to the elements and comes from sustainable forestry systems. The zones are planned out in accordance with the advice given in the Permaculture Designers Manual. All of our systems feed into and off of each other as best they can. Here are some highlights:
We raise goats for meat and milk as well as chickens for eggs and meat (of course we gets tons of compost a year as well).
Fruit Orchards (see attachments).
Rotational grazing cells for goats/sheep moved every three weeks to stay ahead of the parasite cycle. They are not returned to the first cell for 12 weeks after they have been moved. Chickens are run through the cells behind them to sanitize the pasture.
Indoor rotational composting system utilizing the goats bedding to hot compost in the chicken coop with a 1x1x1 meter box then moved through to become the chickens bedding before being moved again to finish off outside of the coop and then being ready to use in the garden.
Hundreds of mulch/firewood/fodder trees planted. This allows us to compost in place (chop and drop) in the fruit orchard, supplies tons of food for the goats and keeps us stocked with firewood for those chilly nights in the summer and wood for the cook stove.
I should mention here that we are at 1500 meters above sea level which is the perfect environment to grow all of the European crops as well as still being warm enough for a lot of tropical crops as well (ginger, turmeric, cardamom, mangoes, etc). This elevation allows you to work all throughout the day without suffocating from the heat! (I used to live on the beach).
Gravity fed spring water from a year round spring. There is SO much water here! This is the most water secure area in all of Costa Rica and one of the most water secure areas in Central America. (Tapanti National Park area/Orosi Valley).
Speaking of the National Park, the views that you see in the photos are all of Tapanti National Park. It is right across the valley from us!
We have a goldfish pond that is gravity fed into the garden for great fertigation.
We have lines of vetiver grass and coppice mulch trees planted on contour all throughout the orchards for passive terrace building.
25% of the property is Primary Forest. It is very magical and supplies us with abundant mushrooms such as Turkey Tail and Reishi which we make medicinal tinctures from. (This has been quite a profitable business for us). We also forage wild Oyster mushrooms and Purple Ear mushrooms which are great for vein health and circulation.
There are also very healthy populations of leaf molds in the forest which we use to make EM.
There are plenty of lumber trees which are ready to harvest for future building projects (Cypress and Bitter Cedar). We also have Guadua Bamboo planted for building projects as well as a type of utility bamboo (about 1" thick) which is great for making trellises with.
There is a high end birding hotel across the valley from us. Last year the visiting birders counted over 180 different species of birds! This hotel has also been a great source of income for us as they are happy to purchase everything that we grow!
I am sure that there is more to say about our homestead. We really put all of our love into it. But I'll stop here for now. Please check out the attachments as there are some great photos as well as a useful plants and trees list pertaining to the property. I'll be happy to answer any questions
