Plant 30,000 native trees Costa Rican owned farms

Our community tree planting Initiative in Costa Rica focuses on local subsistence farmers planting bio diverse trees on their own widespread deforested cattle farms. These farms typically suffer from bad soil and the owners can no longer raise profitable cattle. We have created a solution that works for everyone. Locals make money by producing and planting trees with in deforested areas near the Equator where benefits are compounded for all of us.  

Healthy trees need fertile soil to develop robust, root balls.  Fermenting fruit  material mixed into the compost inoculates the trees naturally. We nourish our baby trees in the nursery with specially prepared soil for a full year before we plant them so that they can survive the first hard couple of years out in the cow pasture. Community members fill the medium sized tree bags with bokosha soil produced by our women's group, ladies like Daney pictured here. 

Daney is 58 years old and has 13 children. She lives in a rustic house and earns extra money producing fertile bokosha soil for our tree nurseries. More and more, our fertile dirt production has gathered momentum and folks around town are buying it up!  Cleaning up the riversides by removing cow poop prevents nitrogen overload in the whole watershed leading to the nearby Pacific ocean 13 kms downstream. 

The link between the dirt and the trees reveals the magic of Nature. And creates a space where we humans can participate! The trees make the dirt by dropping branches, piling up with leaves and fermenting fruit and animal feces dropping from nests and canopies. Add the shade and dappled sunlight, cooler temperatures and cover, and magic dirt appears. The dirt makes the tender young trees grow by giving them a chance to develop a root ball and get nourishment from “topsoil” during the first challenging years. Round and round they go, the dirt and the trees. We all need each other to survive.