Awakening the Badass

It was a long journey looking for land. We knew that we wanted to live in nature, far removed from the vices of Babylonnoun: the entire matrix of the financial, legal, industrial, military, media, medical, education, entertainment, transportation, technology, religious, and virtually every other man-made complex, and to create a food forest that would nourish us with clean healthy food and help to reduce or eliminate our reliance on others.

We looked in several countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where the environments are most hospitable for growing tropical fruit. After hearing about a part of Ecuador where the weather is great and the land is still affordable, we honed the search to the area around Loreto in Orellana Province. After many disappointing experiences with sellers and problems with the land we were seeing for sale, we finally ended up finding 3.52 hectares that would work for the food forest and nature-based living we envisioned.

But one of the biggest challenges here, as with many places, was the people around us. The land we found is in a beautiful valley with jungle surrounding it, but a significant portion of it has been destroyed, mostly for cattle ranching but also for mono-crop farming and a few other industrial uses.

So the planting began, and the trees started growing. Every garden has its challenges, but the unusually dry weather posed a bigger hurdle to getting the food forest started. We’ve been making lots of trips watering new trees with buckets of water from the creeks and replacing a lot of them that have dried out and died.

The physical work is bearable, but the hardest thing to cope with is what we see around us. We watched the neighbours next door cut down almost every remaining wild forest tree on their land. We hear chainsaws killing more trees in the distance, hear machines cutting grass that wouldn’t be there if the jungle still existed, and see people burning land, leaving or burning trash on their land, and more.

Around us there are constantly cows, horses, and goats tied to trees like slaves, animals enclosed in cages like prisoners, people physically abusing animals, chickens squawking through the night (and destroying our gardens, and eating our food), people creating ponds to grow fish just to kill, scraggly dogs invading our land to steal our food, people shooting animals with guns, and an overall lack of respect for any of the innocent beings. It’s one thing to see documentaries and hear stories, but it’s very different to experience these things all around you.

We came here to create our own little paradise, but the surrounding environment and especially the people doing the damage have prompted us to follow a bigger mission.

The first thought that we had was to invite people who were interested in reforesting to buy land from any neighbours who were selling and to collaborate in reviving as much of the surrounding area as possible.
And that was how the idea of Badass Fruiterrarist Land was born.

We were also very aware of the larger-scale devastation that the entire Amazon Rainforest and many forests around the world are facing, so we decided to use this endeavour as an example for others to replicate - a project called Amazon Restore.

So we built this website to share information about the danger that the Amazon is in as well as what people can do about it.

We invite everyone to read the site, learn as much as you can about these topics, and join us if your conscience tells you that helping to save forests and all of the beings who call them home is a worthy cause.

“If we don’t do something now, it may be too late if we ever do…”