We Will Not Let Them Stop Us

It’s been about a year and a half since this project was started. We’ve had some successes as well as many challenges, we’ve made some valuable friendships, and we continue to learn every day.

We’ve planted countless fruit trees on this land, along the roads, and on other land nearby: most abundantly jackfruit, ice cream bean, rollinia, morete, and chicle, along with several other native and exotic species.

We’ve harvested some great fruit like ice cream bean, rambutan, rollinia, pineapples, passionfruit, pumpkins, guavas, watermelons, and several lesser-known native Amazon fruits like badea, paso, Amazon tree grape, arazá, and a few that we haven’t identified.

We’ve developed relationships with several neighbors and learned that many of them would like to sell their land. We’ve had some wonderful volunteers help this project in many ways, and a few of them are interested in buying land here or assisting with crowdfunding to help other people acquire land to conserve and reforest.

This project is still in its early stages, but it is slowly starting to take shape and come to life. However, none of this has been without challenges and setbacks. For most of the first year, the neighbors’ chickens and dogs destroyed a lot our gardens, killing newly planted fruit trees and damaging the crucial soil, compost, and mulch around them, in addition to stealing a lot of food from our homes. Fortunately the pinto peanut has established in most of the areas near the border, which makes it very difficult for the chickens to forage for food, so they’ve mostly lost interest in coming here.

In the past several months, the cows from three different neighbors have invaded this land many times and caused absolute chaos. They have destroyed many fruit trees, flowers, pinto peanut and sweet potato plantations, stream banks, and a bridge, and they’ve caused a lot of damage to the soil and watersheds.

So the domesticated animals, primarily the cows, are not only the biggest cause of deforestation and destruction in this area, but they are also the biggest destroyers and preventers of the reforestation efforts.

Around August-September of 2024 was one of the hottest and driest periods any locals we’ve talked with can remember. The plants in this region are used to consistent year-round rainfall, so many of them struggled from the lack of water. Many of the plants and trees we planted died or suffered from the extremity, but most of them have been replaced, and after an ample amount of fairly steady rainfall starting in about January, the gardens and fruit trees are thriving again.

We have also been witnessing a rapid expansion of cacao, corn, and other monoculture plantations around us, with our neighbors destroying more of the forest to create unhealthy environments for pure profits.

At this stage our main focuses are on the maintenance and continued expansion of the fruit forest and general reforestation, as well as finding people who want to participate in these efforts to buy the neighboring lands to slow down and eventually stop the destruction and create the fruit forest paradise we envision and will continue working on until we achieve.

Those who share our Core Values, primarily standing for total human and animal liberation, and who want to live freely in the tropics and grow an abundance of food, are invited to visit this area and the land available to reforest and create a life of peace and self-sufficiency.

— Brian