You might ask, “Why a cacao farm for healing and wellness?”
BREATHING IN THE FRESH AIR
BEING SURROUNDED BY SOUNDS OF THE FOREST
INGESTING MEDICINAL CHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS OF CACAO
EARTHING/FOREST BATHING: BEING SURROUNDED BY THE TREES ALL DAY
PICKING FRESH FRUIT OFF OF A TREE AND EATING IT RIGHT THERE ON THE SPOT
I am so excited to bring you a one year update from the cacao farm here in Costa Rica!
Since I started taking herbal supplements and using herbal salves at such a young age, I’ve always loved herbs and plant medicine. Still, I never thought I would be blessed with the opportunity to work so intimately with a sacred healing plant such as cacao, never mind the fact that it is used to make one of my favorite substances in the world, chocolate!
It has now been one year on the finca and I can’t help but look back on this time with gratitude and a sense of inspiration to do better next year. It has been a long 12-months of learning, making mistakes, and growth! The first harvest from last year happened in October and yielded a lot of beans! Five of us worked the entire side of the mountain and braved the steep mountain side to find all the fruit that was ready for the picking! We saw lots of fruit that had been tasted by the squirrels. They like to snack on the fruit by chewing a hole in the side of it, eating just a few beans, and then moving on to the next fruit!
After collection we cut open the pods! Using a machete we cut into the fruit on 2-3 sides so that we are able to break the cacao pod open by hand. Then we scoop the delicious white fruit covered cacao beans out of the pod. I’m always excited to see what is resting inside when opening a pod! Some fruit is perfectly ripe, some is a little over ripened, and some is a little young, but it all works for making chocolate! For eating however – this is the treasure hunt! I love cracking open a pod and discovering the perfectly ripened, juicy, plump white pulp surrounding the cacao seeds. Part of the job includes sucking the delicious white meat off of the seed and spitting the seeds into the pile for fermentation. This presents enzymes from your saliva into the beans to support the fermentation process.
The fermentation process takes about five days of storing the beans outdoors hanging in a bag that is porous so the juice can drip out. Each day you need to go out and mush the beans around to support the process. All of this went well, but the drying did not! There’s a lot of rain still happening in the months of October and November so the drying process can require a lot of attention, and if you don’t have the right equipment, time availability, or process in place, the beans will mold. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened to my first harvest! I tried to salvage them by washing them in a white vinegar and water solution and re-drying them (which took a little over a week), but the mold had made its way inside about 60% of the beans. Because of this, I lost the entire first harvest, which was the largest and took the most work of the entire season!
I felt guilty. I felt as if I had failed the farm and disappointed Mother Cacao. My dear friend Flori, the medicine woman who has helped me learn much of what I know about harvesting cacao, and who worked at the closest cacao farm to me, Finca Divina Vida, assured me that it was OK and that Mother Cacao is forgiving. Over the past year, I have learned the hard way, where I can give space to the trees to do their own thing and where I need to show up and support them. Ideally on a farm someone would be out tending the trees a couple of days a week. I do not have time for this, but have been able to hire some support and with over 800 trees, there’s a lot of work to be done!
A beautiful retreat space was also built here on the farm for you to come and experience the healing properties and magic of Mother Cacao and Costa Rica. The space was completed within the first six months of purchasing the farm and was listed on Airbnb in February of 2024. We now are hosting private healing retreats for singles and couples on an ongoing basis. Please consider coming here to receive healing energy, from the trees, the cacao, myself, the animals, the butterflies, the birds, the sky, the ocean, the sunshine and the rain. It is a place to connect to your soul, to hear yourself again, to re-discover and reclaim yourself, your dreams, your health, your inner strength and knowing. It’s not an easy journey, transformational healing, but it’s rewarding beyond imagination.
This past year has been one for the books! Thank you for reading, for caring, and for loving yourself enough to seek healing each day, even if just a little bit. We are here to support you! Keep Thriving!