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The Sacred Suenos Andean Regeneration Project, Ecuador

Some days, says Yves, it’s like this, “dammit, the donkey just stepped on my foot and the goats ate my broccoli, but damn, look at that sunset!” Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to volunteer on Yves’ and Jen’s Sacred Suenos project. It is located on a mountainside near Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador. Using permaculture principles and methods as the overarching guiding force, they are regenerating the land. Oh, and by the way, it’s being done on the budget of a local farmer, and it’s a two-hour walk from the nearest road.

Yves was raised on dairy farms. When he was seventeen, his father asked him to promise to never be a farmer. With the goal of being a bureaucrat in mind, Yves did environmental studies at university. The moment of epiphany came in his third year, after doing a series of environmental ethics reflection papers and taking a summer visiting some organic farms. The realization that he was meant to work humbly with the land and not be behind a desk changed him. After university, he spent a few years hitchhiking through Latin America and volunteering on farms and realized that there was a place for him there. Feeling then that he now had a good amount of experience, it wasn’t until the project began that the realization of how much more he had to learn hit him.

While trying to bridge the gap between society and conservation, Jen studied the human dimensions of the subject. She realized how difficult it was to reconcile modern society’s direction with conservation and became involved with activism and native land rights issues. While traveling in Latin America, she began to seek out ways to live as one with the ecosystem. This brought her to Sacred Suenos, the place she now calls home.

Yves would have been happy almost anywhere in Latin America but he was looking for a few key features in a property. These were; no road access, no connection to any water or electrical systems, fresh springs, however not a large quantity of water and most importantly that it is a piece of degraded land. He did not want to displace locals that he felt should be rewarded for taking care of their land. He wanted to save and restore a piece of the Earth. The primary goal being to develop techniques and technologies that could be replicated by poor Ecuadorians, which could not only sustain them but hopefully increase their standard of living as well. Proving an alternative to cattle pasturing, which is the main reason for the massive deforestation on the surrounding mountains, was also coveted. Yves wished to show that there are other ways of making a living that can also include restoring a functioning ecosystem. The commitment was made to do this within the budget of a local campesino family, not the budget of a rich gringo. This meant not installing things like drip irrigation, although it would have saved a lot of time.

The Sacred Suenos site was chosen because it had been burnt year after year for almost a century. The acidic soil which lay on the steep slope had been leached of its nutrients. The whole mountainside had been abandoned about two generations ago. Looking back without regret, Yves admits he may have bit off a little more than he could chew because he was so green coming in. He didn’t desire beginning with a good piece of land because he wanted to prove that permaculture can be regenerative. Yves wanted to provide solutions to poor Ecuadorians and Andinos that did not have the same access to information and technology that he did.

After purchasing the property about six years ago, one of the first goals when starting out was to create housing and infrastructure for four to eight people. The site is about 10 hectares in total with about two of those flat enough for planting. Erosion control techniques, building soil structure (using native plants or other known dynamic accumulators to increase fertility), biodiversity and productivity were first priorities. In the beginning it was all project initiation and there was little maintenance. Now, most of the time is spent in maintenance. The more that is established, the more there is to maintain, especially concerning the animals. Establishing new things is where the excitement is. Although, as Yves puts it, the establishment phase was “brutal.”

Yves arrived callus-free after teaching English for two years in Japan. Combine this with learning to deal with the fact he was two hours from the nearest road. He had to learn to build with resources on the property, which took a lot longer than he thought it would. Originally, it was thought that five years would be enough time to get the soil productive. At this time it’s fairly productive but he’s still just scraping by. I can speak from personal experience though that the harvest the farm now enjoys is really high quality food. The grenadillas were in season, and eating them off the vine was pure heaven. The fresh salad greens, raspberries, herbs and goat cheese were awesome as well.

Getting back to the history, Yves built his humble dwellings and the kitchen for volunteers and then began digging contour ditches. He mimicked salt-based techniques which were previously used in the Philippines to prevent erosion and capture water in the rainy season. Yves originally acquired a large amount of organic matter producing agroforestry seeds, of which approximately 95% failed. He then changed course and began to work more with the native succession after cutting down the llashipa (bracken ferns). The natives then began to appear and Yves used these heavily, only picking out plants that he knew to not be potential dynamic accumulators. He was making compost, mulching heavily and building terraces for garden beds. He has experimented with multiple techniques of water saving, multi-cropping and irrigation. After the success of the greenhouses, donkeys, goats and chickens were introduced, converting “weeds” into fertile soil.

In a serendipitous turn, an American philanthropist who had been in the Vilcabamba area thirty years ago donated land to the project. Dismayed at the deforestation that had occurred since his last visit, he made the trek up to Yves’ project and they decided that more land was needed to demonstrate reforestation. Land was purchased above and beside the existing property. This new area will be used for Analog Forestry and other permaculture projects. Yves and Jen also intend to build their personal homestead on the new land.

The volunteers, who have come from all corners of the globe, have been integral since the early stages. It was always a part of the original plan. The local Ecuadorians work in families and groups and often in communal work parties called mingas. This philosophy was the basis for the volunteers being there. The site can currently sustain between four and eight people though most of the food is purchased in town at the local mercado with volunteer donations. Volunteers pay $25 a week which goes directly to food purchases. Yves laments though that most volunteers only stay for a short time, a couple of weeks on average. They need to have longer term participants on the farm and this is why an internship program is being developed. The complexity of the system requires quite a lot of time to train newcomers. People need time to understand the design in order to aid it. Yves hopes that in the future others will settle there in order to form a more permanent community. Jen also notes that the volunteers help them widen their own abilities to coexist with many different types of people. In addition, they provide ideas and a fresh look at things. It is very interesting and often entertaining for them to hear people’s comments and having others there just makes things more fun.

When I asked Yves and Jen what some of their favorite features of the site were, “the view” was a unanimous selection. Yves considers himself a forest and plant man, and because of that loves the altitude of 2100-2300m which allows them great diversity. They grow tropical plants in an adobe and plastic sheet greenhouse and blueberries outdoors in a terraced bed. Yves’ dream is to have a supermarket in his garden where he can just walk around and get what he needs. No petroleum: the one mile diet. Yves also admits he has fallen in love with the goats. He makes artesanal cheeses from the milk and the sales in town support him financially. Jen says that she especially likes watching the succession of biodiversity and the arrival of new animals. Owls and frogs arrived last year. She also enjoys the locals and foreigners alike who come to see an active demonstration site.

What are the current needs of the project now and going forward? People, who are intelligent, passionate and committed to the project. Money isn’t really needed because assets would then exceed those of the local families.

Future plans include:

  • The creation of a Regenerative Andean Design Institute, where interns will be trained to take the information to other local Andean communities based on need.
  • A social project on the farm, including social workers on a holistically developed and designed site to help a disenfranchised sector of society such as street children or orphans. Yves is looking for an organization that could run this aspect of the project. It is still an open concept in the planning stages.
  • They also wish to have people with different educational backgrounds to teach skills at the project, and believe it or not, Yves needs a PDC! You won’t find many that know more about sustainable self-sufficient living than Yves, but he has never had the opportunity to take the PDC himself.
  • Analog Forestry. A system of reforestation focusing on the forest rather than plantations. The only way to see the mountains back into forest.
  • Internship Program. Positions are to include a Farm/Volunteer Coordinator, who will manage volunteers, know the gardens well enough to maintain them and initiate new ones, an Appropriate Technology Intern who will apply a project of their interest that meets the needs of the farm and a three month Educational Internship including lectures, readings and library time, while also helping in day-to-day farmwork.
  • A PDC at the farm.

Yves pictures the future of the valley as a patchwork of permaculture sites owned by locals, demonstrating that you can live off of the land selling value-added products and lead a much happier life than a city labourer. Yves says that, “modernity has made it very easy to live in society, and as long as it is convenient, people will do so.” He believes it’s all based on cheap energy of course and when this disappears things won’t last much longer and society will begin to break down. There will be a reverse migration back to the land and when that happens, it would be much better to have garden and forest systems already well underway.

In the immediate now, people need an alternative that can make them money. In an honest and frank reality check, Yves says that the project has been successful in terms of building a sustainable system but is unlikely to be replicated in its entirety by locals due to the amount of time and work it takes in the establishment phases. However, Yves sells a 250g goat cheese for about $6. This could be replicated by locals. He supports himself on the sales of cheese from just three goats. The goats are also great for reforestation when used intelligently. Avenues for locals could include sauces, teas, preserves, coffee and herbal medicines, among many other options. These are ways that permaculture can ecologically sustain people there, on much less land than cattle.

It was a great experience to spend three weeks at Sacred Suenos. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys beautiful vistas, home cooked vegetarian food, fresh fruits and vegetables, challenging work and good debate. It’s an excellent opportunity to expand your permaculture knowledge and learn some of those crucial implementation skills, all while supporting one of the most important and interesting projects in Latin America. Go on up to the mountain, and see what you can dream.

More information can be found at the Sacred Suenos website at www.sacredsuenos.com

8 Comments

  1. Good to see that permaculture techniques are being used to remediate denuded landscapes. Great article, love the pictures!

  2. You mention that only two hectares of the ten are flat enough for planting.

    I’m just curious to know if various tree crops can grow on the slopes. If not, what are you doing with all the too-steep-for-planting land you have. It’s 8/10ths of your property.

  3. Hello Andrew, all of the area not allocated to pasture is being regenerated actively and/or being allowed to succeed naturally. On the land that is too steep to plant on it’s own, terraces and small swales have been created using a variety of methods including beds of llashipa. The too-steep-to-plant comment refers to planting straight into unaltered ground and refers more to annual plants.

  4. Interesting article. Nice to see something developing out of hard work and determination. Looks like a nice place to spend some time.

    Regards,

  5. Hi, we’d like to get in touch with Yves and Jen about volunteering but their website is currently down – please can we have an email address. We are Permaculturalists due to be visiting the country in September.

  6. How much money per month from cheese does he make from 3 goats? Because I may be interested in making an investment on more goats for him, I will be visiting Vilcabamba within the next two months. Does anyone know how much or what range of raw cheese a goat can produce per month in weight?

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