Costa Rica Permaculture Workshop

DAY 1 — MONTEVERDE CLOUD FOREST · The Welcome Mist

We gather at the Monteverde Friends School trailhead at 6am, just as the cloud-line rolls down through the canopy. Doña Marisol — third-generation Quaker-immigrant farmer and our lead permaculture teacher — opens with a tour of the school's living-classroom food forest: 32 species in five vertical layers, productive year-round. Each Luminary receives a hand-stitched canvas tool roll containing a Hori-Hori, grafting tape, a soil pH meter, and the workshop's printed seed catalog.

Through the day we map the school's water cycle from cloud-mist collection through swale-fed forest beds to greywater terraces. Participants pair off and chart their own contour-line water plans on a partner-farm site we'll visit on Day 3. Dinner is fire-cooked tortillas, local-grown black beans, and chayote stew under the open kitchen's tin roof while the mist lifts.