We have had quite the response to telling our friends and family of our Costa Rica plans, I'll try to answer a few questions in this post, and more in a future post.
One of our friend from my old website, BikeForums.net owns a reforestation company. He buys small farms in his area of Costa Rica, then sells the first harvest of hardwood trees to investors. His company owns 800 or so acres of land with 43 different types of hardwood trees. (I may be slightly off on the numbers, 700 acres / 41 types?)
We went down to Costa Rica with the intent of spending a few days with him and seeing how he lives, and what its like to be an expat in Costa Rica. We quickly learned that he was going to go look at a 140 acre farm to buy for his business in the next week or so. One thing led to another and we ended up making a deal with him to buy a large portion of the trees on the land as well as our pick of 10 acres for our personal farm.
Right now there are cows on the land, and the rain forest was clear cut in the last few decades. By next spring, we will have picked out our 10 acres and our home site. At that point, we will have a small 800sq ft house built. We will live in this house while our real house is being built. Once our real house is complete, we are going to hire a local tico couple to live on our 10 acres with us. They will help us around the garden, help us shop, do dishes etc... full time help!
In 5 years from now, the tree's planted will be 20 - 30 feet tall.
In 8 years, some of the trees will be cut down, less then 10%.
In 25 years all the hardwood trees planted on the other 130 acres will be harvested.
As the trees grow, the underbrush will not be cut, and native trees will soon start to take over the land. After 25 years and the last harvest, the land will be put into a conservation easement, at that point our 10 acres will be surrounded by 130 acres of primary rain forest.
We are moving down there with the goal and intent to live 100% self sustainable. After a few years of living there we want to morph our land into more of an eco-resort by adding half a dozen small cabinas to our land and renting them out by the week or month. We also have in mind doing week long raw food and yoga retreats, but only once we are fully settled into the land and culture.
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