Cultivating Connections Amidst Costa Rica’s Regenerative Renaissance

The Journey:
How I Got Here

My interest and exploration of the regenerative movement began in my twenties as a vagabond. I spent six years backpacking around the continent, visiting dozens of intentional communities and permaculture farms in Hawai’i and across North and Central America, searching for a place that felt like home.

I came close several times, but was young and had restless feet. Over the years, I became intimately familiar with various nuances of how different projects operated, welcomed guests and volunteers, and made decisions.

Something I didn’t understand until I founded and operated my own project was that the communities that thrived had something the struggling ones didn’t – clear systems beneath the surface. Not bureaucracy, but foundational infrastructure built on agreements. These governance models and cultural frameworks set the stage for diverse people to work toward a shared vision without burning out or falling apart.

In 2009, after six months traveling from Minnesota in our veggie-oil school bus, my family and I landed in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica, and co-founded Finca Fruición, a permaculture land cooperative and education center. For our first seven years there, we hosted a steady stream of students and volunteers, taught permaculture design, built cabins, held an array of events, and regenerated 20 acres of deforested pastureland. During this time, I learned firsthand what it takes to build and sustain a regenerative project (and it, most certainly, wasn’t easy).

After those seven years of active operation, we moved the family back to Minnesota to acquire services for one of our sons. While there, I spent two years immersing myself in studying what I’d long judged and dismissed: business design, tech tools, automation systems, and strategic frameworks used by some of the world’s most successful organizations.

Following some waves of change, I moved back to the farm without the family. And then the pandemic hit. Our project was no longer what it once was, and sustaining it with tourist rentals was no longer an option. That’s when I started the podcast to learn what other landowners were doing that we could model.

I spent some years trying to revive it after our absence, but eventually I realized that my dedication to reviving that single land project was holding me back from the new work calling me forward.

Leaving Finca Fruición was humbling, but it freed me to pursue what I now see as my real work: building regional resilience, facilitating nationwide networking, and helping visionary founders create the systems their projects need to last.

I’d set out to become a bridge, a connection between sound organizational practices and the regenerative projects that too often push them away.

Today, that bridge is bringing new audiences, tools, and strategies to regenerative projects that desperately need them, without compromising the values that drive us to do what we do. 

You, my friend, are a member of that bridge.
Thanks for joining us!

The Journey:
How I Got Here

My interest and exploration of the regenerative movement began in my twenties as a vagabond. I spent six years backpacking around the continent, visiting dozens of intentional communities and permaculture farms in Hawai’i and across North and Central America, searching for a place that felt like home.

I came close several times, but was young and had restless feet. Over the years, I became intimately familiar with various nuances of how different projects operated, welcomed guests and volunteers, and made decisions.

Something I didn’t understand until I founded and operated my own project was that the communities that thrived had something the struggling ones didn’t – clear systems beneath the surface. Not bureaucracy, but foundational infrastructure built on agreements. These governance models and cultural frameworks set the stage for diverse people to work toward a shared vision without burning out or falling apart.

In 2009, after six months traveling from Minnesota in our veggie-oil school bus, my family and I landed in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica, and co-founded Finca Fruición, a permaculture land cooperative and education center.

For our first seven years there, we hosted a steady stream of students and volunteers, taught permaculture design, built cabins, held an array of events, and regenerated 20 acres of deforested pastureland. During this time, I learned firsthand what it takes to build and sustain a regenerative project (and it, most certainly, wasn’t easy).

After those seven years of active operation, we moved the family back to Minnesota to acquire services for one of our sons. While there, I spent two years immersing myself in studying what I’d long judged and dismissed: business design, tech tools, automation systems, and strategic frameworks used by some of the world’s most successful organizations.

Following some waves of change, I moved back to the farm without the family. And then the pandemic hit. Our project was no longer what it once was, and sustaining it with tourist rentals was no longer an option. That’s when I started the podcast to learn what other landowners were doing that we could model.

I spent some years trying to revive it after our absence, but eventually I realized that my dedication to reviving that single land project was holding me back from the new work calling me forward.

Leaving Finca Fruición was humbling, but it freed me to pursue what I now see as my real work: building regional resilience, facilitating nationwide networking, and helping visionary founders create the systems their projects need to last.

I’d set out to become a bridge, a connection between sound organizational practices and the regenerative projects that too often push them away.

Today, that bridge is bringing new audiences, tools, and strategies to regenerative projects that desperately need them, without compromising the values that drive us to do what we do. 

You, my friend, are a member of that bridge.
Thanks for joining us!

The Projects Leading the Way

The heart of Regeneration Nation isn’t my services—it’s the pioneering projects across Costa Rica that are proving another way is possible.

Brave Earth is a healing arts center, regenerative farm, mutual-aid network, and emerging residential community near Arenal, which began its community building, not with a neighborhood design and lots for sale, but by knocking on doors in the village to introduce themselves and learn who in their neighborhood had what to offer and who was in need. 

Urban activist Santi Moringa, of Molina Verde de Moringa in San Jose, demonstrates how permaculture can be practiced in the city and how it’s most potent when it begins with social interaction, mutual aid, and functional education. 

Bamboo School Costa Rica is where native Costa Rican master builder Rodo Saenz carries forward the ancient art of bamboo building, teaching sustainable building techniques to the architects of our next generation.

Esteban Acosta, founder of Viogaz and Sembrando Flores, and a graduate of EARTH University, has become one of Central America’s chief biodynamic ambassadors and a leading manufacturer of biodigestor systems, consulting for projects worldwide, while teaching his trade to his fellow Costa Ricans, here at home.

These projects—and dozens more across the country—are the real teachers. My role is to help amplify their lessons, connect them with each other, and support new visionaries in building on what they’ve learned.

The regenerative movement doesn’t need more lone heroes. It needs connected networks of resilient projects learning from each other, supporting each other, and collectively building the future we need.

The Projects Leading the Way

The heart of Regeneration Nation isn’t my services—it’s the pioneering projects across Costa Rica that are proving another way is possible.

Brave Earth is a healing arts center, regenerative farm, mutual-aid network, and emerging residential community near Arenal, which began its community building, not with a neighborhood design and lots for sale, but by knocking on doors in the village to introduce themselves and learn who in their neighborhood had what to offer and who was in need. 

Urban activist Santi Moringa, of Molina Verde de Moringa in San Jose, demonstrates how permaculture can be practiced in the city and how it’s most potent when it begins with social interaction, mutual aid, and functional education. 

Bamboo School Costa Rica is where native Costa Rican master builder Rodo Saenz carries forward the ancient art of bamboo building, teaching sustainable building techniques to the architects of our next generation.

Esteban Acosta, founder of Viogaz and Sembrando Flores, and a graduate of EARTH University, has become one of Central America’s chief biodynamic ambassadors and a leading manufacturer of biodigestor systems, consulting for projects worldwide, while teaching his trade to his fellow Costa Ricans, here at home.

These projects—and dozens more across the country—are the real teachers. My role is to help amplify their lessons, connect them with each other, and support new visionaries in building on what they’ve learned.

The regenerative movement doesn’t need more lone heroes. It needs connected networks of resilient projects learning from each other, supporting each other, and collectively building the future we need.