to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy… and to laugh along the way
If each of us learns to become a faithful steward of the small corner of creation entrusted to us, then perhaps the future we dream of – a healthier planet, stronger communities, and lives lived in greater harmony with nature – is not an impossible dream after all.
Toward the tail-end of my military career, the question I would ask myself was: “How do we build peace among our own divided people?” Now, as a small farmer, I have a new kind of war to address. And I ask: “How do we build peace with the earth?”
As I walked back across Gran Verde Farm that afternoon, I found myself looking down more often than ever before. Not because I was tired, but because I had developed a new respect for what lay beneath my feet. I realized that the greatest lesson of the day wasn’t about compost, bees, worms, or insects. It was about relationships. Nature survives because everything contributes to something greater than itself.
The workshop took us one step further. It challenged us to think differently. Like many people, I had always imagined permaculture to be simply another approach to farming – an organic way of growing vegetables or raising fruit trees. By the second day, I realized how incomplete that understanding had been.
What began as a course on caring for the land gradually became a journey into understanding our relationship with nature, our communities, and even ourselves. It challenged many of my long-held assumptions, awakened a deeper appreciation for the quiet wisdom of the natural world, and reminded me that meaningful change often begins with the smallest, most ordinary choices.
Our dream now is to keep developing the farm sustainably, to keep building cacao products we can be proud of, and to leave behind something the next generation can actually carry forward. If Gran Verde proves anything, it is that limited resources and a difficult beginning don’t have to be the end of the story – not if you’re willing to clear the land one patch at a time, and change course when the land asks you to.
Color My World 