Happy Fruit
Permaculture and building a life that is sustainable and whole
I recently had the honor of visiting Happy Fruit, a cacao farm in southern Ecuador for a cacao diete facilitated by a young woman who is changing agribusiness in Ecuador. Tanya Romero is a 36 year old single mother who is transforming her family’s cacao farm into a permaculture food forest and place for transformational retreats and education.
Tanya’s story is that of the shaman. In her early twenties she became disillusioned with mainstream culture and went on a journey to find her soul. That led her into the Andes on a spiritual journey where she found herself and fell in love with Pachamama. Then in college she fell in love with the science of permaculture and food, and decided to bring her love, passion, and creativity home to her family’s cacao farm to reimagine how they were doing business.
It wasn’t until she moved back to the farm to live amongst the cacao trees that she started connecting with the spirit of cacao and its traditional use as a medicine and sacrament. Like most people she had only known cacao as the sugary candy you buy in stores. But her curiosity led her to learn about its history and eventually study with indigenous elders who remembered its medicinal and ceremonial uses.
Cacao is a master teacher plant that was first domesticated in the upper Amazon approximately 5,300 years ago. From there it spread to mesoamerica between 3,800 to 3,000 years ago, where it was used by the Aztecs and Mayans in religious ceremonies and as currency.
The cacao grown at Happy Fruit is one of the most ancient ancestral strands and the cacao forest grows over a field of petrified trees. This gives the medicine an intelligence and force that I have rarely experienced with cacao.
Cacao is often associated with the underworld, and is a potent medicine for helping us move through grief and heartache. As a medicine of death, transformation, and rebirth, cacao grounds us into the body and Earth. At the energetic level it dilates the root chakra and magnetizes us to the Earth. Which creates the sensation of deep relaxation and being held by Pachamama. In that state of relaxation mental and emotional impressions are easily released, leading to healing, clarity, and heart opening.
As the diete progressed I became increasingly relaxed, grounded, joyful, and open hearted. Grief and fear melted away, even as my inner warrior became more activated in service to life.
It is hard to say what was better medicine, the cacao or spending time with Tanya and her family. She is a few years younger than me and we grew up in different countries and have different cultural backgrounds, but we have a shared commitment to the sacred and Mother Earth. She is clear on her mission and purpose and is serving it with steadfast commitment. Motherhood is not an obstacle to her service, but an expression of it. That is permaculture, a life that is integrated, whole, and deeply connected to the Earth and her intelligence.
I’m still figuring out what sustainability and integration look like in my life. I know it begins with my connection to Pachamama and being in right relationship with her. I know it involves right livelihood and relationships built on trust, love, self-awareness, authenticity, and a shared field of value. I know these things are serving the overarching mission and purpose for my life and the vision for Ramaka. The challenge is grounding this awareness into physical reality one concrete action at a time.
Sometimes I get crystal clear clarity on actions that need to be taken in service to grounding the vision into physical reality. Most of the time it is much less clear, and all I can do is listen, improvise, and pray.
Clarity in action reduced my life to a blank slate. The next part of the vision has yet to come through. Until it does I must listen, pray, and when necessary improvise and course correct.