Returning to the Root: Life on Permaculture Farms in Costa Rica and Colombia

The art of being.

Ground Truth

There are still a few places in the world where the imprint of capitalism feels faint. Where the constant hum of productivity softens and life moves at a human pace. Permaculture farms exist in that quiet margin. Living and working within them feels like stepping out of the machinery of consumption and back into something older, more instinctive.

That pull toward simplicity didn’t appear out of nowhere. In the pause of 2020, I found myself questioning the grind culture I had long accepted as normal. The slower pace of life, the absence of urgency, created space for bigger questions to surface. What is all this motion actually for? What does a meaningful life look like outside of optimization and output?

Around the same time, a series of health complications pushed me to reconsider my relationship with food. I began experimenting with a plant-based diet and grew curious about the deeper connection between what we eat and how we think, feel, and move through the world. Food stopped being fuel and started becoming information.

Following that thread led me, almost inevitably, to an eco-hostel tucked deep in the Costa Rican rainforest. It was a conscious step away from screens and schedules, toward soil and sunlight. Days were spent eating food grown feet from where it was prepared, learning sustainable living practices, and working within regenerative agricultural systems designed to give back more than they take.

What once defined the day-to-day existence of our ancestors now exists as a retreat for a tech-saturated generation. Life reduced to essentials. Hands in the dirt. Time marked by light and weather rather than notifications.

It didn’t feel like play. It felt like reverence. Excess fell away. What remained was elemental and grounding, a quiet reminder that beneath modern structures, there is still a version of us that knows how to live this way. Slowly. Attentively. In relationship with the land.

A Return to Simplicity

On these farms, even a tomato tastes different. Its sweetness isn’t just flavor, it carries the memory of rain, the patience of seasons, the richness of soil. Meals linger. Conversations stretch past usefulness into something more intimate, more human. Beauty arrives quietly: a bee hovering over a blossom, wind turning leaves into instruments, silence widening beyond anything a screen could hold.

I was fortunate to share this experience with a close friend, venturing deep into the jungle near Arenal, Costa Rica, to live briefly off the grid.

Our days were intentionally simple.

We journaled.
We meditated.
We practiced yoga.
We ate three plant-based meals made entirely from ingredients grown on the land.
We wandered the farm.
We read.
We painted.
We talked with the other residents.

And that was it.

Just being. Pure existence, stripped of performance.

The purpose wasn’t escape, but remembrance. A return to our human essence. Space to reconnect with curiosity, creativity, and the questions that rarely survive a busy life. Without distraction, reflection deepened. We examined values, relationships, work, family, and the quiet assumptions that shape how we move through the world, all with the intention of laying a more conscious foundation for what comes next.

It wasn’t easy. With no noise to hide behind, emotional shadows surfaced. Old fears resurfaced. When distraction disappears, confrontation becomes inevitable. Still, there was something profoundly grounding in that honesty.

We were lucky to spend the week immersed in both remembrance and inspiration. The challenge, as always, is carrying that stillness with you when you leave. But simplicity, I learned, is not scarcity. It is abundance in its truest form. When life is reduced to the essential, it becomes sacred.

*Permaculture Farm in Guatape, Colombia*

Knowing What’s at the Root

The deepest shift came through food.

To plant, tend, harvest, prepare, and finally eat collapses the distance modern life has stretched between human and earth. Each meal becomes a ceremony. Each bite a reminder that survival is not consumption alone, but communion.

Food is not neutral. What we grow shapes our bodies, our minds, and the energy we carry into the world. It begins in the gut, but it radiates outward, influencing how we feel, how we think, and how we show up for others.

What Remains

Permaculture farms whisper truths our modern lives often drown out.

That we are not meant to live as perpetual consumers.
That community is as essential as water.
That beauty is found not in accumulation, but in attention.

They remind us that richness comes from slowness, not speed. From enough, not more. From belonging, not ownership.

It becomes clear how easily we mistake what we do for who we are. Jobs become identities. Roles harden into self-concepts. But work is only one expression of energy, not the totality of being. A task exists because society needs it done, and someone exists who can do it well. That role is not the whole person.

The real work is internal.

To remain a student of the world.
To treat every person as a teacher.
To see every moment as an opportunity to grow.

Intention lays the groundwork. Action brings it to life.

Shared meals reveal themselves as a quiet key to happiness. Collaboration carries an ancestral pride, a reminder that humans have always built meaning together. And perhaps the most radical lesson of all: what you have in this moment is already enough.

In a world accelerating toward profit and excess, these farms offer a glimpse of another way, one that feels both ancient and urgently relevant. A return to roots. A return to balance. A return to living in relationship with the earth, and with ourselves.