Alliance Finca-Sagrada: A first person account by Walter Moora, farmer and teacher of biodynamics based in Vilcabamba, Ecuador.
Finca Sagrada (sacred land farm) is a farm-based, multicultural learning center designed to reconnect people with self, community, food and nature.
This is the story of how this happened and how SEEDS is helping to manifest this dream.
Soon after Susan Davis-Moora and I moved to the mountains of southern Ecuador in 2006, we were asked to buy a rather isolated farm that is bordered by a river and a stream surrounded by mountains.
I had been a biodynamic dairy farmer for almost forty years and thought that my farming days were over. However, every time I visited the farm I just felt good, so I knew something special was going on in that valley. I just didn’t know what it was. It has a 273 hectare mountain (600 acres) with about five hectares (12 acres) of rolling irrigated pastures below the mountain and next to the river. The pastures were neglected and overgrown with scrub, and there were no structures. However, being a farmer, I could see great potential. So we bought it.
Living in Ecuador is very affordable so we were able to hire a farm manager and, after a year or two, we restored the pastures, cleaned up and replanted a traditional food forest and planted gardens. Our aim was to create a self-sufficient biodynamic farm community that could feed us all, and that’s what we’ve done.
We had been living in Vilcabamba, a small town about forty minutes from the farm, but decided to move out to the farm and create the community. Now we have a beautiful community house, accommodation for our indigenous partners and places where our volunteers can stay. During the Covid lockdown we accommodated 18 people for four months and lived in a bubble separated from the world and all its troubles.
Through various acts of serendipity, we are in a global Indigenous leadership group called The Fountain. It included the Kogi elders of Columbia. The Kogi escaped Spanish conquerors and still raise their priests in caves to ‘read’ what is happening around the world. Thus they discerned that our farm was an ancient sacred site that needed to be re-activated. They would come four times to do ceremony and re-activate the sacredness of the valley.
On their third visit they suggested that we should build a spirit house on our farm, a replica of their own spirit houses. These “Houses of Original Thought” are made of all natural materials and have a special design with twelve main posts and doors facing East and West. They represent the stars and planets and are a home for spirit beings.
At first I was reluctant to build it. How could we honor a building like this? How would we keep it central to our being? We did decide to build it and the Kogi came down for the baptism as they called it. As part of the ceremony, they lit a fire in the center and informed us that this fire should never go out. If it did, the spirit beings would cry. You can imagine my surprise. Suddenly we were fire keepers.
Not surprisingly, it is the fire that keeps the house alive in our midst and the volunteers love to take it on as a task. Sometimes, when we have no volunteers, then it is I who has to be the keeper for months at a time. Every morning we take part in a sunrise ceremony and then we have to tend the fire another three or four times. I love to walk up, through the pasture at night, watching the stars with the fire flies flitting all around. Sometimes it seems like the stars have come down to earth. In fact, the Kogi tell us we should call this place “Sharua” – the place where the stars are planted on the earth.
So far, Susan and I have been able to fund and organize this. However we are both in our seventies and our funds are limited. We wonder how our dreams will continue into the future as a model intercultural thriving farm community To this end, we have created a non-profit in Ecuador to help run the farm. That board consists of two leading Ecuadorian environmentalists, two indigenous leaders from our local tribe and we two foreigners attracting resources for the farm.
Soon (by March of 2021) we will have a non-profit in the States called KINSHIP-EARTH. Here we will center all our activities such as Susan’s KINS networks, Finca Sagrada and other activities centered around our SEEDS projects.
SEEDS.
In August of 2020, we were introduced to SEEDS and we immediately knew that SEEDS was for us. Susan’s lifetime work has been to change finance from greed and fear to love and joy. In fact some people call her the grandmother of social investing as she organized the first social investment groups in the 1970s.
With the help of an old friend, Mark Epstein (SEEDS Citizen & creator Flow Farm, Aberdeen, NC) who has a deep understanding of SEEDS and a leadership role, we wrote an alliance proposal for Finca Sagrada. When the tokens become available in a year or two it will allow us to fulfill many of our dreams.
In our proposal we asked for 700,000 Seeds, which will be distributed in the following manner:
- 300,000 Seeds will be used to put Finca Sagrada into the KINSHIP Earth not-for-profit. This is very important as it will allow Finca Sagrada to continue as we are already in our 70s
- 180,000 Seeds to build a small retreat and learning center on the farm
- 80,000 Seeds to help run the Center for two years.
- 100,000 Seeds to design and implement a holistic land management plan for the watershed behind our farm that is the buffer zone for the Yakuri national park.
- 40,000 Seeds will cover the cost of writing and printing a book on the local flora and flora as an important educational tool for our community.
Having these Seeds gifted to Finca Sagrada will make a huge difference in our lives. It will allow Finca Sagrada to continue functioning as a sacred site for Mother Earth. After the learning center is built, we will be able to share this with many people. It will also make it possible to earn income so that Finca Sagrada is financially viable.
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