Live for Today, Prepare for Tomorow

I woke up this morning to a delicious cool breeze blowing in through the open bedroom window. It reminded me of mornings on the farm where we lived in Costa Rica. Those were golden days, a life out of time and space from our normal existence. It was during our year living on a farm in the rain forest, that our focus for the future and purpose for prepping changed. Before we left for Costa Rica my life focus had been trying on to survive a future cataclysm, always listening to what was "happening" and worrying about our what the future might bring...

Then late in 2008, my husband was diagnosed with a rare, life threatening brain disorder. Suddenly

A view of Volcan Arenal, the 10th most active volcano on Earth.
This is a view from our side of the lake.

all the world and its problems faded into the background as we came to grips with our new reality. My husband had brain surgery which remedied several of the problems he had, but one was in the frontal lobe and was inoperable. So once he had recovered from his surgery, we went about making plans to LIVE LIFE TODAY, since today might be all we had together. We reduced our possessions to what would fit in one room of our house, closed the door and rented the rest of the house to a friend who we knew would take enjoy and care for our gardens. We found good homes for all of our animals,(except for our pup Tagg who went with us), packed up a few belongings, and moved to Costa Rica to live on a farm with a view of Arenal Volcano. My husband and I have always loved traveling and living in different cultures, he speaks Spanish very well, so we decided that Costa Rica a great place to go to be together for as long as he was well enough to enjoy being there. 

We lived in a fairly remote area. We had internet, but it was sporadic. We had little news, only what we could cull from online sources when we had internet, and soon, day by day, our overall interest in what was going on in the world at large diminished. We had no "preps" with us, everything had been left behind in the USA. All we had was the skills that we had cultivated over the years and a farm full of exotic fruits, tropical birds and the rain forest. We got the opportunity to see what it would be like to live without much of what we previously considered necessary for daily life. We had no car at first, no computer, no TV, (we never did have a TV with programming in stateside life, but in CR if we were somewhere that had a TV, it was in Spanish),  we had no stove/oven, just a two burner counter top propane cook top, (similar to a Coleman camp stove without the cover). There was no water heater. There was little variety to choose from when shopping for groceries, I had to learn to make do with whatever there was available. Our well honed Stateside gardening skills were daily challenged by insects and soil issues we had never encountered before. We were basically starting over, learning how to make do and live a different life, one where we didn't always know the rules or know how to do what needed to be done.

This is the third time our son planted his tomatoes... both previous times, right before they
 bore ripe fruit the Cutter ants marched through and ate everything down to the ground.

            During the "Honeymoon Phase", it was all exciting and wonderful. An adventure.

Ripening mangos in the lane along the walk to the gardens. We also had manderines, avacado,
 oranges, star fruit, Mora (like black raspberries), water apples and many other wild
 tropical fruits I don't have English names for.

Bougainvillea and Trumpet vines growing wild 

Orchids that grew on the trees near the farmhouse.

But reality soon overtook the romance of it all, and we found ourselves working from daybreak to dusk just trying to stay ahead of the jungle.

Laundry done by hand hung under cover to keep the rain forest from
soaking the almost dry clothes

First Bean crop. The winds blew so strong it twisted the
 tops off of all the bean plants. 

Two planting later we finally managed to get a harvest by changing planting locations and building
 wind breaks to protect the plants from a constant 20-30 mph wind on the top of the mountain

We built a large, beautiful green house from rebar and covered it with plastic.The Tilawa winds hammered
 the rebar frame to the ground and the plastic was blown all the was to Sabalito
 at the bottom of our mountain. We had to learn to use low
 row covers and wind breaks to shelter our seedlings

But something wonderful was happening, I worried less, there was no sense of impending doom clouding the joys of everyday life. I had no time for podcasts full of bad news, extolling the virtues of acquiring silver and gold, stockpiling weapons and ammo, filling me with dread and fear. In its place I was having a real life experience, learning to survive in what easily could have resembled post apocalyptic life. Granted our experience was minus the fear of violence, looters, disease, etc, but what our experience lacked in those challenges it made up for in other. Vipers, jaguars and other wild creatures, insects that could bring on screaming nightmares, like scorpions the size of your hand getting into bed with you, Cutter ants that could carry off your entire mature garden in a matter of hours and ticks that were like heat seeking missiles and could find your soft flesh in seconds and cover you by the hundreds....

This scorpion one was 10 inches long tip to tail. It was hiding on the back of my cutting board and dropped between my feet when I pulled the cutting board off the shelf. It stung me on the toe when I went to stomp on it. Lesson learned, take your sandal off and smack it, don't step on it with your foot in the sandal!

Costa Rica was every day a dream and a nightmare. But we adapted, grew more saavy about how to contend with the challenges and soon we were living in harmony with our surroundings and learning to sway with what challenges a day in the rain forest could bring. Life was simple. Life was good. The world did not come to an end because we weren't keeping up with what was going on...

Bromiliads bloom on every tree

Howler monkeys serenade us while we work in the gardens

a Keel Billed Toucan. This male and his bride were nesting in a huge mango tree
 behind the cabina, (small cabin), out on the farm

While living in Costa Rica some of our fundamental attitudes about prepping changed. We no longer focused on how bad things might get, but focused on how we could make a good today. It became more about living and less about future survival. Now we are living back in the States, a transition that I am still struggling with... but I try to remember the lessons I learned in our year out of time. Live simply, work hard, make do with what you have, find creative solutions to challenges, have courage in the face of danger, but remember life is given as a gift from on high, and it was meant to be enjoyed.

A lovely view from one of the fence lines on the farm

We are of course still practicing our skills and constantly learning new ones, we are maintaining our food supplies, and staying debt free. We grow as much of our own food as possible, make our own medicines and do as much as we possibly can to be self-reliant and self-sustaining. But our focus is on being responsible for our lives and as self reliant as possible. So that whatever may come, in as much as circumstances will allow, we are able to face it on our own terms.We also spend a lot of time educating and encouraging others to be self-sustaining and self-reliant, sharing our knowledge and experience, in the hopes that others will discover what we did... that life shouldn't be driven by fear and worry, but should be lived in a simple and sustainable way, that gives quality of life day to day and provides the skills, knowledge and resources that may be necessary to live in this uncertain world.