Help!  Cutting Stuff UP!  

Yes, we need help cutting stuff up!

Dear Family, Friend and Others:

As many of you know, our family has been farming organically in Turrialba, Costa Rica for the past 17 years. We produce a variety of
crops for our community, local farmers market and our own consumption.  We have been fortunate to have a large number of volunteers come to work on the farm.  We also have many visitors come to observe the farm and learn about organic farming in the tropics.  And, we are encouraging more to come join us in this process.            

Now we have been faced with an interesting challenge - Catching Up with Cutting UP!

Our organic production depends on our own labor, the whims of nature and LOTS OF COMPOST! For the last eight years we have used a second-hand, small household chipper-shredder to process all the abundant material on our property and turn it into tons of carbon to    
return to the soil. This is a vital step to assure our organic production as well as to heal our environment.  By returning carbon to soil the   cycle of nature is completed vs  the conventional approach to growing food which does not complete the carbon cycle and instead
deposits concentrated chemicals into the soil which compounds  our current climate crisis. 

This chipper has recently broken and is beyond repair!

We are asking for a group effort through GoFundMe in order to help us purchase a larger chipper-shredder with more capacity, which in  turn means more compost. We need the machine in order for us to keep up with our present crop production and continue supplying our community with quality organic vegetables and at the same time enabling us to grow more food.  This growth in production will also           enable us to accommodate more student interns and volunteers  introducing them to much needed organic farming techniques so important for our collective future and the future of our precious planet. It is a big investment that we personally can't handle, and we know that many of you support, appreciate and value farming; and are conscious of the small scale organic and sustainable farmers' struggle.

We would be ever so grateful for your help in reaching our goal!  All donations will be used for the shredding equipment and/or for              
assisting more student and volunteer farmers.

Thank you for taking the time to read and consider…..

And helping us to make it happen!

Lara Baumheier and John MacDonnell