Kerry
United States
Kerry was our host during our first volunteering in Ecuador. He is from Michigan, in the United States and lives in Ecuador for more than 10 years. He was a kitchen designer for most of its life, but he fell in love with the Valley of Intag and decided to buy a farm there 3 years ago.
He began his adventure by building a road to access it and learnt a lot about erosion control plants and retaining tire walls.
His goal is to create a demonstration farm and show that a model of sustainable agriculture that doesn’t depend on chemicals or pesticide is possible. For him, the soil is the most important. If the micro-biological life of the soil is balanced, the plants will have the nutrition that they need to grow without diseases or pesticides. They will then produce nutrient dense food which is what we need to sustain our own health.
We were really happy to take part on his project for 2 weeks and put our hands in the soil. It made us realise how much of an effort it was to grow food and how much we should respect the people who are producing it for us and truly appreciate the food we are eating.
Kerry taught us a lot about nature, agriculture, soil, fungies, yucas, beans, pineapples, lemons, oranges, avocados, corn… We ate delicious food directly coming from the farm ! And once again, we discovered a whole new world!
His partner Lisa and him are also creating a retreat centre, a place where people can come and enjoy clean air, water and food and experience healing on various levels.