Reflections about Rio Muchacho Organic Farm

During January and the being of February 2011, I had the honor of volunteering at Rio Muchacho Finca Organica (Organic Farm) located close to Canoa, Manabi, Ecuador.

Rio Muchacho Finca Organica: Rio Muchacho is a beautiful farm situated just inland of the coast of Ecuador, located close to a town named Canoa. The farm is focused on sustainability and on being a non-waste producing facility. The organic farm has close to a 10 acre garden where they grow various different fruits and vegetables: cucumbers, pineapple, pumpkin, sweet potato, papaya (sweet, sweet papaya), passion fruit, onions, okra, eggplant, bananas, peanuts, and many other delicious items.

Rio Muchacho also founded a school for the Rio Muchacho community named “Escuela Ambiamentalista” where the courses are taught through an environmentalist lens and they own and operate a tour agency that can connect you with some of the fun and interesting things to do in Ecuador.

Please check out their site at riomuchacho.com.

General Day: Rio Muchacho takes on volunteers to do most of the daily chores. While I was there, there were anywhere from 5 to 11 volunteers helping with all the farm tasks.

We rose early at 5:25 am and did the morning routines. There are about 5 different morning routines: chickens, horses, cuyes (guinea pigs), pigs, kitchen, and harvesting vegetables from the garden. The volunteers manage the routines in the morning with the leading help from the full time staff there. Each week you can move from one routine to the next so you can get an experience with all the animals. All routines are hard work and require muscle power to get the job done… By the time we were finished in the mornings, we were warmed up , sweaty and ready to have something to eat! After the morning routines there is a break for breakfast.

After breakfast, we did group projects. The long term volunteers have the opportunity to develop a project within the Rio Muchacho community. I was not a long term volunteer so I did not have a project, so I mainly helped with the full time staff. My tasks ranged from planting seeds in the garden, watering the plant nursery, turning compost, weeding (a constant battle) and more… there are endless jobs to be done on a farm. We would work until 4 pm and then have free time before dinner.

Water: Because Ecuador has a wet a dry season, water availability is an ebb and flow. Water comes in huge gushes causing the roads to wash away and newly planted crops to drown. Or the rain won’t come for weeks and weeks killing plants and making it a precious scarcity. At Rio Muchacho, there are no flush toilets, all are composting and when composting toilets are done with the correct maintenance and procedure, they are a no smell facility and use absolutely no water. At Rio Muchacho, they also have water catchment located in different areas around the farm. This is an effective way to save water and use it for watering plants, for drinking water for the animals on the farm, and also for washing dishes. They employed a unique washing system where all plate scarps were scraped into a compost bin, all plates were then rinsed in the shallow bin of water, then scrubbed with soap, then the soapy dishes were rinsed in another bin of water and set to dry. For a breakfast or dinner of 15 people, about 3 liters of water was used total to wash all dishes… That is amazing and so simple.

Compost: Rio muchacho has 4 composting systems.

1. The food waste from the kitchen is fed to the pigs.

2. The pigs feces is collected and added to a large pits in the ground. They have 3 pits total. Once one is filled it is left to decompose and the next pit is used.

3. All the horse and cow feces is collected from the small paddock area and set to decompose in a pit.

4. After horse and cow feces has decomposed sufficiently, some of it is used to “feed” the worms in the worm beds. Composting with worms is call vermiculture and is a great way to produce high quality compost. The worms eat the compost and then produce casting highly available nutrients that are easily accessible for plants. Also, the guinea pigs on the farm live in huts that were built to stand over the worm beds. The floors of the huts are mesh floors and the guinea pig poop falls down to the worm bed to provide more “food” for the worms.

All animals have a different carbon:nitrogen:phosphorous ratio produced in their excrement, and this is important to know so that you can create a proper carbon:nitrogen (C:N) ratio when you set it to decompose.

In conclusion: If you are headed to Ecuador at any point in time, give a visit to Rio Muchacho Finca Organica. I have only touched on the garden and facility related observations here, but the area around and the people at this farm are amazing. In my future travels, I hope to return. Please get in touch with me if you would like more information.