September 14, 2004: I first meet Robert Ayers—a sprightly middle-aged man known for his bagged lettuce mix and specialty breads—in the bustling San Isidro Farmers’ Market. The rumor passed from traveler to traveler is that San Isidro is Central America’s fastest growing city. Judging by the number of vendors and shoppers at the weekly farmers' market, I wouldn’t be surprised. People bus into the city from a wide radius on Thursday mornings and afternoons to peruse the never-ending rows of booths that merge together, piled high with tropical fruits and bright vegetables.

San Isdro Farmers' Market. The market houses about six organic merchants including Robert.

We bus up from Rivas, the town near Finca Puebla, one afternoon, unknowingly choosing a festival day to travel, complete with parades and a tope, or rodeo. The one refurbished school bus that heads up toward the mountain is packed with worn-out festival goers, and we mash into the back, sweating. As the bus climbs, bouncing on the dirt road, the air feels cooler. The vegetation out the window changes. People make their way off the bus, little by little, until Neil and I have seats, then room to spread out. We get off near the end of the line – near San Gerardo, the last town at the base of Costa Rica’s highest mountain, Mt. Chirripo, which peaks around 12,500 feet.

Robert’s farm, called “Home Farm,” sits at 4200 ft. The evenings are cool enough for a sweatshirt or two, and the variety of vegetables that Robert can grow is more extensive than that on most Costa Rican farms. The soil on Home Farm is rich, naturally fertile, and amended with a variety of additives. Robert pays a tico (Costa Rican) to collect cabbage and corn scraps from market and then layers them in compost piles. We build a couple more bins, lacing wooden pallets together with wire to form open-topped containers. We fill them with a mix of green compost; manure from a neighbor’s dairy farm; and the corn cobs and stalks, which allow air to circulate. Robert also tosses in some biodynamic preparations – he’s been dabbling in biodynamics (BD), using local dandelions and other BD-significant additives in his compost. Eventually, he tells me, he’d like to involve biodynamics more comprehensively on the farm, and “get the community more opened up to the idea.”

Building on Costa Rica's organic potential

Robert picks grazing mesculin mix among interplanted red clover.

Robert feels that Costa Rica, in general, is wide open to new farming ideas, and ready for change. He doesn’t feel alone. “Ticos are receptive to organic growing,” he says, with a quick raise of his shoulders. “The environment is polluted, their family members are getting sick – you especially see a lot of stomach cancer, from the chemicals used in the coffee fields. Also using chemical fertilizers costs more money than farming organically.” Robert’s neighbor and friend, Luis, is an organic pillar in the community. He grows coffee, raises cattle, and produces bio-gas.

“At the same time,” Robert says, “[growing the organic community] can be very difficult.” He would like to start a local co-op, but most Costa Rican farmers grow for export rather than the local markets where Robert sells produce. “Many farmers already have their niche.” Robert’s niche is salad greens. In addition to the San Isidro market, he sells to a few up-scale restaurants in the coastal areas. He also serves as a middleman for other farmers, buying their lettuce and marketing it to restaurants. He has agreements with several farmers by which they grow his lettuce mix and sell it to him wholesale, so that he can then put it on his table at the market.

Robert has been farming for 30-plus years, he proudly tells us, and he’s been in Costa Rica for seven. Six of those years he spent managing Finca Ipe, a well-established vegetable and herb farm that accepts WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) volunteers. For the past year he’s been farming his own land.

Raised beds of dark soil rest on either side of the quaint turquoise home he shares with his partner Emily and their twin babies. The yard-farm seems anything but incongruous – growing food and savoring it is obviously a natural and comfortable lifestyle for Emily and Robert.

Emily, with draping long blond hair and a soft British accent, serves us several gourmet meals, including home-made pizza with arugula leaves arranged in a delicate outward spiral and a salad straight from the day’s harvest. We appreciate the flavorful food, recognizing in the candlelight the small, spicy leaves we snipped from a sea of greens that bright morning.

Around the house, Robert grows his arugula in small beds. A ten-minute walk up the road, however, leads to spreading gardens and a couple of typical Costa Rican greenhouses, open-aired structures with thin white plastic roofs. The beds are high, black and obviously fertile, and inter-planted. Fiery orange nasturtiums, their leaves like thin lily-pads, twine around lettuce and mustard. Huge pepper plants grow in one greenhouse, their bright red, sweet fruits decorating the branches like a tropical Christmas tree. Robert doesn’t know the name of the pepper variety, but explains that a Costa Rican friend gave him the seeds of the locally-common vegetable.

This seven-acre plot belongs to a relative, and it's here that Robert does most of his farming. We water transplants, sprout herb cuttings, build compost piles, harvest salad greens and kale and peppers, and watch the sun set over the hazy valley below. On clear days we catch glimpses of Mt. Chirripo, which looms behind us as we work.

Robert is intense, and demanding, but not unreasonable, we discover. He has years of experience growing and marketing produce, and plenty of tested theories. “Stack it high,” he bellows, about everything from produce at market to organic matter in the beds. Neil and I add compost and fertilizer to the beds, spreading it thick where new lettuce transplants will be planted. Robert starts transplants in his own mix of screened compost, fertilizer, rock dust, peat moss, and sand. He fertilizes with fish emulsion as much as possible without burning, and sets out plants as soon as they’re gaining momentum, before they get root-bound.

“Stack it high.” Robert's motto applies to everything from produce at market to organic matter in the beds. Here Susanna prepares a bed for propagating herbs in the seed-starting greenhouse.

Even with his extensive farming know-how, Robert continues to learn. His ultimate goals are to produce most of his family’s food on the farm; to incorporate animals like goats, cows, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits, growing their feed on the farm and using the manure for composting. He’d also like to start aquaculture, fruit trees and learn more about biodynamic management practices.

Robert has a lot of energy. Even as we bounce our way to the San Isidro Farmer’s Market on a cold rainy morning, he’s hyped. Robert, Emily, Neil and I are crammed into the steamy cab of a little pick-up truck. I ask Robert if he enjoys the farmers’ market – all the work picking lettuce and baking his bread the night before, the set-up, tear-down, and all the bustle at the market itself. “Yeah.” He nods emphatically. “I’m novel, you know. I’m the only gringo. This is my social event. I’m busy, I’m hopping. It’s in my blood.”

The familiar market-farmer’s anticipation I feel in Pittsburgh is here, too, in a pick-up on a back road in Costa Rica. I smile and crane my head to peer beyond wildly flapping windshield wipers to the road ahead, leading into the San Isidro Valley.

Anyone with serious interest in working with Robert on Home Farm should meet him in the organic section of the San Isidro Farmers’ Market, which runs every Thursday from 9 to 4 p.m. Robert’s interest is in willing workers and learners, and possibly a farm manager. Couples and families with children are especially welcomed.

Susanna Meyer is a freelance writer and urban farmer in Pittsburgh, PA.