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Objective
Sacred Sueños aims to regenerate a small (10 hectares) piece of degraded mountainside into a self-sufficient farm community, using permaculture design principles. We plan to reforest (using native and exotic species), experiment with and apply appropriate technologies, and practice intensive organic gardening in order to find a way to provide the needs of a small community while simultaneously restore soil fertility, increase biodiversity, and be carbon negative.

This is not an easy task, especially given the property's remote location in southern Ecuador. The farm gratefully depends on the motivation and hard work of its volunteers (and hopefully soon, interns) whose labour more often than not replaces electric or petroleum generated energy to accomplish our many projects.

Focusing on manual labour rather than unsustainable technologies demands a lot of time. Based on what We've learned from our first three years of experience developing Sacred Sueños, we believe it could take between 10 and 15 years before the land is fully developed.

However, though it may take time, concentrating on being extremely resourceful and labour intensive has a very low cost. The current budget is relatively minimal. The largest expense is carried by Yves (facilitator of Sacred Sueños) with his weekly food contribution of $20 and a $10 stipend, coming to $1560 per year. The cost of materials and tools has averaged around only $1000 annually these first three years.