The Mountain That Waters the Farm

The Andes run down the western side of Venezuela, and in the state of Merida they lift into the country's highest peaks. Our finca sits high on that spine, in Aldea Gavidia above the town of Mucuchies, near Sierra Nevada National Park. The land rests at about 11,150 feet. Up here the days are cool, the nights are cold, and the light comes down clean and strong. That combination is not a problem to overcome. It is an advantage, and everything we plan to produce depends on it.

Above the farm lies the paramo, a rare high grassland found in only a few places on earth. Its signature plant is the frailejon, a slow growing plant with silver leaves that catches moisture from the air and the clouds and lets it out again, slowly, into the soil and the streams below. People here call the paramo a natural water tower, and that is exactly what it is. The spring on our property, the clean water that will feed the mushrooms and the trout and the greens, begins its life up there among the frailejones.

Altitude decides what thrives. Cool days and cold nights and strong sun suit potatoes, garlic, and greens. The clean cold water suits trout. And in the warehouse we are finishing, the steady mountain climate suits mushrooms, which is where we will begin. This is high country farming as it has always been done here, only with the tools to do it well: solar panels already installed, satellite internet already working, a spring that does not depend on the public grid, which fails often here.

This is the ground Terra sits on: a real hectare of mostly cultivable land, roughly 2.3 acres, on a mountain that has watered farms for a very long time. When we talk about producing food and paying wages and letting the revenue seed the next venture, this is where it happens: high in the Andes of Merida, on soil the paramo keeps alive.