“Even when they say they’re organic, they still spray. The tomatoes look plastic-y and perfect but you bite in and its just water. You come here, taste the vegetables and it’s a completely different world. You feel so rewarded when you can say ‘I made that cheese’. We should go back to producing our own food. You run and run and run, and then you’re dead. I lived like this for too long, I’m done with that lifestyle. I’ll never return to civilization.” – Says Kinga Kordan, the on-site healer at Finca Luna Nueva who gave up her life in LA to run her own farm in Costa Rica.

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For Finca’s head chef, Jenny Gamboa, this is her first farm-to-table experience in 18 years of cooking. While she previously had only cooked International cuisines, when she joined Finca Luna Nueva two years ago, she learned how to make healthier versions of her recipes. Her face lights up as she says “aprendi mucho”, she has learned so much.

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It is learning that is at the heart of Finca Luna Nueva, an eco-lodge committed to conserving the rainforests of Costa Rica through regenerative agriculture. The education starts on the property tours where guests witness how the hotel produces their food, ninety percent of which is grown on-site, but it becomes transformative once visitors taste the difference. Cows are fed a mix of plants high in protein and probiotics, rather than processed grains, resulting in more nutritious milk, yogurt, and ice cream. Fruits and vegetables are rich in flavor and texture as a result of being harvested without chemical pesticides. Despite being an avid farm-to-table diner, after touring and tasting Finca’s farm and medicinal garden, I realized that I don’t actually consider where my food comes from on a daily basis. But witnessing this simpler way of life; producing solely what you need and enabling the environment to engage in its natural processes, and tasting the difference, makes our whole food industry seem completely backwards.