Our Journal

Discover Costa Rica’s best-kept secret: Sept–Oct brings ideal weather and abundant tropical fruit harvests at Finca Luna Nueva.

We describe Finca Luna Nueva as “both a recreational paradise and a living classroom.” We think we need to add “we’re also a living laboratory,” as distinguished scientists from the University of Texas, Dallas and Texas A&M University came to our syntropic cacao field to test new technology for the measurement of soil health. Dr. […]

Finca Luna Nueva began in 1994, when an herbal company named New Moon Extracts contacted Steven Farrell and asked him to find an organic farm that could grow a large amount of ginger. Steven knew Walter Arias, who is one of our current farmers, and Walter recommended a large parcel of fallow land that was […]

Want to spend quality time on your belly crawling through the jungle to find endangered plant species that just might cure major diseases? Too intense for your family outing? Well, how about spending a few hours “biologizing” about the flora along our Cabalonga Trail, learning how indigenous peoples used those plants to treat snake bites, […]

Bamboo Building at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge

The Birth of Finca Luna Nueva For fans of JRR Tolkien, the image of wise Gandalf the Grey embodies the good magic of the world. Our beloved founder, Steven Farrell, is known by many as Gandalf, the wizard of the farm. He’s been organically farming for forty years, beginning in 1984 in stone-fruit orchards in […]

Frightening? Disgusting? Or are these creatures the immune system of Mother Earth making our environment a great deal safer? Sarcoramphus papa a/k/a The King! Yes, vultures devour rotting flesh. The acid in their digestive system is about 100 times more acidic than human digestive juices, with a pH that borders on zero. pH ranges from […]

It’s been a deeply fulfilling year for us, and we finally have a chance to say hello and update you on the latest. So, where do we start? Did we mention how busy we are? Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you for all your wonderful support of our regenerative experience and mission. Let’s start […]

Katie Rose Molina Browning and Scott Gallant As we look to find niches and stack functions in our tropical permaculture homesteads, one often overlooked group of plants include the edible flowers. With a focus on Costa Rica, this blog, authored primarily by Katie Browning, a certified herbalist, explores the many common and uncommon edible flowers […]

By Thomas Newmark, Finca Luna Nueva Lodge Make chocolate in the rainforest? Of course! You’ll take a thousand-year journey through the history of growing cacao and making chocolate, even using an ancient cacao grinding stone recovered from the Caribbean slope of the great Atlantic rainforest in Costa Rica. Plus, you get to drink and eat […]

Our daughter Sara and her beautiful family (husband Drew and our grandkids Elias and Eloise) visited us a few weeks ago, and they brought with them a gang of friends and other family members. It was spring break meets family reunion at Finca Luna Nueva, and the group exchanged photos to share their memories. The […]

Well, it wasn’t March 4th, but our souls commanded us to march through the farm with lots of friends, new and old. Two regenerative farming experts, Gaabi Hathaway and Zach Wolf, visited us from the renowned Caney Fork Farms in Tennessee, and Mary Little and her colleagues brought us a busload of students from the […]

I don’t eat meat so I can’t confirm this, but I’ve read that acorn-fed Iberico pigs in Spain have meat that tastes rich and nutty. I once spent months in the French Alps on a meditation course, and I could tell from the flavor of the milk what the cows had been grazing on up […]

October 9th, 2021 was a “Big Day,” where birders around the world went out canvassing their ecosystems, finding birds, and compiling bird species counts. We at Finca Luna Nueva always participate in these global counts, but this year offered up a twist. Not only did we have humans go out to find birds on our […]

by Tom Newmark, Chairman of The Carbon Underground, and member of the CRARS Leadership Council Artwork by Sam Hepburn. Guilty! Many of us in the regenerative agriculture movement describe the world’s soils as a “sink” into which excess atmospheric carbon can be stored, and we’ve been wrong. That mistake has diminished the appeal of our […]

The ecologist Carl Safina writes that “macaws are born to be wild. But becoming wild requires an education.” He wonders what happens when habitat loss or other pressures force them to relocate. What happens when caring humans rescue macaws and move them into a new region? Do those glorious creatures somehow ask “How can we […]

Welcome back to the paradise of birding in the Arenal region of Costa Rica!  We at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, www.fincalunanuevalodge.com, are thrilled to once again be hosting birding in one of the most biologically abundant regions of the world.  We are located in the mountainous rainforest on the Caribbean slope, approximately  25 kilometers east […]

We are honored to be featured in the Rodale Institute White Paper titled: Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution. Where Tom Newmark (owner of Finca Luna Nueva) was given the opportunity to dive deep into the environmental climate crisis and the regenerative agriculture solution. “Global adoption of regenerative practices across both grasslands and arable […]

Part two of our coverage of this event looks at the experiences of two farmers who have chosen a regenerative approach: Tom Newmark, of Finca Luna Nueva, and Kamal Bell, of Sankofa Farms. By WholeFoods Magazine Staff -September 4, 202052 Mature agroforestry at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, Tom Newmark’s farm in Costa Rica, designing for […]