So the day is fast coming — the decision has been made. I am moving to my land. For 2.5 years I have toyed with this idea on a daily basis, each day the feelings growing stronger and stronger, the call from within no longer deniable. So here it is, I have made the call. At the earliest convenience I shall leave the comfort of community life, which I have lived for over 8.5 years, and go it solo. My heart has been calling this pretty much from the day I legally received guardianship of the land, but the fears from my mind were too loud, and they dampened my heart's voice. Some of these fears still linger a little — the fear of being alone mostly — but I also know this is just noise, and that when I am truly connected to myself, the land and spirit, I am never really alone. That feeling, that emptiness, evaporates. So as a little backdrop for context. I live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Here we are blessed to live alongside the original people of the territory, the Tairona, made up of 4 tribes — Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo. I am also very blessed that I work closely with a Mamo, a spiritual leader from the Kogui tribe. As a foreign person in someone else's home, it makes sense to present myself and ask for permission to be here. This is essentially some of the work undertaken with the Mamo. He is my spiritual guide whilst I am the part-time caretaker of this little plot of land I have been blessed to take care of. Mamo Alejandro gave the land the name Winmakũ. It translates to — A Place of Healing Light. We are in many processes together. It feels incredibly reassuring to know that I have a direct channel to such a wise elder, and it gives me a lot of confidence to know that the Mamo is helping me in the spiritual realm to ensure only light radiates from this land under my tenure. A lot of the work revolves around making payments in the spiritual realm. This is done at the sacred site that the Mamo located on the land — the only big boulders. An example of this process would be me asking for a wife and a family to be received into my life. With the Mamo I make a payment for this — you could say I am buying a wife and a family in the spirit world. The payment is made by placing cotton in my left and right hand. Into the left I place all of the negative thoughts I have ever had about myself. When I have finished unloading everything that comes up, I take the right and do the same, but this time depositing all the positivity I have towards life and love into the cotton. Both are given to the Mamo, who then does some of his own work on them before placing them in a little cave beneath the two big boulders. The significance of this sacred site is the point where the masculine and the feminine meet. The boulder represents the masculine, loving presence, which is constantly in contact with the earth — the feminine. Everything is in balance at this point, so too the negative and the positive. The permission and the payment have been made. Now I go back to work and grow the trees and plants that will feed my family! Below is a little picture of my love shack and a surprise harvest — a signal that I am already receiving the abundance from the land! And for those that don’t know, because I didn’t know before I started growing pineapples, the shoots of the side of the pineapple are the seeds for planting another 4 which will give in 2 years. Solid PoW… plant one, get a pineapple plus the opportunity to plant another 4!! Not a bad return!

*I will start by caveating everything I am saying below... I am 100% biased. I love cacao! Straight up, I really, really love cacao! Where to start... Well, it goes way back to my time working in an office in London, let's say around 2013. I worked with a Ghanaian woman. She was very proud of her country and their food. One day she brought into the office what she called Ghanaian Chocolate. I tried it, anticipating the usual sweet flavours I had become accustomed to over the years of indulging in the supermarket selections. And I hated it! The whole office joked about how disgusting it was. So, so bitter! This was not chocolate in my eyes. Horrible! It was another 5 years before I had my next encounter with "chocolate". By this time, I had left the rat race and had started building a community in Colombia. The parents of one of the girls I lived with had a farm nearby, and one day they brought with them some of their own produce. I was introduced to the cacao bean, which I was told was where chocolate comes from. People called it the Chocolate Tree just to help me get my head around where chocolate actually comes from. I ate the fermented and dried beans raw. Kind of okay, but definitely not something I was excited about. We then did the grinding process to turn the beans into an oily goo, which was then poured into moulds and left to set. The next morning it was like a brick. Being greedy, and when no one was looking, I cut off a rather large slice and helped myself. Disgusting!! Bitter, bitter, bitter! What the hell is this "foreign" chocolate all about? It brought back the memories of the Ghanaian Chocolate and again I was not impressed with what Colombians were trying to tell me about their produce. This was not chocolate. Chocolate is sweet! This is not! By this stage in my life, I had also become very health conscious. I was living in community and investing a lot of time and energy in the land, and receiving the benefit of growing my own food and just all-round receiving the understanding that food is medicine, and that anything that is grown directly from the earth without the use of any chemicals, and grown with love and care, is by far the best food on planet Earth. Finally, I was open to receive cacao in its real form. Everything changed that evening when we had our first hot chocolate brew. With a little bit of panela, Colombia's version of raw cane sugar, also 100% natural, 100% pure, and made with intention and held at the fire in community, this warm, silky smooth beverage entered my being and warmed my whole body. And it was delicious! I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And from that moment there have not been many days I have gone without a cacao brew. That's 8 years of essentially being with this plant every day. What can I say, I went from an accountant in London to a cacao farmer in a very short space of time. The dream is to cultivate an incredible cacao from the land where I live in the Sierra Nevada, Colombia. So far I have planted close to 100 cacao trees. The oldest are a little less than 2 years old. Some of these have been grafted and thus take on the DNA of a much more mature tree and could give fruit in the next year or two. One hundred trees is not that many, but it is a starting point I am very happy with. These trees were planted into an area of the land which already had good shade and a lot of biomass. The conditions were perfect to plant into. The rest of the land is asking for a lot of love and care. The previous owners had cut down many of the trees, encroached onto the protected nature reserve above the land, and mono-cropped the land for yuca (cassava). The soil has turned to sand in some areas. Years of heavy rains washing away the topsoil. This land needs a lot of love. This is my main focus. To grow soil. This is a long process. It could require a few years of planting out all of the support trees and plants and recycling those back into the earth before the soil is ready to support more cacao trees. I am under no illusion. And equally, I am in no rush. Just like Bitcoin, permaculture is a low time preference gig. Thinking way down the line, understanding all of the steps that are necessary before getting to that magic moment of harvesting the cacao. Bitcoin has really helped with this process because it takes a lot of pressure off me to obtain a yield straight away. I know in the background Bitcoin is doing its thing. Yes, sometimes very frustratingly, but over time, we know how it works, and this protects me from wasting a lot of time, energy, and resources on pushing a high time preference objective, like planting cacao for profit. I see it a lot with coffee, and it is the same with cacao. As soon as the commodities price exchange goes up, every farmer scrambles to plant as much as they can to take advantage of the high prices, only to see that by the time they receive a harvest, the market has been flooded and the price is low again. This high time preference approach almost always leads to soil degradation as well. Over-farmed, over-treated, and under-loved. Thank you, Bitcoin, and thank you, Cacao! I pray that we can continue to work closely together and that, with good intent, with love for the land at the centre of all decision-making, one day in the future I will present to the Nostr/Bitcoin community the cacao that comes from my labour of love!! This is the dream! If anyone wants to come and plant some cacao trees, September/October is prime time!! You are most welcome to come and stay! Big love to all, Bitcoin Beans

#asknostr - what happened to @npub1w69y...zltw - Man drops truth bombs and appears to be a huge advocate and voice of reason for Bitcoin as Money. Where be Parker?? For two years there has been no Parker on Nostr. Given his advocate for Bitcoin through his great work - Pay Me In Bitcoin Theory it seems a shame we no longer receive the thoughts and words of Parker in this space. For those unfamiliar, he wrote in his Gradually, Then Suddenly essay: Pay-Me-in-Bitcoin Theory, • Someone must understand why bitcoin stores value to want to be paid in it • Receiving bitcoin payments is a balance sheet decision at the end of day • Merchants will drive the shift to bitcoin payments • Specifically merchants who understand why bitcoin stores value • Business owners are ultimately in control of what currency to accept • Spending bitcoin can be both rational and irrational for consumers • Spending bitcoin is rational if the merchant is valued and saves in bitcoin • Accepting bitcoin payments does not mean not accepting fiat payments • The transition to payments will be gradual, similar to saving in bitcoin If anyone knows Parker personally saying from me, I would love to see you back on Nostr! Praying you are well and still transacting with Bitcoin as money!

The wait is over. El Clásico x Lightning Koffee has officially landed in the USA 🇺🇸⚡️🍫☕️ A long dreamed-of collaboration between two Bitcoin-native Nostr businesses is finally here — @npub1jx70...2c49 x @npub1cxtz...d5cj — uniting the legendary coffee-growing mountains of Antioquia with the sacred cacao lands of La Sierra Nevada, Colombia. If you already love adding cacao to your coffee… this was made for you. This limited edition release brings together three of Colombia’s most delicious and nutrient-dense foods: • 100% cacao • speciality coffee • caramelised cacao nibs An outrageous expression of Proof of Work crafted into an exceptional culinary experience. Deep, rich cacao meets the bold character and aroma of premium coffee, rounded off with our caramelised nibs for the perfect balance of bitterness, sweetness and crunch. Each pack contains: ⚡️ 5 x 40g bars ⚡️ Total Net Wt. 200g / 7oz Small-batch. Artisanal. Bitcoin-native. Cultivated with care and integrity from bean to bar. Extremely limited release. Once these are gone, they may never exist again. Secure yours now ⚡️

Bitcoin Beans - Proof of Work Cacao

Proof of Work Cacao (chocolate) -- grown with care, paid in Bitcoin. Premium chocolate crafted for Bitcoin enthusiasts.

Bitcoin Beans full sweet of products are now in stock! Shipping across the globe on request! Special Nostr:Bitcoin collaboration announcement coming soon, keep your eyes peeled for the special limited edition release! Big chocolatey love to all! X