A few entries back, I wrote about making chocolate at the Maya Mountain Research Farm, an organic agro-forestry demonstration farm. I left a lot of it out.  I didn’t write about how green and fertile everything seemed, about seeing the decades-old hardwood trees flourishing alongside of recently planted pineapple bushes and coconut trees.  How it had taken Chris and Dawn years of work to reclaim the land back from the unfertile pasture.  I didn’t write about the way Chris looked when he talked about his neighbors practicing slash and burn agriculture, the worry on his face, or the danger of fires getting out of control and spreading, as happens every year.  I didn’t talk about the ever-present smell of ash in southern Belize and eastern Guatemala, as farmers cleared their crops before the rainy season.  I didn’t talk about the distant puffs of dark foreboding smoke visible from my bedroom at the farm. (more…)