OUR BLOG

It’s late summer, and I’m sitting on the porch at Spirit Mountain with a cup of coffee. Not just any coffee, but coffee grown on the slopes of Spirit Mountain, directly in front of me. I find myself thinking about when Krista and I lived in Santo Domingo in the 90s....

When Krista and I moved to the Dominican Republic in 1995, we were fresh out of college and in our early twenties. We came to help build a Young Life camp. We certainly did not have a grand plan for what the next thirty years would look like. But we did have belief....

There was a moment a few weeks ago that has stayed with me. The coffee in my mug had long since cooled. The last light of the day was slipping behind the ridgeline, painting the mountains in those impossible shades of blue and gold that never quite make it into a...

Let’s start with a slightly uncomfortable truth: The way we’ve been farming for the last 75 years is… not going great. Industrial agriculture has done an impressive job of feeding billions of people. Credit where credit is due. But it has also come with a cost—soil...

Lately, we have noticed something. More and more people are looking at Estancia Natura and Spirit Mountain and saying, “You know... this makes a lot more sense than the standard retirement plan.” And honestly, we get it. When the world feels expensive, noisy,...

One of the things we are reminded of again and again at Estancia Natura is this: none of us builds a meaningful life alone. Whatever is good here at Spirit Mountain—whatever beauty, warmth, creativity, hospitality, hard work, good coffee, good trails, or good ideas...

At the beginning of a new year, the world usually asks for more. More plans. More ambition. More change. More effort. More proof that our lives are moving forward. But perhaps what we need is not more. Perhaps what we need is less. Less noise. Less striving. Less...

Over the last several months, we’ve received some pointed criticism about the environmental ethics of Estancia Natura—most of it from people who have never visited Spirit Mountain, never studied the site, and (to be blunt) have not taken the time to understand what...

you’ve hiked our ridge lately, you’ve probably noticed two things: the views keep sneaking up on you, and our roads crews drink an impressive amount of coffee. Both are good signs. And here’s an even better one: the entire Wallace family will be on the farm for...

Dear Friends and Family, Krista and I want to begin by saying thank you — truly — for joining us on this remarkable journey of building community at Spirit Mountain. Whether you’ve been with us since the early days (back when Manabao didn’t even have...

In many U.S. real estate markets today, high entry prices, rising borrowing costs, andcompressed cap rates make new investments difficult to justify. In contrast, the DominicanRepublic (DR) offers a compelling counterpoint: a stable investment climate, strong...

As Estancia Natura at Spirit Mountain moves from dream to dirt, from concept to reality, I’ve realized just how challenging—sometimes downright impossible—it can be to explain something that is layered with history, depth, and complexity. Some of you “get us.” You’ve...

There are more than a couple of ways to judge a book….by its cover, by a quick skim of the content…some people only read the first and last chapters then review the table of contents.  You can actually sit down and read a book as it was intentionally deigned to...

Some people dream of white picket fences and HOA meetings.We dream of mountain mist, papagayos, tree frogs, and Grant making a surprisingly terrible pun before handing you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had. That’s just the kind of place Estancia Natura is...

Breaking Ground: From Crazy Idea to Actual Dirt Moving Well friends — after years of drawings, dreaming, and no small amount of caffeine-fueled debate, construction is officially underway on the first cluster of A-Frames at Estancia Natura. It's actually happening....