The Monkey Farm - a farm of HOPE

Our AMAZING Evolution… into the only tourist attraction in Central America that 100% of proceeds Give Back to the Community!

2013 The Monkey Farm began when two volunteers from Finland and Croatia, joined the founder, Vicki Conley, from Southern California, in the process of creating a monkey rescue center. The plan was to be the first monkey rescue center in the world that would be completely self-sufficient and sustainable. We were only thinking about monkeys and farming, hence the funny name, “The Monkey Farm”.

2014 we began hosting volunteers from all over the world who lived an average of two months on the farm. They joined us in turning this old farm into a monkey and animal rescue center, while living and learning on site.  The original two volunteers moved on in their travels, while Vicki remained living on site.

Our original intention was only to create a rescue center model that is self-sufficient in every way. But read how we have evolved and keep evolving into so much MORE…

We created an aquaponics system to grow both fish, fruit, vegetables and herbs. We milk our own goats and cows to make cheese, yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, kefir and ice cream. We raise our own chickens, turkeys, ducks, peafowl, guinea hens and eggs. We also have our own bees producing a high-quality medicinal honey.

2015 we had an excess of food, so we began sharing by serving dinner and a message of Hope and faith to the homeless men and women in Playas del Coco every Tuesday night. We serve a hot and hearty meat and vegetable stew to the homeless and hopeless every Tuesday to this day.

2016 we began teaching English two days a week to adults at our local church so they can get better jobs to provide for their families.

2017 we began providing Free Equine therapy every Saturday to local children with handicaps and challenges such as cerebral palsy, autism and Downs syndrome. We have seen unbelievable success with these children. One who was told he would never be able to walk, is now pushing around other children in their wheelchairs at his special education school!

2019 we were serving our usual Tuesday night dinner and message of hope and faith to the homeless when two of our “regulars” asked for help to get out of their homeless lifestyle and addiction to alcohol. Not knowing what to do, we brought them home and started investigating how best to help them. When other addicted and homeless men saw the success of the original two men that asked for help, they too asked for an opportunity to change their lives. Within six months of the original two men asking for help, we had no room for International volunteers and could no longer accept them. The farm became run completly by the men receiving help. This began our Free faith-based residential recovery program.

2020 during the pandemic we learned that addiction is not the problem, it is just a symptom of unhealed trauma and complex PTSD. We began teaching the men how to heal their trauma and seek God. We combine this with nurturing and caring for the animals and plants and equine therapy for trauma. The results have been miraculous! Our program lasts 13 months because it takes a long time to learn the tools to heal a lifetime of trauma and pain.

2021 Vicki (who still lives on site), and the men in recovery were joined by our first full-time staff member, who was the former Senior Pastor of a church in Liberia and in recovery himself, and also experienced in working in residential addiction recovery when he joined us as spiritual leader. He gave private counseling to the men, taught their recovery classes and helped them process their traumas as they were uncovered and faced.

2022 We became the first Free residential addiction and trauma therapy center in the World that is using natural horsemanship training methods as part of their therapy. It started when we watched an inspirational movie called “The Mustang”. It’s about the wild mustangs in the United States. The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of them and they had the problem of them reproducing so much that they didn’t have enough food to eat and were starving to death. They had an adoption program but no one wanted them because they were completely wild.

So they started taking the wild horses into the prisons out West and teaching the prisoners how to tame and train the wild horses. Then they could sell them because people now could handle and ride them. What they never expected was that the rate of these men returning to prison dropped to zero in the men that trained the horses! Through the training process, the men and the horses rehabilitate one another.

What they learn from the horses is courage, patience, respect, love, discipline, caring, commitment, and trust. They must also learn to control their emotions and face their fears. Horses mirror the emotions of the person they are with. The men learn to set daily goals, face challenges, get a sense of accomplishment and take pride in a job well done, which builds self-confidence and self-esteem, which is lacking when they arrive. This also produces in them a valuable skill that they can use later to earn a living.

We have now adopted this program here. We are putting it into practice by teaching our own men here how to train our horses, which we raise here ouselves, so our men too will have all these amazing benefits. The men are really loving it!

2023 We added more amazing things in 2023! First, in January and February, we did a one-month camp for at-risk young men. It was a huge success in teaching them how to get their life back on track with the help of faith in God. We hope to repeat this camp yearly to help these at-risk youth.

The next new thing started in 2023, we call “Interactive English” classes. The years Vicki spent as a volunteer teaching English at her church, she realized that when she wrote things on the board they could read and understand them just fine. But when she actually spoke to them, she got the “deer in the headlights” panic look.

We realized that we have the amazing resource here of YOU, our visitors! Now the men get to practice giving you parts of your tour and interact with our visitors in a natural manner. This way, when they graduate from their recovery program, so many more doors are opened for jobs by their ability to fearlessly converse in English.

Please have patience with our guys as they might struggle a little to communicate with you. In fact, it would be great if you encourage them and tell them they are doing great! I promise, you will get the biggest smile you’ve ever seen! And thank you for giving them the priviledge of getting to practice with “real” tourists.

In the second half of 2023, we hosted our first Missionary Team, here on our property and it exceeded all our expectations! We hosted for 8 days, “Cowboys with a Mission” a horse and ranch oriented division of “Youth with a Mission”. We enjoyed them so much that we hope to host many more short-term mission teams and church groups here on our property in the next year.

Last, but not least, we discovered a fast and very affordable way around the temporary moratorium on new construction. We discovered and had donated some container type mobile housing units. They average about $10,000 each to build to our specs or plans and take only 3 weeks to be ready! This is helping us to increase our capacity. We had two installed in December and have more on the way. We hope this will also help us to host those missionary teams that he hope to have join us this year!

2024 Has started with a bang! We started off with our one-month “youth-at-risk” camp. This has morphed into some of the guys wanting to stay and complete the full program of 13 months. Since we have limited space, they have a one-month trial to compete for the limited spaces. This really gets them started off on the right foot.

We have two more mobile housing units on the way and hope to continue increasing our capacity for men in the program, missionary teams and added staff members as we grow.

The first week in January, we were joined by Andy Carlson, a six-month residential volunteer that was sent by Tim Fletcher, the founder of our ReAct addiction and trauma recovery program. Andy has already been a great asset as a counselor and recovery coach, facilitating our advanced, Phase 2 or ReAct, and also he has been giving our guys extra English classes.

We have started communicating and planning with more Missionary teams that want to join us this and next year.  In September we started construction on a new dormitory which will provide living space for 18 more people.

All of this is funded by horseback riding,  and our different tours of the farm and donations generous people put in our donation box. Our recovery program has not yet been officially certified by the government, but when we get it the government certification will give us many benefits. A BIG one is that there is a law in Costa Rica that when police confiscate property, cars or money from drug traffickers, they are required to donate what was confiscated to a certified addiction recovery center. There are very few certified recovery centers in the country.

What is preventing us from being certified is that we have to demonstrate financial stability for one year out. But since the pandemic closed the borders and airports, we had no tourists here for 11 months and they very slowly trickled in after that. That is why we cannot count tourism as reliable, stable income. BUT, what we CAN count on is monthly automated donations to prove our financial stability. If you would like to help us get certified with an automated monthly donation of any amount, Click the box to make a monthly donation.

Please come and meet us, play with our baby animals, take a horseback ride, see the wildlife, learn about aquaponics, and see what we are doing!  We love visitors!

The Monkey Farm is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization registered in the United States, ID #81-1664389, and also a registered NGO in Costa Rica. All donations are tax deductible.