OUR COFFEE

We produce about 500,000 pounds of coffee per year and as we grow, we will produce about 750,000 pounds. We grow microlots of Caturra, yellow Catuai, red Catuai, Bourbon, Maragogype, Java, Catimor, and Geisha varietals, all of them between 900 and 1350 meters above sea level. Beanealogy and Royal import our coffees.

All of the coffee on the farm is shade grown and half of it is certified organic. The other half is still handled organically, unless there is either a big problem that organic solutions cannot help (like a roya infestation) or we run out of organic fertilizer.

We employ about 180 workers in our coffee farm who live either on-site with their families or in the nearby city of Matagalpa. During picking season, we hire seasonal workers who stay in housing on-site.

We have our own dry mill and wet mill, giving us total control over our coffee’s quality. From the dry mill, we recycle the coffee husks as fuel in the workers’ kitchen and from the wet mill, we use our cherry pulp as compost in our worm farm and use the honey water byproduct to produce methane gas for cooking and electricity.

We use organic pesticides and fungicides developed in our on-site organic laboratory, as well as recycled traps for the broca, or coffee borer beetle. To make the traps, we first cut a hole out of a large soda bottle and paint the bottle red to resemble a cherry. Inside, we hang a little dropper bottle full of alcohol and coffee grounds, and fill the bottom of the bottle with water. The beetles smell and see what they believe is a nice big red cherry and drown inside. Each season, we capture between 600,000 and 2 million broca.