Una Finca de Café

 

Before Leslie moved back home this past week :(  she invited me to visit a coffee farm last Sunday that is owned by one of her friends, Felix.  It was an awesome experience!

Remember that you can see a larger picture by clicking on it.

To start, we drove to a town about 10 miles from Antigua.  Neither of us had any idea of how far "off the beaten path" the farm was.  We climbed up and up the mountain, stopping at one point to put the pick-up in 4-wheel drive.  Here are some pictures of the drive up.  It was a rough ride.  Near the top we had to stop and get out so the truck could make it through the loose dirt.  I don't know how obvious it is from the pictures, but during heavy rains this road turns into a small river- at some points the ruts were over a foot deep.  Leslie can back me up on this; I am not exaggerating!                

Leslie and Felix



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(I'm sorry, I don't know what "gh" is or how to get rid of it!  When I try it just deletes the last picture.)  Felix showed us where the coffee plants were spread out over his land.  I'm sure he told us, but I can't remember how many acres he owns.  It was quite an amazing story he has, how he started just helping his father on this farm and then was able to partner with an organization down here to start his own business.  Since then he has bought more plots of land, helped many other farmers to buy land and export coffee beans, and has a crew of 7 working on his farm.

The dark green small shrubs are the coffee plants. 

Not an easy terrain to farm... but beautiful.

 

 

  

 

Felix also had corn, frijoles, and many different types of fruit trees.  He likes to experiment with plants and had avocado trees from Mexico and some type of fine-wood trees from Africa.  He picked a lot of fruit for us to try.

Don't remember the name of this fruit.
Update:  The fruit is called Granadilla.  (Gracias Eileen!)

Newly planted coffee field.

 

 

Three-year old plant on the left.  You can see the coffee beans- the red ones are ripe.  Apparently you can eat the middle of the bean seed. 

Six-year old plants on the right.  The higher the altitude where they are planted, the better the quality, though it is harder to farm and takes more years for a plant to produce seeds.

 After, Felix took us to see his greenhouse with the baby coffee plants.  We ended by going to his house to meet his family and see where they split, dry, and sort the coffee beans.