Electricity on the Farm and the "Extra" House

We go to incredible lengths to bring you the very best coffee. The finca is quite remote. It is probably only 20 miles from Matagalpa, up into the mountains towards San Ramon, but it is about two hours by car or truck. The road is "paved" (sort of - some of it is asphalt, and some is gravel and oil) up until the last 8 km. "Paved", but still you can only travel 25mph on most parts. The bus will stop to let you off in Santa Ana, which is just a few houses in a cluster. That is where the dirt road begins.

One-lane mud road (in the rainy season)

The electricity ends in Santa Ana, too, or shortly up the dirt road. In any case, it doesn't make it anywhere near the farm. We decided to put one of our city-raised men on the farm to oversee the harvest and processing. While his wife is from the country, thus used to living without power, he is not. We were able to find a solar panel to mount on the roof of the "extra" house, so he can have some electricty.

Small soar panel on the roof of the "extra" house

The "extra" house is kind of a funny story. When we bought the finca, the overseer already lived on it. His family has lived in the mountains and farmed coffee for generations. He, his wife, and their three daughters were living in the standard mountain house: two bedrooms, dirt floor, no running water, no electricity. There isn't even a chimney. They cook over an open fire in the kitchen half of the house, then, instead of the walls being higher where the roof is higher, the walls are the same height on all sides of the house, and the gap between the roof and the walls provides ventilation for the cooking smoke to escape.

Wood-stove cooking inside the house (without a chimney)

We looked at this house with dirt floors and promptly decided that our overseer and his family should have a nicer house. We took fallen logs (plenty of giant trees were felled by Hurricane Mitch in 1998) and had a local craftsman slice them into boards for walls, then brought in "zinc" roofing panels, and finally poured concrete for the floor.

Even though we had had our overseer's wife participate in measuring off the rooms of this new house, she took one walk through the house and promptly decided that she could not live in a house with concrete floors! She and her family stayed in the house with the dirt floor, and our new man and his wife just now moved into the "extra" house.

The solar panels feed a battery which provides enough juice either to keep three lightbulbs going, or to power two bulbs and one electric outlet. It didn't take long for word to spread among the locals and before we knew it there was a line waiting to pay to use the electricity to charge cell phones. Strangely, in this community without electricity, almost everyone has a cell phone. Formerly, they had to walk 6 or 8km to the where they could pay someone to charge their cell phones.

We are hoping the local authorities will be providing real electricity soon, but in the meantime, everyone is happy for the opportunity to charge their phones.