What a Cloud Forest Looks Like (from the inside)

You may have heard of a "cloud forest," but seeing one and being inside one are an entirely different matter. Because our farm is 3600+ feet in elevation, it is squarely in the cloud forest. It is easy to lose one's sense of direction when the clouds are so thick and low because one can't even navigate to or from rises in the land.

The road leaving the farm disappears into a cloud. You can see the roof of one of the gazebos on the right, past the roof of the caretaker's house. The gazebos provide a place out of the sun for workers and the local police to enjoy lunch or a break.

On the right you can see the chute where the de-pulped coffee comes out of the de-pulper. Coffee sits in partially-full green bags.

 Even in the "dry season," there is plenty of water on the farm. We never need to irrigate the plants once they are out of the "semillero" (where the seeds sprout) and the "vivero" (the nursery where we keep the plants until they are ready to be planted in the soil on the hills). The baby plants won't survive too much sunlight or too little or too much water, so we carefully control the water for the baby plants. Once they are in the fields, mother nature takes care of the rest.

This is the road from the last town and the end of the paved road (Santa Ana) to the farm. 

One major hazard of having only a single-lane dirt road for the last 8km is that in the rainy season, the mud can make the road completely impassable to cars. Fortunately, we harvest in the dry season.