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.

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.

Visit to Nicaragua

We had the good fortune to get down to Nicaragua since last I posted. The next few posts will give you something of a travel log of Nicaragua.

We arrived on the 11:45am flight from Miami. Alex was, of course, there to meet us with a driver ("chofer"), since he does not like driving in Managua.

We decided, since it was basically lunch time, and we had been traveling since very early (2am in my case), to get lunch at the airport. Augusto Sandino International Airport has quite a few dining options in their food court. Both large national chicken chains (kind of like KFC) have counters there. Also, you can find a Subway, but we opted for Hilda's Comida Tipico (typical Nicaraguan cuisine).

Typical Nicaraguan cuisine: chicken breast in sauce with peppers and onions, gallo pinto (the rice/bean concoction in the middle of the plate), queso frito (fried slice of cheese in the foreground), and pico de gallo

Hilda's food was good. Priced like real Nicaraguan food and truly delicious. I can't imagine anyone wants to arrive in Nicaragua and eat grilled (or fried) chicken sandwiches with french fries, if they can have the plate above!

Also before we left the airport, I wanted to get my birthday present (early): a crocodile purse. When we were there last, I was on the fence about getting one, but then we had to catch a plane, and that was that. So, I didn't want that to happen again. There is exactly one booth at the airport that sells "bolsas de cocodrilo" (note the R is in a different syllable). They had a tremendous selection compared to our last visit, including lots of different colors. They also had quite a few purses and clutches of boa. Very tempting.

Alex had put new tires on the truck earlier in the week, because he didn't want any mishaps with the old tires while he was driving around with us. After we admired the tires, we all piled in. A song from The Matrix was playing on the radio.

The airport is on the north side of Managua, so we got out of town with relatively little trouble. On the side of the road, about half way to Matagalpa, Alex wanted to stop to see about getting his girls a parrot. Locals catch the parrots and sell them from the side of the road, or even in cages at the intersections in Managua.

I snapped this one out the windshield of the car at an intersection in Managua, later in our trip. This man has one of the same birds in his cage.

Because the entire side-of-the-road-bird-purchase event transpired so quickly, I didn't get a photo. The short of it is that Alex's girls are not getting a bird because the man selling them that day wanted $15 for them, which Alex thought was too high. Alex tells me the birds are called chocoyos or pericos.

Beautiful yellow-naped parrot, native to Nicaragua

About 8 miles from Matagalpa, the car started making an unhappy sound. We pulled over so Alex could add water (from a 2-liter bottle in the trunk) to the radiator. Catastrophe averted.

Arriving in Matagalpa, it was drizzling a bit. Matagalpa is definitely the greenest place we went on this trip. This was our first trip during "the dry season," but in Matagalpa, which is in the mountains, the dry season is not all that dry. We got a little rain every day.

My husband and I were both anxious to get to our hotel to get cleaned up.

A Fun Visit to Redding Roasters

Yesterday I had a meeting at O'Neil's, the much-loved sandwich shop in Bethel, CT. While standing at the counter, ordering green tea, the coffee delivery from Redding Roasters Coffee Company arrived. I got to chatting with the lovely lady delivering the coffee, and she invited me to come by the shop, which I am glad I did.

Bill O'Keefe, the owner, was happy to show me around. I was asking questions about how we go about getting our coffee decaffeinated. Have you ever wondered about that? Turns out there is a big plant in Canada that does (unintuituvely) Swiss water process and another big plant in Mexico that does (intuitively) Mexican water process decaffeination. I have much to learn.

Bill was kind enough to show me the difference in the beans. The Swiss water process is on the left. The Mexican water process is on the right. He said the Swiss is supposed to be the gold-standard, but he sells both. They roast up differently.

The big decision we are going to need to make is to decide whether our beans are (objectively) good enough to import and private label or whether we should just sell them as a commodity in Nicaragua to the beneficios. Bill agreed to roast some of our beans when I finally get some green beans here, and give me his objective assessment.

Chayote: Local Staples to the Nicaraguan Diet

Driving around the Matagalpa state of Nicaragua, we saw many trucks loaded with what looked like either pears or limes. They were green, but not smooth like pears.The skin looked thicker, like limes, but they didn't have the distinctive citrus skin of lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit.

After a bit of research, we found out that these vegetables were called chayote. Chayote are described as being a cross between a cucumber and a potato. They are cooked into soups and stews or served as a side-dish by themselves. I keep reading that they have a subtle, sweet flavor, like cucumber, but, to be completely honest, they didn't taste like anything to me. I guess I would say potato is probably closest, but they are not as firm or as starchy as a potato. I would say they taste like whatever you cook them with, which is a good quality in a vegetable.

We noticed chayote growing in farms along the sides of the roads. Chayote grows on a trellis, and the fruits hang down from trellis. All the farms we passed had the chayote fields in full sun.

Chayote field in full sun.

Because we grow coffee in filtered sunlight (a.k.a. shade), and because we didn't want to take down any of our old-growth trees, and because it's actually against the law to cut down any tree bigger than a certain size, even if you are only planning to use it for a structure on your own farm, and because our agronomist told us to plant our chayote field where he did, we had a pretty lousy chayote crop this year.

Old-growth trees that give our coffee a shade canopy.

Putting in the trellis for the chayote

Chayote hanging from the trellis.

You have probably figured out already what the problem was that we had. We planted the chayote in filtered sunlight, and, as a result, the crop was pretty bad. We are currently in the process of moving the trellises to a sunnier spot. Yes, we noticed that all the other chayote fields were in full sun before we planted ours, but we were deferring to the experts. This time next year, we'll all be eating fried chayote!

We have yellow coffee cherries!

Right in the middle of our debate about whether to plant the beans (which are actually seeds, not beans) from the mature coffee plants on the farm, our business manager in Nicaragua, Alex, sent us some photos of the other types of mature coffee on the farm: the plants that produce yellow coffee cherries! I had never seen yellow coffee cherries before.

Yellow (yes, these are RIPE) coffee cherries on one of our plants!

Alex said he was not sure of the variety, but a short Google search found me this:

The closest thing I could find to our yellow coffee cherries (from http://www.coffeeresearch.org/agriculture/varietals.htm).

The beans in the bottom photo are called Amarello, and they are a mutation on the Brazillian Bourbon bean. I was able to find quite a few sites selling "sweet yellow bourbon beans." So ... that might be what we have. We will probably have to send a sample somewhere to have it tested.

This, of course, complicates our decision about what seeds to start next. We will have about 1000lbs of coffee from the yellow cherries, so we could plant this year's crop of plants from the yellow beans. We just need to figure out which plant give us the highest quality coffee on our soil at our elevation.

Q Grading Coffee

You know how last week, I told you we would have between 4000-5000lbs. of cafe oro (a.k.a. green beans)? Turns out we are going to have between 5,000 and 10,000lbs. this year.

One of the three contiguous parcels we purchased that comprise Finca La Cumbre today already had mature coffee on it when we purchased it. We have yet to identify what the variety of that bean is. Here are some photos for you, in case you have some idea:

The field of mature coffee plants on our farm. Can you tell us what the variety is?

Ripe coffee beans from the mature plants on the farm.

Last year, in April we purchased 100,000 plants of Caturra Estrella. Sixty thousand of those plants died from fungus. We replaced those by starting our own from the same type of seeds. We also discovered that copper sulfate is an organic-approved fungicide.

Starting coffee from seeds.

We will be starting 100,000 coffee plants from seeds in April, when the rainy season begins. We are trying to figure out whether we should save the beans from the mature plants on the farm. We obviously have more than enough beans. We just don't know how good, objectively, the coffee our mature plants are producing IS.


After quite a bit of research, we came across the logically named Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), which has created a coffee grading system that is globally used. They also provide the training that official coffee graders attend. Turns out that we can have our coffee graded using their system by their local ICP (in-country partner), the Asociación de cafes especiales de Nicaragua (ACEN). Lots of acronyms, but eventually we sorted it all out. So our coffee sample will soon be on its way to the ACEN official graders. They will have three certified graders each score our coffee independently. 


I will, of course, let you know how it goes.  

Malanga: A Tale of A Tuber

I first fell in love with malanga, a root vegetable, in the summer of 2010. Malanga is not a vegetable I had ever tasted before my first trip to Nicaragua in 2010. It is not a particularly glamorous vegetable.

Malanga: Not a very sophisticated looking tuber.

Malanga likes very wet soil. That makes it a perfect partner crop to coffee. We grow malanga in the valleys between the various peaks on the farm. The coffee grows on the sides of the peaks, but at the bottom, where the water sits, we grow malanga. We also grow malanga next to the rivers that run through the farm. Finally, we grow malanga near the natural springs on the farm. 

The large leaves of malanga are common among plants that live in or near water. Also, malanga likes the sun.

Coffee will not survive in any of these places because coffee needs well-drained soil or coffee fungus will take over.  The soil on the farm is truly ideal for coffee, but malanga is happy to grow where coffee cannot.

A field of malanga. You can see the native old-growth forest behind the sun-drenched field of malanga. Coffee is growing under the canopy of shade.

We returned to Nicaragua in June of 2011, and I was looking forward to finding a woman with a basket on her head to purchase more of those wonderful, crispy malanga chips. Imagine my dismay when all the ladies I stopped (and I stopped more than one of them) had only limp, fragile potato chips for sale! Of course, to be polite, I purchased a little baggie of potato chips from each, but I wasn't interested in homemade potato chips.

Bagging up the malanga in 2010.

Malanga chips were almost impossible to find in the summer of 2011. The photo above is from the malanga harvest in early 2010. Unfortunately, the malanga harvest on our farm in early 2011 was almost zero. It was a dry year, and the malanga didn't make it. If there in not enough rain, the malanga rots. I thought that might have been unique to our farm, but apparently the malanga harvest everywhere failed. Considering how many farmers were relying on malanga crops, it was a horrible year for many.

Quequisque also suffered from the lack of rain. Like malanga, quequisque grows in wet areas. It is also a tuber but it has a more delicate flavor than malanga.

I have looked for malanga chips in the U.S. It seems like something they would sell at Trader Joe's, but I have yet to find them.  There are some other varieties of the same type of plant.  One is called "quequisque", and looks almost the same as malanga on the top, but is more of a delicacy because it has a smaller, more delicately flavored root. 

The entire malanga situation is very sad. If you type "malanga Nicaragua" into Google, you will see a long list of "success stories" of co-ops and international aid organizations touting how they have helped local farmers to increase their sales by growing malanga, rather than lower value crops. I wonder if those aid organizations and co-ops taught the value of a diverse crop. Poverty is a very difficult disease to cure.

Other Crops We Grow on the Farm

One of our goals for the finca (farm) was to maintain a rich polyculture. When we purchased the land, some of the land had been (stupidly) cleared of foliage, including some of the old-growth trees that provide the natural shade canopy that makes our coffee so rich and prevents acid development in the beans. Shade allows us to grow a gentle cup of coffee.

Old growth trees provide shade for the coffee.

Because we had to provide shade for certain areas, we looked into what local crops we could grow that would offer both shade and food. Bananas are a natural pick. Our farm is too high to be the ultimate banana-growing environment. Bananas like heat more than coffee does, but we can still grow bananas, which we do.

Banana trees supplement the old growth canopy, some of which was cut away by previous owners.

Green bananas from the farm, ready to go to town. Strangely, Nicaraguans pay a premium for green bananas.

One of the parcels of land we purchased has mature papaya trees. Papayas also provide the ideal filtered shade for the coffee.

Big papayas, on the tree....

Field of papaya trees.

After we purchased the first piece of land that is now part of the farm, the price of beans and corn went up so fast that our workers were having trouble keeping up. We decided to plant some beans and corn on the farm so that they would have food they could afford, and so that they didn't have to go all the way to town (2+ hours on foot plus the bus) to get staples that we could grow on site.

Corn grown on the farm. Nicaraguans use young (not fully ripened) corn to make a popular beverage, so these were picked early.

Field of corn on the farm. Unlike the fields of corn you see driving through Indiana or Illinois, our corn field is far from flat,and it is a rich polyculture. No sprays are used to prevent the growth of weeds or insects. "Live and let live."

When we were in Matagalpa in August of 2010, we saw many women carrying baskets full o little baggies of fried, what looked like potato chips, on their heads. These women were like the Nicaraguan vending machines. They were everywhere. We bought some of these chips, which were malanga chips. They were kind of like potato chips, but denser and less greasy. Also, we noticed that the bag of malanga chips were still crisp after 3 days, while the open bag of potato chips we purchased at the same time were soggy.

Field of malanga plants on the farm. Malanga grows in the wet areas. Alex, our business manager, is in the middle of two farm workers.

Harvested malanga being bagged up for sale.

We loved the malanga chips. Nicaraguans also eat chayote, which looks like a thick-skinned pear, but is actually a vegetable.  More on that tomorrow....

How is Nicaraguan Coffee Different?

Nicaraguan coffee is a milder coffee than you may have tasted in the past. If you are used to drinking "brisk" or even slightly bitter American coffees (like Starbucks), then you might be pleasantly surprised by Nicaraguan coffee.

Ripe coffee beans. Caturra estrella.

Sweet Maria's is an excellent source of information on coffees, as well as home-roasting equipment and green beans (cafe oro). This is what Thompson "Tom" Owens has to say about Nicaraguan coffee:

"Good Nicaraguan coffees are considered "classic" cup: great body, clean flavor, and balance. They are unique among Centrals in the fact that the highest grown (SHG grade: Strictly High Grown) do not develop the pronounced and sharp acidity of other Centrals. The botanical cultivars utilized are traditional: Typic, some Bourbon and Maragogype dominate, along with Caturra and Paca."

One of the nurseries where we grow our coffee from certified seeds.

"..., Jinotega and Matagalpa coffees can demonstrate their remarkable versatility in a wide range of roasts, from light City roast through Full City and into the Vienna range."

Did I mention that our coffee farm is in Matagalpa? Did I mention that all the coffee on our farm is certified "Strictly High Grown" (SGH) because of the altitude of our farm?

Why You Should Look for Shade-Grown Coffee

All our coffee is shade grown. In fact, it is such a rustic, natural farm with so much original native vegetation, that you almost can't find the coffee plants in this picture:

Coffee plants in between native bananas and old-growth trees.

On our farm, high in the mountains of Nicaragua, all the original old-growth trees are left alone. Previous owners started to clear some of the old-growth trees, despite very strict and strictly enforced regulations about cutting down old trees. When we purchased the land, there were quite a few human-felled trees and some Hurricane-Felix-felled trees. Since we purchased the land, we haven't cleared any old-growth trees. We do clear out some of the low-growing vegetation to make room for coffee plants, but as you can see from the photo above, coffee lives in a rich polyculture of indigenous vegetation.

Here I am in that same place as the photo above, with a young coffee plant in front of me. Notice that you could barely see it before I pointed it out.

The Seattle Audubon Society has a fascinating web page about why farmers should grow and you should buy shade-grown coffee. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has created a certification that we are pursuing that certifies coffee "shade grown, bird friendly." It turns out that coffee originally grew entirely in the shade. Recently, varieties of coffee were developed that thrived in full sunshine. The point of full-sun coffee was to increase yields. In fact, coffee plants that grow in full sun can produce up to 3 times as much coffee in a year, however, when these plants were introduced, along with them came the need for more fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. Additionally, the soil was depleted by the plants, and there was more run-off of chemicals into the local water supplies. If you have seen Food Inc., or any other documentary about how the pursuit of higher-yielding plants and livestock have resulted in a more abundant but inferior food supply, then you know the story.

By sticking to shade-grown coffee, we follow the traditions of the native Nicaraguans, and we also protect the soil and water, not to mention protecting the native bird habitats by keeping intact the diverse vegetation that the birds require.

Young coffee plant. Notice the shade from bananas and other native trees falling across the bush.

Also, if great taste is what you seek in a cup of coffee, any professional coffee taster will tell you that shade-grown coffee is a richer, more nuanced cup of coffee than full-sun-grown coffee.

Cafe Oro

Now that we have about 4,000-5,000 lbs. of "cafe oro," from our mature coffee plants this year, I realize I had better get hopping on finding retail outlets for our delicious Nicaraguan coffee. "Cafe oro" means golden coffee, which is the color of the coffee after the husks have been soaked off.This photo shows the unroasted beans, after husks and skin have been removed. This is what is called "cafe oro." Different countries grow different types of coffees, and each type of coffee is processed differently. Many coffees are dry processed. In Nicaragua, water is used to remove the papery skin, so cafe de oro requires that the coffee be dried in the sun. We are pretty small-scale at this point, so we are able to dry our coffee on these screens, propped up on saw horses and boards.

Large, commercial "beneficios" (coffee processing centers) use large outdoor concrete slabs (they kind of look like areas the size of multiple shuffle board courts) to dry the beans in the sun. On any sunny day, you can see the workers out in the drying areas with long-handled flat rakes moving the coffee around so it will all dry out. Thanks to Marvin del Cid for this photo.