Blog
Find out what's happening around Vienna Coffee Company
The first image is of Demetrio, one of the new farmers of La Armonia Hermosa Coffee. He is showing us his large arabica trees. He has a wide assortment of coffee trees of all ages and an assortment of shade trees. He's great! Incredibly animated, and very passionate about his crop.
The second image is Demetrio walking back from his farm to the path probably carrying about 40 pounds worth of jocote (a tropical fruit) on his back! The incredible part is he is 56 years old and barely broke a sweat!
Also incredible is this path that he and all the other farmers have to walk up with all of their products to go back up to Santa Maria from their farm! Wow... these guys are strong and fit! You didn't want to see us after climbing this hill without anything on our backs.
The last image is John and Les talking with Demetrio about his crop this year and eveything that goes into it. Very exciting!
The first image is of unripe coffee drying (with the cherries still on the bean) on the patio of Rodolfo's brother-in-law. When they sort the ripe coffee cherries from the unripe coffee, they keep the unripe cherries to use for themselves and dry them on patios around their land.
The second image is of a coffee tree nursery. Notice how good these seedlings look.
The third image is of the bags of coffee cherries that the pickers picked. Imagine carrying one of those on your back up a huge hill!
The fourth image is of Rodolfo weighing the bags of cherries that have been picked by his pickers. When Rodolfo took us around his land he had us walk up the mountains like the pickers do. We, however, didn't have 100 lbs of coffee strapped to our backs. The agility, strength, and determination of these pickers are incredible. I'm fairly in shape, and I was huffing, puffing and falling all over the place.
The fourth image is of their beneficio (wet mill). This is a large scale beneficio. The one we are constructing in Santa Maria will not be this large.
The fifth image is of Rodolfo giving Les some green samples of his coffee (these beans are not roasted) to take back for Vienna Coffee to sample roast. Notice in the background that they have a large warehouse full of coffee ready to be shipped to different roasters around the country.
The first picture is outside of John's window the first two nights he was in Antigua.
We then went to Dometrio's land. We are taking a little break eating Jocotes. One of Dometrio's shade crops over his coffee trees.
These are the "chicken" buses that take people to and from the different villages and cities in Guatemala.
John, Les, and Jamie took a nice relaxing lunch at Epicure. It had a beautiful plaza in the middle of it, and the food was spectacular! We even received complimentary chocolate/ginger truffles.... yumm.
