Maria Melva Rodriguez owns the farm Las Casitas in the Agua Caliente area of Corquin, Copan. The farm is less than one hectare of land but is planted entirely with Caturra, all of which is maintained under the natural forest.
Maria left Honduras a number of years ago to live in the USA, in search of a better life, but never felt integrated into society there and so decided to return to Honduras and start producing coffee, which she has done for the last 15 years. Since she doesn't have much land production will never be sufficient to make a living from coffee selling through commercial routes, therefore she has decided to focus entirely on the quality and maximise her earnings through investment in quality coffee production. Maria's coffees have improved over the three years we have been buying from her and have gotten more and more complex. With the increased income generated from micro-lot sales, Maria has been able to regenerate areas of her farm and improve her living conditions. The producers will receive about 70% of the FOB price for their micro-lots.
This year the harvest for all producers was extremely difficult with increased rains during the harvest and a lack of pickers meaning a large amount of coffee was lost from either falling to the ground or swelling and splitting on the tree. This lot is a natural that was macerated for 90 hours before being dried on raised beds. All the processing for the ML’s takes place at the Aruco mill to centralise and have greater control over the process to create consistent procedures but also to reduce the risk on the producer. The mill is also at 800masl which gives a drier more stable climate to dry the coffee compared to up at the farms where the weather can be less predictable. The coffee will be delivered to the mill where they assess the cherry (take Brix) and decide on the process for the coffees depending on space and what the producer has done already. The cherry is cleaned and washed and then floated to remove any immature. Then it is placed into barrels that are sealed to create an environment without oxygen for the cherry to continue ferment and macerate in the barrels for different times. In the barrel, the temperature is monitored and kept around 22-25c in the shade at the wet mill. The coffee is then taken to the beds where it is dried for between 20-30 days weather depending on where it is turned hourly.
