Guate travels: Alberto

Jamie and Les left the freezing USA last Monday to go to the deliciously warm Antigua, Guatemala to work with and visit the coffee farmers of Santa Maria de Jesus. To their great happiness, their first week in beautiful Guate was great consisting of farm visits, shared meals, and many meetings.

Here is a snippet of one of their trips to Santa Maria de Jesus...
"After catching a ride on the back of a local's truck and taking the long hike down from the village onto the farmland, we came to Alberto's land where the harvest is looking great. (photos will come shortly). He has shade trees full of avocados, lemons, Kumquats, bananas, pacaya and many other delicious treats. His coffee trees are full and plump with beautiful coffee cherries ready for the picking. Alberto, a masterful farmer, has a great selection of different varieties of coffee which helps if a coffee blight takes over one of the varietals. You can tell Alberto has such great passion for his crops not only by his enthusiasm when showing off his land and the twinkle in his eye, but also the health of all of his trees and plants. BEA-U-TI-FUL!"

The picture is of Volcan Agua (the Volcano Santa Maria de Jesus is located on)

Please check back in the near future for more about Les and Jamie's trip and pictures.

La Armonia Hermosa coffee farm visit

Les and Jamie are off next Monday to Guatemala to work with the coffee farmers of our delicious La Armonia Hermosa coffee. Keep up with the story of the project at their website.

During this trip the goal is to start construction on a cistern that is needed for constructing the wet mill. Creating a wet mill will let the farmers to process their own coffee which gives them more control over the quality, and it will also employ the farmers which will allow more money to stay within their community instead of the larger beneficios (processing plants). John will be joining them at the end of January where we will help pick the coffee berries. Everyone is excited about the trip and will take many pictures!

*The picture is of the wet mill at Azotea where they get their coffee processed currently.