All About Coffee
Finca Esperanza Verde (FEV) is a 263-acre certified organic farm of which 28 acres (16 manzanas) is cultivated in Arabica coffee that flourishes under the shade of the farm”s extensive tropical forest canopy.
When purchased in 1997, FEV was an abandoned coffee farm that could only be accessed via a muddy track. Since that time, Sister Communities of San Ramón, Nicaragua has renovated and replanted the coffee, rebuilt the road, built an ecological coffee processing facility and built an ecotourism lodge for 26 guests mostly on the income from the sale of the farm’s coffee, Café San Ramón, in North Carolina.
When visiting the farm you can learn about growing coffee in an environmentally responsible way which includes participating in the care of the coffee bushes and making compost. During the coffee harvest months, November through February, you can help by picking, processing, and sorting the coffee beans. If you desire, you can follow the coffee to Matagalpa where it is sun dried, sorted, graded, cupped and exported.
The farm’s Nicaraguan staff enjoys teaching visitors about coffee and is proud that their care of the farm makes it a home to hundreds of species of birds, butterflies, mammals, trees and orchids.
AWARD WINNING COFFEE
Our coffee, the Catura variety of Arabica, was the top scoring certified organic coffee in Nicaragua’s first Cup of Excellence ™ competition in 2007.
One of the world’s more discerning coffee companies, Counter Culture Coffee based in Durham, North Carolina, purchases our entire coffee crop annually. They also purchase coffee from a number of other certified organic, family owned coffee farms in San Ramón. Counter Culture Coffee has been at the forefront of the movement of specialty coffee buyers to develop a long-term relationship with the coffee producers. Producers are paid generously for their coffee, well above the organic, fair trade certified price.
FEV reopens Feb. 10th
FEV in Oprah Magazine
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, David Zucchino, writes about his trip to FEV in the UU World, Fall, 2011.
The rutted road continues up a lush mountainside, past banana plants heavy with fruit and tree canopies inhabited by howler monkeys and sloths, to an outpost high in the rain forest. Carved out of the mountain 4,000 feet up, the setting offers spectacular views of the Dariense mountain range and the green valley far below.