Colombia San Antonio Doña Rosa

This coffee is from the farm of Doña Maria Rosa, her farm Los Nogales tucked away in the hillside above the store her family operates in the town of San Antonio. Los Nogales is not reachable by car or motorcycle. A trail curls up around the side of the local school yard, then up, up, up for the better part of an hour to the reach the top at just shy of 2000 meters. During the picking season, Doña Rosa makes this trek daily at 5 am to organize labor for the day's picking, and to check on the coffee that was processed the previous day. In addition, her family also run the town store, as well as a coffee buying warehouse where farmers in the surrounding region can sell their coffee for a fair price. We've stayed with her several times, and the amount of work she puts into the farm, store, family, and guests is nothing short of incredible! Not surprising, the rest of the family are all involved in their own farms as well, the youngest with a plot named "La Salada", and Robinson manages a shared 10 hectare farm in the nearby village of Agua Blanca. Los Nogales is about 3 hectares in size, and they've planted 3 different cultivers: Caturra, Tabi, and Typica. Like many in the region, their beneficio consists of a manual de-pulper, and they have a 3 tank system involving separate tanks for fermentation, soaking, and a final wash before being carried down to their home solar dryers in the town below. Their farm is situated along a ridged valley, carbonero trees towering from the valley floor, and banana and balsa trees used for shade.