Honduras – Maria Genoveva (Organic)

Honduras – Honduras – Maria Genoveva (Organic)

Maria Genoveva Martinez owns the farm Las Casitas in the Agua Caliente area of Corquin, Copan. The farm covers 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. She was in search of a better life, but never felt integrated into society there and so decided to return to Honduras and start producing coffee. This she has done for the last 15 years. Since she doesn’t have much land her production will never be sufficient to make a living from coffee selling through commercial routes, so she has decided to focus entirely on quality and maximise her earnings through investment in quality coffee production. Maria has been assisted in this by our partner Falcon and the Aruco cooperative. Maria’s coffees have improved greatly over just three years and have become more and more complex. With the increased income generated from micro-lot sales Maria has been able to regenerate parts of her farm and improve her living conditions.

All the processing for this and our other Honduran micro-lots takes place at the Aruco mill which enables consistent processing procedures to be created and utilised and reduces the risk for the producer. The mill is also located at 800masl which gives a drier more stable climate to dry the coffee compared to up at the farms where the weather is much less predictable.

The coffee is delivered to the mill where the cherries are assessed the process for the each lot is decided upon. The coffee cherries are cleaned and washed and then floated to remove any immatures. Then for natural processing 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. 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 and is turned hourly.