Neighbors & crops
MARGARITA RAMIREZ
VILLA JULIANA
Village: Cachipay, Cundinamarca
Altitude: 1500 M.A.S.L
Variety: Castillo
The Profile
Doña Margarita is 62 years old and has grown coffee for the last 9 years. Coming from a family of traditional farmers, Margarita feels connected to agricultural work and the countryside. Having been displaced from Los Llanos (near the Amazon) due to civil unrest, Doña Margarita moved to Cundinamarca after a cousin offered her a piece of land to work. Ever since Margarita has been working the farm, Villa Juliana, cultivating coffee and breeding rabbits. The interest in cultivating coffee actually came from the want to use and sell organic compost from rabbit waste. Having heard that the region was full of coffee, she decided to plant 0,7 hectares with the crop to test out her product. It seems the success of her organic compost resulted in a long-term affair with coffee.
The farm is located in the municipality of Cachipay, Cundinamarca, at an elevation of 1500 m.a.s.l. Before working with us, Margarita would sell her coffee to cooperatives in the nearest town of Cachipay. She tells us that her biggest challenges were processing and drying, due to the lack of infrastructure. Since joining the Neighbors & Crops program two years ago, Margarita has noticed her overall costs go down: no longer having to find and pay pickers, no longer having to pay for processing space, and no longer having to transport her coffee to the cooperatives. She sees this as a win-win situation, and so do we!
Key Facts
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Proccesing Methods
Lactic
This kind of fermentation is classified as ‘Anaerobic’ as oxygen has minimal interaction with the cherry. Once the cherries arrive at the mill, they are hand sorted and placed in sealed tanks. With no oxygen involved, bacteria feed on carbohydrates present in the mucilage favoring a higher concentration of Lactic Acid, creating a unique profile of the resulting cup.
Honey
The Honey Process begins with a pre-fermentation stage of 45 hours at the wet mill. From here the cherries will start the de-pulping stage, passing through three stages of quality control before removing a percentage of the skin. While the drying stage, coffee will be placed in African-style raised beds for over 15 days. Due to the levels of sugar and moisture, the first days will be crucial to avoid microbial activity prolongation. Finally parchment coffee will pass through the mechanical drying machines to end up the drying process.
Mixed
This method involves a combination of stages found in lactic and acetic processing methods. First, all hand-sorted cherries will go through a short pre-fermentation step. Similar to lactic processing, the cherries are placed in airtight fermentation tanks with limited oxygen. Once removed from the tanks, we pass them through three levels of quality control before having the skin removed by a pulper machine. From there, we leave the beans resting in the fermentation tanks to undergo an acetic fermentation, agitating them from time to time. Once the process is completed, the beans are transferred to African-style raised beds to begin the drying phase.
Our Mixed Fermentation Processing produces a very balanced cup profile with medium to heavy body.
Bio-Innovation
Through the Bioinnovation process, La Palma & El Tucán honors the main principles of organic farming. They first capture and reproduce microorganisms found in their farm’s beautiful forests, to create their own fermentation substrate. Then, they mix this substrate with perfectly ripen geisha cherries, in a clay pot for 100 hours. This combination allows them to create a sustainable closed cycle. After the fermentation, they remove the leftovers and reuse them as compost.
If you wish to request additional information about the processing of your microlot, such as fermentation time or type of drying, please let us know by filling this form.
We will get back to you soon with detailed information.
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