On Monday, we took a trip to a coffee farm about an hour’s drive around the lake. It was by far the coolest experience we have had since we have been here. The owner of the farm is a Guatemalan guy named Charlie. He and his family live on the farm, which is a rarity because most rich landowners in Guatemala live in the city, and only visit the farm to make sure that everything is going smoothly. They have a very neat and just relationship with their workers because they are so highly involved in the entire process. They have cottages set up so that during the harvest, Mayan families can come and live there for three months. Charlie is a very forward thinking guy. He received his B.A. from the University of Florida in agriculture. His family name is well known due to their money and political power. As a result, his cousins and he have been kidnapped and held for ransom in the past. This is a common problem here in Guatemala with people that have money or political power, so their family is unfortunately surrounded by bodyguards at all times.

The farm seems to be bursting at the seams with activity, yet all the activity flows together. Their main thing is coffee; they sell their good coffee to Starbucks, and their not so good coffee to Folgers. They have bees on the farm to cross pollinate, this can increase coffee production by 40%. So they have honey to collect, and 300,000 pounds of it a year they do collect. (When we were leaving the farm I (brett) drove into a bee, it was my first Africanized bee sting.)

On the 2000 acres they also have several rivers which are funneled through 3 small hydro-electric plants. They create enough power to run all of the coffee machinery and their cow milking process.

They raise cattle for meat and cows for milking. This gives the farm an income year round and creates cash for the farm. The milk goes to a cheese manufacturer, Parma, that is several miles from the finca. The cows are fed from corn and bananas grown on the finca. The food the cows won’t eat they feed to goats and water buffalo they are raising. The hope to milk both of them for cheese production also

We put up some generally pictures we took at the farm. In a few weeks the finca we live on starts harvesting, we will explain the harvest then. Charlie’s finca is closer to sea level and warmer, so the harvest starts earlier. For now pictures. Oh yeah…we had a bummer of a time riding around in the Defender 110.

A Mayan girl sorting her picked coffee cherries





This is Charlie explaining their coffee nursery to Adele.



Hava looking at the green coffee on a drying patio.



This thing was a brick wall, asian water buffalo.



This is a brick wall too…