Las Nubes, Nicaragua

Description

This coffee was grown by Xiomara del Carmen Marin Gradiz in the Las Nubes community in Nicaragua. She’s owned the land for 10 years and uses it to support her children and wider family.

The coffee is shade-grown beneath nitrogen-fixing inga trees, banana plants, and native forest trees. Xiomara del Carmen Marin Gradiz uses a mixture of synthetic fertiliser and natural coffee pulp compost. Integrated pest management is used which uses a mixture of traps, selective pruning and de-leafing, and low impact targeted fungicides and insecticides to control pests in a minimally harmful way. Controlled monitoring is used to ensure that problems are dealt with immediately in a controlled and focused way. Unfortunately climate change is causing pests and diseases that were previously only found at lower altitudes to make their way further up the mountain as well as changing flowering patterns and increasing both drought and heavy rainfall. This means that constant monitoring and adjustment is needed to maintain healthy, productive coffee crops in the region.

Once picked, the coffee cherries are taken 2 Km away to Xiomara’s mother’s farm where they are floated, depulped, and fermented for 20 to 36 hours before drying on patios or African raised beds for 10-12 days. Then it is transported to the dry mill for processing. Water from the mill is converted to the natural pulp compost for use on coffee farms.