#nobletree

by Byron Holcomb Director of Agribusiness

What do all three have in common? They all produce coffee. Let me explain, but first. . .

It is now time to officially let the cat out of the bag – we purchased a CoE winning farm in Carmo de Minas – Fazenda Monte Verde. The coffee is absolutely delish, the farms topography is breath taking, and there is something charming about the humble and brilliant people in Carmo. I could go on and on for hours about this piece of land, how it is one of the featured farms in the Denomination of Origin program with all 4 aspects having coffee; north, east, south, west. It has about 40% Yellow Bourbon in production. We purchased the farm in January of 2014 and are just now starting to get our feet under ourselves. There are some really fantastic farm workers on the farm, who where fantastically trained by the prior owner Jose Roberto Canato, truly a brilliant man. This year we simply hope to keep up his winning streak in quality. I’ve identified a couple opportunities for improvement, but in all transparency my approach here is to learn from this system that is in place and what makes this coffee so delicious. Basically, I don’t want to screw it up. 

Fazenda Monte Verde

If things go according to plan, and they rarely do in agriculture, we should have some of this coffee for sale this year. Our roasting and retail operations will consume about 20% this year’s crop. Let alone from both farms.  So we will be looking to find a good home for some of this coffee for sure.

A couple months back it was all the rage to talk about the lack of vegetal growth on skeleton pruned coffee in Brazil, which would compromise the harvest in 2015 severely. (Vegetal growth = branches and leaves = nodes = where coffee flowers = where coffee fruits = usually measured in pairs of leaves = 10 pairs of leaves is a great number). Brazilian farmers know a thing or two about selling coffee and coffee markets. As much as they hate to see production dip, they love to spread bad news in hopes of pushing the market up even just one point, which doesn’t mean penny, here it means 100th of a penny on the pound. 

I thought it was too early to start spreading that kind of news when the “supposed to be rainy months” weren’t even over yet. Now they are over. Ok let's talk about vegetal growth – honestly I saw trees that grew several nodes in March. The rains came in and the trees grew horizontal branches like, well normal, just much later than normal.

Solar Panels – here I’m talking about leaves. Plain old green glossy leaves. That is what leaves do for plants. They absorb solar energy, use some CO2 and tadaaaaa the plant has energy to produce fruit and all the other vital things that enable our daily consumption of coffee. More sun, more solar energy. This harvest should start early because well the trees have been basking in lots more sun than normal. Not only that everyday the UV indices are “red” as in danger. On Santa Izabel and our new farm in Carmo we now start at 6am so the workers can spend less time in the intense summer/fall sun.

Water Pumps – here I’m talking about trees. That is what trees do. They pump water from the ground up and out through the underside of their leaves. Sure they have been under massive stress and so much so that the tree was signaled to actually flower. I have lots of pretty pictures of flowers in February. But what happened March – well we had some rain. April? More rain. Last week I almost didn’t’ make it to the office. In 4-wheel drive low, my tires spun all they way up the hill at a snails pace. Again, another argument to expect an early harvest.

The effect of these solar panels and water pumps is like a cars’ turbo. It takes the normal system and kicks it into high gear. In theory the harvest should come early. When I look at our farms through my Central American lens – it is time to pick. In Brazil they say wait until the top of the tree start to over ripe then start. Our farm managers say hold the line until the normal picking season (mid May) then release the pickers to get the coffee off the tree.

The dangers here are never as simple as wait for it to turn red (or yellow). In years like this I like to say you can’t trust your eyes, because a tree that is loaded with coffee starts to direct its energy into its fruit so red doesn’t mean ripe. So when heavy rains hit during a harvest the cherries sometime “explode” or the cherry skin cracks open and of then the cherries are also pushed off on to the ground. Trees coming out of such a stressful final development (too much sun, not enough water), are going to try and “rush” their coffee to be ripe to make that seed viable. I simply hope for light rains that don’t really saturate the soil and think we shouldn’t rush in and start picking because a few trees are ripe - errr red (but this is really tempting). I don’t really have faith in the Brix meter to indicate perfect ripeness but we will be using it again this year.

Picture taken from Santa Izabel on April 1st. 

Picking in in Brazil is like trying to hold a fire hose off a hydrant. It takes many people and you must think twice as to where you point it. Picking in Central America is like holding a garden hose with your thumb. A little here a little there and back again.

by Byron Holcomb Director of Agribusiness

I’m not sure why but usually about 2/3’s through a coffee harvest I can’t wait for it to be over. Some time next May will be so excited for the harvest to start. Then I predict next August, I will be hoping the last cherries are picked and dried.

Our first harvest on Santa Izabel was pretty great considering our volume estimates are being hit, we had some promising cups on the cupping table and have realized that we were lucky to have some fantastic people in place when got here. We were actually very excited to make it through the National Finals of the Cup of Excellence. I’m not sure what our place was but there were only 57 coffees that made it through out of almost 400 entries. We didn’t make it through the International Jury, but I’m not disappointed because for our first year the National Finals was a huge success.

September 30 marks the beginning of the next “ano agrigola – agricultural year”. That should be the date when your harvest is over and you launch into prep for the next harvest cycle: weeding, fertilizing and pruning all at full tilt, but not in that particular order. Usually pruning, cleaning and then the first set of fertilizers.

The first flowering in Ouro Fino was textbook perfect. A very dry August helped stress the trees (hydraulic stress = more flowers), then a couple light rains helped queue up a nice bunch of flower buds, the flowers opened in late September, and the best news is that 4 days of rains followed. I honestly think we had about 95%+ of those flowers take. Then the second flowering followed a similar pattern, it was a touch smaller than the first but still pretty large and it also had a few days of rain following which is great for what we hope to be a big harvest.

I was counting my lucky stars when I left Brazil for a trip to the Dominican Republic last week. My tiny little farm is starting to harvest. The leaf rust here is pretty terrible and some farmers have said, “I don’t even have coffee to drink this year, much less to sell”.

Then today I got an update from Brazil and it was pictures of hail damage. Yes hail. I knew that something had to go wrong because the first two flowerings were too perfect. Not all hope is lost. We only are operating with a hole in the roof of the office but the hail was small so the employees in the field and the coffee trees are ok.

Our terraces are doing pretty great so far. There is one that has been problematic, but that also means it is also the one that is teaching us the most lessons.