Producer: Byron Rodriguez
Farm: Finca San Isidro
Cultivars: Red and yellow Catuai, Java, Pacamara
Altitude: 1250-1586masl
Process: Washed
Farmgate: €7.31
Wholebean coffee
Nougat, caramel, red apple, black tea, vibrant
Notable:
They grow coffee in harmony with the environment. They use machetes to clean their coffee trees and don’t use any chemicals. All coffee is shade grown so the area is reforested. They do tissue management, it is a sanitary pruning by removing the dead part of the plant and leaving the living part to regenerate. They take care of the flora and fauna surrounding the natural reserve mountain in this region.
Coffee in the Rodriguez family has been trickled down because it is a tradition and a livelihood choice. Byron fondly recalls that it was his grandfather that planted coffee back in the days. It was financially and ecologically viable. His grandfather raised his family by coffee farming and then his father did the same. When they were teenagers, his father gave him and his 4 brothers each a piece of land for coffee farming. Even though there is hope for coffee farmers to earn a good price for their produce, the socio-economic situation in Nicaragua limits this dream.
Many factors ranging from climate change, lack of labor, immigation to neighboring countries for better opportunities, pests, diseases and low prices deeply impact the motivation to continue producing coffee. Yet Byron, his brothers and their father are persistent to not stop this habit called coffee that has been empowering them economically across generations. His farm is located on the Honduran border and when we visited he showed us the outpost that the Nicaraguan army made on the highest part of his land, a reminder of the tumultuous history of this region.
Byron is more than a coffee farmer, he is a mechanic and an inventor. It was his homemade coffee pulping setup that he showed Lennart in 2015 that inspired many other farmers worldwide in later origin trips: more than six mechanical wet-milling processes are connected to a single diesel generator in an ingenious way. The same ingenuity went into his coffee roasters - which he is famous for in the region. He builds them from scratch and sells them, providing him with more income than coffee. Byron’s coffee was becoming known in the Netherlands before our cooperation was forcedly stopped. - This Side Up