A coffee farmer's story.....
Nuevo San Luis is a small village in the centre of Chiapas. Because employment opportunities are scarce there, many families have left the village to find work elsewhere. The families that stayed are members of Union de Eijdos San Fernando. Adán Salas Gonzales (pictured right) is originally from Motozintla, but moved to Nuevo San Luis to grow coffee and and is now a member of San Fernando.
“Coffee production is not new to me. I learned the best tricks already from my grandfather in Motozintla and after that on the big coffee plantations where I started as a worker. Ever since I produce the coffee organically, I can really tell that that is much better also for the coffee beans. When you do your work right with regards to cleaning the land, have the right dose of shade, you can see that that is enough for he beans to become big, much bigger and heavier than when you apply chemicals. Another important thing to do is to select the best varieties of coffee trees via seed selection and put only the best seeds in your nursery for new production. What I do is compare how the different varieties give fruit, weigh the beans of the different trees in water, and of those that are heaviest, I select the seeds. We have here varieties such as Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai, Arabe and Marago.”
It is really marvellous to know that my coffee ends up in the Palenque Gourmet for consumers in the U.K. to drink. In the past we did not even know where our coffee went. We only sold it locally and we did not know what happened with it afterwards. Now we know where our coffee goes to and that is important for us to know.
To the people who are drinking our coffee, I would like to tell them that they are savouring an excellent coffee, free of any contamination, pure organic, and which takes a lot of work by the farmers to produce it. But it is done with a lot of love.”