Cerro Oscuro

Manuel cultivates coffee since he turn 10 years of age, land inherited from his father. they have been coffe picker all their lifes, but with great effort they have bought that land thats now producing this coffee as a way of living for him and his family of four. That farm has no permanent workers and up to 3 in harvest season.

Manuel fertilizes in the middle of June. He does his farm's weed control by hand, applies tree pruning, with selective and sanitary purposes, also regulates shade. he does a very active sampling for plagues and pest, and uses the Integrated method of control for plagues. His harvest starts in December until the end of April sometimes, collecting only the red cherries, her pickers do the picking along with people from the community. then he moves his crop using the pickers to wet mill, taking him approximately 15 minutes . The pulper works just fine, so the process is using the less water possible from a protected water source coming from a near by stream. Fermentation takes place in cement tanks, an average of 20 hours, under close supervision, depending on the weather and moisture.

Then the coffee is taken into cement patios for removing excess water, and then is placed into solar dryers, the green house type. It takes 1:30 hours to get his coffe to the nearest exporter. He says his success lays in picking only the red cherries, implementing a good nutrition plan for the coffee trees. He and his family and workers are aware of the protection of the environment and give the proper process to pulp and residue waters. Actually coffee production doesn't give enough yield for maintaining the necessary family income, specially fertilizers prices. This also affects the workers because he is not able to give them much paid work.