Field Notes: Catalan de las Mercedes, Guatemala

The growth of operations at Catalan De Las Mercedes astounded us this year! Two years of travel restrictions only serve to amplify the feeling of amazement when returning to this farm. Producer Nico Hammond has transformed this third generation farm into an enormous operation, with new additions including a fully staffed school center for harvest workers complete with dormitories and a large scale mechanical drying facility. Among the many efforts toward sustainability, the excess water from the mill is used to irrigate grasslands where livestock graze. They also recycle the cherry pulp into organic compost.

The Journey from Seed to Cup

In a time where coffee and convenience seem to go hand in hand, many people would probably be surprised to know just how hard it is to get this product to them. Let’s start with the fact that higher quality coffee production excels in places with predictable dry and rainy seasons, requiring elevations over 800 masl and as high as 3,000 masl.

A Brief History of Coffee

The exact story of coffee’s earliest entry into the human diet has faded well beyond the reach of history, but modern geneology has given us the ability to trace the origins of the fruit to the western mountains of Ethiopia. What’s clear is that at some point, people took a liking to the fruit of the shade-loving trees growing wild under the forest canopy, and decided to plant the seeds with them where they settled.

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