Finca Sofia – Snake Bites!

Posted on April 30, 2010

Two days ago our field supervisor, Angel, was bitten by a venomous snake. He was rushed to the hospital in David by Kelly Hartmann, farm manager, and given the antidote immediately.

Kelly said Angel was looking quite ill when they arrived, and his arm had already begun to swell, but by the time he left that evening, Angel was looking much better.

Today Kelly reports the swelling has gone down some and Angel should be released in the next day or two.

We are still trying to find out the type of snake that bit Angel, but from experience we know that there are lots of them on the farm and in Panama – some 20 that are venomous!!

Another reality is that our farm, the ecological bastion that it is, is fast becoming a refuge for animals of all types, since many of our neighbors rely heavily on the use of pesticides.

Needless to say, when I travel to Finca Sofia in the summer I will be taking a snake-bite emergency kit!

We are grateful that Angel is doing better and will do everything to strike a careful balance between ecology and safety on our farm.

SCAA Perspectives – Ecuador Perla Negra and Decaf Colombia

Posted on April 21, 2010

I am just back from SCAA in Anaheim.  This wonderful event highlighted some spectacular advances in coffee quality.  In particular I had the pleasure of cupping coffees from Ecuador and Colombia that “reset” my expectations for these origins.

Nico Velez, a coffee farmer/exporter/roaster and native of Ecuador, has started a boutique-grade coffee renaissance in his country, focused around the capital, Quito.  At a cupping at the SCAA, Nico’s first attempts at micro-lot coffees were placed around a table for a group of 20 coffee professionals to sample.

Tasted blindly, the coffees showed an array of flavors, some of which were very unusual for this origin.  In particular, the Ecuador Perla Negra, grown by Magdalena Zavala in the town of Nanegal in the provence of Pichincha, just outside Quito, far exceeded our expectations, showing an abundance of floral aromas and flavors, peach and green apple.  This 100% typica coffee, was full-bodied and bright, but very nuanced.

Furthermore, we are proud to be the owners of the first lot of this coffee ever exported from Ecuador – having just arrived last week.  We have been searching for just such a coffee for years, and came upon it through our good friends at Exclusive Coffees, who until recently have focused on micro-lots from Central America, but branched out into Ecuador this year.  The best part of the cupping was that we were able to compare our lot to the current harvest, due to ship in June, which is just beginning to be picked and which was also on the table.  Both coffees were world class, and left us excited at the prospects of this fantastic origin! Available now on facebook.

The other surprise at the show was a cupping of Colombia micro-lots, with boutique exporter, Virmax.  Among the coffees on the table was none other than the winner of the Coffee of the Year Competition at the SCAA, the coffee which received the highest score overall from a panel of judges.  What we did not know is that there was also a decaf coffee on the table.  Well, to everyone’s surprise, the coffee that rated highest at the end of the cupping was the decaf!  We were all shocked, and those of us from Equator were delighted because we had just received this very coffee a few days earlier!

This unusual coffee is called Colombia Las Serranias and is currently available on facebook – it is like a sweetly acidic southern Hulia, but with banana, pineapple and cream notes no doubt imparted through the decaffeination process that uses a derivative from sugar-cane known scientifically as Ethel Acetate (EA).    It isn’t that this is the first lot of coffee to be decaffeinated using EA, far from it, but the difference lies in the fact that Las Serranias is an A grade coffee, selected by Equator BEFORE decaffeination.  This, tied in with the pleasant characteristics sugar cane adds during the decaffeination process, rather than the “off” flavors often associated with decaffeinated coffees, makes this a wonderful option for decaf drinkers, and one of the most popular coffees at the SCAA!

These and other wonderful events at the SCAA demonstrated the vigor and dynamism evident in the specialty coffee industry right now.   The bottom line is that coffee drinkers will have some wonderful new options to choose from today and, I think, some even better options as origins like Ecuador gain momentum!

Best,
David Pohl

Panama – Finca Sofia Update!

Posted on April 17, 2010

I just returned from a wonderful trip to Finca Sofia, Equator’s fledgling coffee farm in Panama.  This trip was focused on three aspects of the farm: worker housing, getting Angelica, a girl on a farm with a deformed leg, on a plane to the US  for surgery, and checking on the status of our coffee trees.

We have been planning worker housing since we bought the farm three years ago.  A lot of though has gone into the final plans, including input from the very workers who will in habit it.  The result is a comfortable, high-quality, culturally appropriate dwelling for the 7 full time employees and their families.

Susan Church, a contractor from Berkeley, CA, and I, along with out farm manager, Kelly Hartmann, broke ground on the worker housing last week when we rented a back-hoe/front loader.  This machine pictured below struggled for 10 hours at it removed massive volcanic boulders from the building site, and in some cases buried these boulders because it simply wasn’t feasible to remove them.

We now have a site cleared and leveled, ready an waiting for construction to being.  Materials are being ordered this week for the foundation, and we’ll take it from there.  The estimated time of completion is 6 months from now, a long time we feel, but things happen at their own pace in the remote section of Panama where we find our farm.

Angelica, the little girl who we have connected with Shriners hospital finally received a surgery date, so by chance Susan and I were involved in the logistics of getting her to Panama City with her mom to catch a flight to Tampa Florida.  Angelica had her surgery Tuesday and will be fitted with a prosthetic limb, allowing here to play and go to school, things she has not been able to do for much of her life.

Finally we walked the farm with agronomist Edgardo Miranda, seeing great progress all over the place, including even a smattering of geisha flowers.  This very exciting development came a year earlier than we expected and is a positive sign that we’ll have a little coffee to sample next year!

I’ll be spending a month on Finca Sofia this summer, learning more about how a farm operates, seeing the worker housing to completion (we hope) and checking on Angelica’s recovery.

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