El Campo – Honduras

Marysabel Caballero and her husband Moises Herrera are working with over 200 hectares of land, planted with coffee. They are 2nd and 3rd generation coffee farmers and have been rewarded many times for their commitment to developing coffee quality in Honduras. We have known the family since mid-2000, and Nordic started buying coffee from them in 2012.

The Caballeros are highly committed to the environmental sustainability of their farms. A lot of their energy and focus goes towards improving the soil of their farms to ensure a healthy growing environment for their coffee shrubs. Therefore, they produce organic fertilizer made from cow and chicken manure mixed with pulp from coffee cherries and other organic materials. This is used in addition to some mineral fertilizer to ensure that the coffee plants get the nutrients they need. Oranges, avocados, flowers, bananas and other fruits are also grown at the farms, but mainly for the pickers to eat and to create biodiversity at the farms that ensure good growing conditions and shade for the coffee trees.

Moises began producing naturals 3 or so years ago, initially only starting with 30 bags. Drying Natural coffees is very difficult in Marcala because of the humid climate and the rain experienced during the drying period. Moises has worked hard over the years to perfect the process, and in doing so has also showed Fabio, his father-in-law, the same techniques. Where they are processing the coffees as Naturals, they are picking ripe cherries and drying them on covered raised beds. Initially, the layer of cherry must be thin and as the coffee dries you can increase the thickness of the drying cherry. Cherry can take 20-40 days to dry depending on the temperatures.