Coffee Farm - Cafe Las Flores

I love coffee!  It is one of Nicaragua's most important agricultural exports (4th in the world)...so they know a little about coffee.  Aleida and I took a personal day last week and went to visit Cafe Las Flores - a Rainforest-Certified coffee farm. The farm saves a lot of water, does not use pesticides, and has good working conditions for the local people, as well as for the local flora and fauna.  It was nice to see what that certification means in the real world, and impresses upon me that importance of knowing where our food comes from.

The truck we took up the hillside - it was steep!

At the top

The nursery- coffee plants in the shade

The coffee plants were beginning to flower and each flower becomes one coffee bean

The "swimming pool" that the coffee is washed in.

These women hand sort the beans after they are machine sorted to make sure that its the highest grade coffee.

Some bad beans...the black on them is caused by a bug that was affect a lot of plants.  expect coffee pear!rices to go up next year.

In order to be rainforest certified, they need to clean and recapture their water.  In this barrel are plants that are cleaning the water before it can be used again for irrigation.  The farm reuses 80% of their water!

Where the coffee would normally be dried.

Coffee beans drying in the sun, husks still on.

Doors into the cafe, I just thought they were beautiful.