Finca La Cabra is an experimental, super specialty coffee farm we started in Panama with Willem Boot, Catherine Cadloni, and Kelly Hartmann in 2016. We stitched up an abandoned farm, planting 20,000 geisha and 2,500 each of two other research varieties on 11 hectares on the Volcan Baru a kilometer below the densely forested and richly biodiverse Parque Nacional Volcan Baru. The Lamastus Estates' El Burro and Willem's Best of Panama-winning Finca La Mula are our next door neighbors. This month we wrapped up our first export harvest.
After planting the farm, we began building housing for our permanent crew and the seasonal pickers who come in for harvest. Much of the road to the farm is little more than a rocky cut in the side of the mountain, so the process has taken far longer than we had hoped. Nonetheless we are in the home stretch with painting, trim work, and furnishings left on the punch list.
At the end of the crew house, we built a processing space. Here's Kelly washing out one of the fermentation tanks.
Behind Kelly are the parabolic, African-style raised drying beds. The cover keeps the rain off of the cherries, while the design allows air to keep moving through to continue naturally drying the cherries.
We work with conservation biologists like Esteban Acosta from Costa Rica to understand how best to naturally nourish the soil for the trees to be able to produce the most flavorful cherries and fight off destructive insects, fungi, and roya.
The land is fed and bordered on two sides by Rio La Cruz. Because it is relatively flat and on the the southern slope of the mountain, we get lots of good sunlight throughout the day. This leads to plenty of photosynthetic process producing sugars in the ripening fruit that lead to a very sweet cup.
It is special for us to be able to work with and follow our coffee from the soil of the farm all the way to our roastery and finally into the cup we brew in our cafes. We hope you'll join us on this exciting new part of our coffee journey.
Award Winning Specialty Coffee
