Finca Carrizo

Omaira Zambrano bought Finca Carrizo with her husband Jesús Alfredo Morales in 2006. At the time it was being used to keep pasture for horses with just a small amount of coffee planted. They grew beans for a while but now concentrate exclusively on coffee. Omaira and Jesús have been participating in our competitions for the last five years. The premiums they have received have helped them to make repairs to their house, refurbish their wet-mill and plant more trees. Carrizo is a small 3 hectares farm (in comparison to other areas of Colombia) and they need to make full use of all the land they have. This year they have moved away from concrete tanks to plastic barrels for the fermentation stage of the processing. The barrels have many benefits because they are small; they are easy to move, keep clean, and control the fermentation. If there are any problems in one barrel it is contained and doesn’t contaminate the rest of the day’s processing. Less water is used for the process which helps with water preservation and control on the farm and when the harvest is over they are straightforward to store, taking up much less space than a traditional concrete tank.