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It has been a tough couple of years at Finca Galeras for Roberto Melo. The farm in 2023 had an extreme and extensive rainy season where Roberto lost his entire harvest. Thankfully, Roberto also grows corn for the local markets, and this provided income to support his family. As coffee is the main crop for the farm, Roberto had to consider his options for the future. The trees were in bad shape and Roberto had to decide how to go about recovery; limp along for a few years as the trees began to crop again haphazardly or take a radical step to prune heavily, in the hopes that the crop in two years’ time would be worth the short-term sacrifice in productivity for the 2024 crop. Roberto chose the latter and this allowed most of the trees to have a complete rest as well as giving Roberto the time to replant areas that were no longer productive. This has meant of course, that we have less coffee from Finca Galeras this year, but it looks like the effort and loss-of-production path is working as Galeras has had a solid flowering for the coming crop and will be close to its usual numbers for the new crop coming later in the year.