Finca La Bella

La Bella is in the south of the Sierra de las Minas Mountain range in eastern Guatemala. This is a beautiful part of Guatemala with most of the Sierra de las Minas designated as a national park with biosphere status. Teodoro Engelhardt is the fourth generation of his family to grow coffee at La Bella and over the many years the farm has been added to and developed to over 85 acres of forest and coffee. The practices on the farm reflect the care that the wider community has for the area: water is conserved and recycled, the coffee trees are shaded under two levels of canopy to help preserve the wildlife diversity, and all coffee pulp (the fruit of the cherry that is removed during processing) is collected and turned into nutrient-rich soil by the farm's wormery which is then used in the coffee nursery beds. Over the last few years Teodoro has concentrated on replanting less productive areas with more appropriate varietals and has implemented a green fertilization program which includes planting banana trees to fix nitrogen and phosphorus as well as help control soil moisture with additional mulch. Teodoro has recently added two new sections to the farm bringing his total separate areas up to eighteen. Each section (or lot) is planted with a specific cultivar which is picked and processed separately from the other lots. This shipment is from the Pacamara trees on the farm.