The southern province of Loja (Ecuador) has a mountainous region named Gonzanama. In these hills, Eladio and his wife have a 10-hectare farm, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, where they live with their youngest son, Roberto. They have four more children: Lorena, Maria Fernanda, Maria Isabel and Carlos (who is a coffee roaster!).
He bought the farm in 1997 and, alongside his wife, started a pig farm. In 2002, they discussed the option of starting to grow coffee. He built a nursery with 100 trees of Caturra, which eventually were planted and thrived—they decided to switch entirely to coffee production. Today, they also grow sugar cane and citrus trees.
Eladio, Roberto and Francisca
He initially processed his coffee through natural process (known in Ecuador as “bola” coffee) and sold it at local markets. But, in 2015, he decided to try washed process after it was recommended by neighbouring producers. The higher quality of his coffee allowed him to sell to the global specialty market, so he never looked back and stayed focus on high quality varieties and processing.
Eladio has introduced better farm managing processes to preserve the environment and achieve organic production (though they don’t hold any official certification yet). The biggest challenge is the drought periods during summer; when it doesn’t rain enough, he has to buy water to run the washed process.
The process
Eladio begins the coffee process by manually selecting and picking the ripe cherries. Then, they go into the wet mill, where they are sorted and floated to remove the defective ones and any small branches. Later, the cherries are pulped with some water and placed inside airtight plastic containers for 30 hours (without water).
Then, the coffee is washed 3 times and taken to the covered drying beds, where it will take from 25 to 30 days to reach its ideal moisture percentage. During that time, the coffee is moved several times daily for even drying.
