Richard Detrich’s Boquete, Panama Weblog

Coffee harvest in Boquete is in full swing, and what beautiful coffee!  This is our third coffee harvest from our little finca and my wife is pleased and proud as the “old timers” she meets taking her coffee to sell at Sitton oooo and ahh at her coffee.  Ours was an old farm that had been let go and it won’t be until next year that we should reach full production.

If you’d like to see photos of the full coffee cycle visit my page at http://www.beautifulboquete.com/jaguar_java.htm

When you buy coffee you are making concious consumer choices that have wide reaching impact.  On cruises when I lecture about our “Vanishing Rainforest” I point out the comparison between the mass market Brazilian robusta coffeegrown on vast farms hacked out of Amazon rainforest, and the gourmet, high-altitude Arabica coffee from Panama.  Not only does our coffee taste better, it is better for the environment. 

For comparison, here’s a Brazilian coffee farm and a Boquete coffee farm.

And here’s a Brazilian coffee picker and a Boquete coffee picker.

Yesterday we started picking coffee.  In the rain.

The coffee harvest starts during the rainy season, so the folks who pick the coffee work in the rain.  Generally the coffee pickers are Gnobe Bugle Indians who come down from the “Comarca” in the mountains to pick coffee during the season.  Since we have such a small farm, our picking is generally done by our Gnobe Bugle farm workers friends from church, and our local Gnobe neighbors.  It gives them a chance to pick up some extra money, and we like keeping it “in the family” of locals.

We have exceptional coffee this year!  Big, healthy cherries.  This is our third coffee harvest from our little finca, but it is by far the best coffee we have produced, the result of a lot of work by our worker and my wife, Nikki.

Throughout our married life, whenever I gave Nikki a plant I’d say, “Here dear, it’s yours, but don’t touch it!”  Now she turns out to be the agriculturalist!

In addition to coffee our little farm grows bananas, plantains, oranges, lemons, yuca, and a variety of other local vegetables.

If you are interested in coffee check out this page on my BeautifulPanama.com Web site http://www.beautifulboquete.com/jaguar_java.htm