Roy and Dariela Hernández - Anaerobic Natural

It isn’t much; together we own 1,7 hectares. That’s not enough to provide for ourselves and our little daughter, so we both also hold a formal job and we work on our land at night and in the weekends, whenever we can.
 
 

Also, our dads and sometimes our brothers help out. In exchange, we offer them our solar dryers, because we have three, which is more than we need for ourselves, and we also help them sell their coffees.
 
 

We’re very interested in special preparations, certainly Roy. In fact, our main goal for the mid-term future is to sell 70% of our harvest as high quality micro-lot coffees.
 
 Click to see video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHT9s9WeZE&ab_channel=Cafesmo_s.a
 
It’s mostly a matter of being very focused and detail oriented once the coffee has been harvested: moving the beans around frequently while drying and not drying too fast only to gain some time, choosing the right process of preparation for each variety, controlling the level of humidity and warmth in the solar dryer... learn by trial and error. 
 
 

Some of our coffee is sold to a roaster in the US, and we also sell some in the UK. Now, we want to start collaborating with one or two roasters in other countries as well.
 
 

We have a young child, who we love more than anything in the world. Aylin is only still a toddler so she won’t be working with us for anytime soon, but at night, when she’s asleep, we sometimes fantasize about how wonderful it would be if our daughter can continue our work when we grow old and tired.
 
 

But that’s still decades away, we are still young ourselves, and eager to buy more land as soon as we can afford it, to grow more coffee and prepare more specialties.
 
 

Together, we own two plots that total 1,7 hectares at 1,200 and 1,250 meters.
 
 

Dariela’s lot is called El Mandarino, Roy’s is Guayabina.
 
 

The varieties we grow are Pacas, Obatá and Parainema.
 
 

Shadow is provided by a large variety of trees: we have pine forest on and around our land, and we grow mango, bananas and plantains, also for personal consumption. There are also local trees like guamo, cuanagiquil, and liquidambar.
 
 

Our coffees are FTO certified.
 
 

This farm is Rain Forest Alliance certified.