Exploring Panama
Read MoreLerida has mostly Red Catuai cultivar coffees. Red Catuai is a semi-dwarf Arabica cultivar whose cherries hold firmly to the tree. This is important since during the harvest months Boquete is buffeted by very strong winds. Yellow Catuai (bearing yellow ripe fruit, not red) is avoided because the fruit comes off easily; it is therefore popular in Brazil where many farms use mechanical harvesting. New varieties and cultivars have been added to Lerida recently, including Gesha and Mocha; the latter produces a tiny bean that has an age-old reputation for high quality that has yet to be tested in our modern times, as far as i know.
The farm is gradually replanting all its coffee trees along contours to better preserve the soil. The ossaional unbroken lines of taller trees are windbreakers to protect the coffee plants from the harsh winds that blow down from the north.Looking due east from Lerida. La Esmeralda's Gesha coffee is grown on the mountain slopes in the distance, partially covered with mist and a few clouds.
Lerida gets about 110 - 120 inches of rain per year while La Esmeralda gets 138 - 157 inches, according to John. It rains less at La Esmeralda during the harvest season, however. It is extraordinary how many microclimates there are in the Boquete area.The wet mill below is about to undergo expansion; thus the rubble, bottom left. The coffee cherries go down the white pipe to the blue depulper and demucilager below. These take off all the fruit from the coffee bean. The beans are then very meticulously mechanically dried, in the structure at right, stopping at night, to allow the moisture in the beans to even out before resuming in the morning. John says that each variety of coffee has a separate drying profile.
A coffee tree nursery is directly below, with glass roofs. Just to the right are three long pens where the spent coffee cherry is turned to mulch, using California red worms http://www.vermiculturemanual.com/en/manual/concepts.html.) A small concrete patio is used for limited sun-drying of beans.
The beans, once dried, are stored in a heavily insulated warehouse to keep bean moisture a s stable as possiblke over the months of storage.Toby Smith, who owns a coffee company in Australia http://www.tobysestate.com.au/), joined us in the cupping.
The La Esmeralda wet mill. In back are two separators (high up) which remove the outer fruit. The beans (seeds) and fruit then pass through a rotary sieve, below, which separates the bulky fruit from the beans. The beans, falling through the sieve, then travel up through a demucilager where turbulence and friction remove the remaining mucilage. The cleansed beans then pass through the white tubes, in front, to be dried.
At Finca Elida, another high quality producer - picking orange colored tree tomatoes. See http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/tree_tomato.html
Elida Farm in the foreground.The farm goes up to 5,600 feet. Much of it is virgin forest shared with Volcan Baru National Park.
Thatcher Lamastus, in his seventies, drove us to the top of his farm, along the edge of the forest, with spectacular views. He explained to us as we were going up the narrow dirt road that he was partially deaf and could only see with one eye. When we got to the top he stopped and asked for a magnifying glass to see a coffee leaf with hi good eye. Great driver though! Who would have known!