Life Monteverde is a small, family-run coffee plantation right in the mountainside of Monteverde. Although it was smaller than the two previous coffee plantations we visited, I found it to be the most impressive. Not only are the sustainability techniques incredibly cool, it seems as if the family is more connected to the environment and community around them.
Since he is a small farmer, Don Guillermo seems to do much more hands-on work around the farm. Also, since he lives on the farm, he knows all the inner workings of it. The farm is his entire life. However, there were some challenges he talked about. One was that the road leading to Monteverde is only open twice a day. This makes it hard to send out shipments and receive them. Another is that – since the farm is smaller – they must find ways other than size of production to be competitive with companies like Doka and Cafe Britt. One of the ways they do this is by using all three coffee processing types: dry, honey-roasting, and full-wash.
One thing Don Guillermo was happy to talk about were the tour groups that came to visit. Last August, a group from Michigan came to Life Monteverde. They were a group from a juvenile detention and coming to Costa Rica was a chance to have a new perspective on life. He also talked a lot about helping the migrant workers from Nicaragua. Since they can’t afford much food, he worked to set up a meal plan that would provide healthy and familiar food for them.
Life Monteverde has a huge focus on sustainability. They make their own fertilizer using coffee pulp and goat manure and have cut back on using herbicides on the coffee plants. Since the plantation is also located in the rainforest, bugs do not automatically flock to the coffee crop, which helps. Another thing I found interesting, was that they had something called a biodigestor. It separates the methane gas from pig manure and brings it into the farm’s kitchen to burn it off into carbon dioxide and water. This prevents the green house gas from being released into the atmosphere.
Overall, I really enjoyed the tour today and it gave me a new perspective on farmers in Costa Rica. Going to the two bigger coffee plantations, it was hard to see the connection between the workers and the farm, but it was easy to observe at Life Monteverde. From the sustainability efforts to the care for visitors and workers, Don Guillermo and his family put so much of their heart and soul into Life Monteverde and it definitely shows.