Origin: Los Alpes, Jesus de Otoro, Intibuca, Honduras

Farm: Valhys

Producers: Judith Pastora Santos

Process: Washed

Varieties: Bourbon

Altitude: 1350masl

Importer: Semilla with Sueños de Semilla

Roast: Medium Light

Notes: Berries, Lemon Curd, White Tea, Milk Chocolate

Transparency: We committed to her entire 6 bag lot at $5.15USD/lb + shipping, storage and brokerage.

Semilla's Farmgate price: 7500 Lempira/quintal green coffee paid to Judith,
Local farmgate price (2024): 3500 Lempira/quintal parchment coffee
FOB Price: $4.33USD/lb

Judith Santos, Honduras

During our time in Honduras last year we got the privilege to have some very early looks at some phenomenal coffee. On our first day in Honduras we tasted through 60+ samples from over 50 producers, and were able to taste what would be some amazing coffees available in the next year.

One of the coffees that stood out to everyone there was Judith's Washed Bourbon. We also got the opportunity to quickly meet with Judith on our way back from one of our farm visits, where she rode down on her motorcycle with her kids to catch us at a quick pit stop on our way back to Comayagua.

Judith is the second generation of coffee farmers in her family. Her father started planting coffee when she was a child because he noticed that other producers in the region were generating good income from growing coffee. He wanted to secure a good source of income for his family and by 2000, Judith's entire family was working together on the cultivation and harvest. She was only 7 years old at the time. When she was 20, her father became ill and the family had to face the idea of selling their land in 2013 when her father passed away, they had no other choice.

After her father's death, Judith got married and began working hand in hand with her husband on new crops. In 2020, her husband gave her an area of the farm just for her and today she has 3 hectares of her own crops. She and her husband continue to work every day to expand their farm to give their two daughters a good life and education.

Judith and her family grow coffee because they are passionate about what they do and see it as a good source of income, but it comes with many challenges. Right now their biggest challenge is finding people to help with the crops and the new pests, diseases, and climate change that have affected their crops. To this day they have worked to earn enough to sustain themselves, but she hopes that selling their coffee abroad will bring them better opportunities and income.

Judith is very happy to be able to export her production and wants to share this with those who buy her coffee: “We are a very close-knit family that works and is passionate about what we do. In this case, we prepare quality coffee in a diversified environment where we take care of the trees, the birds, and do not damage the water sources. We appreciate that you consume our coffee.”

As with many of our favourite coffees we bring in, Judith treats this beautiful bourbon to some extended primary dry fermentation, followed by a wet fermentation after de-pulping.

She picks her cherry at peak freshness, and places the cherry in sealed plastic bags for 65 hours. The cherries are then de-pulped and put in bags for a secondary wet fermentation. The coffee is then placed on raised drying beds and slowly dried for 25-30 days.

Sueños de Semilla, Comayagua, Honduras

In March of 2024 Kelly and I(Sonny) had the amazing opportunity to travel down to Honduras with Semilla & other roasters(who quickly became good pals!). This trip was an amazing experience, both of us had never visited a coffee producing region, and we were excited for it!

This trip exceeded all expectations. Not only was it an amazing, fun  filled adventure with trudging through wet farms & riding up steep mountain's on the back of a Hilux, it was also one of hardship & emotions, learning first hand the difficulties of being a smallholder producer in an economy that is constantly trying to exploit you.

We traveled across the Montecillos Mountain range in Comayagua with Semilla, Jesus Galeas, life long producer, and partner of Sueños de Semilla, as well as other amazing producers, such as Addonnay, Don Clementino, Danilo, and Jeovanny(our trip wouldn't have been possible or half as fun without these folks.).

Everyday we drove and met with different groups of producers, listening to their stories, hearing about their processing, and having them show us their farms and homes. This is an important part of business for Semilla, having a direct connection with as many of the producers they work with as possible. 

This being the first year of Sueños de Semila, majority of the producers we met were fully processing their coffee down the parchment for the first time. This is super important for producers as it allows them to capture the most profit for their product.

It's very common in Honduras ( and many other producing countries) for producers to sell their cherry to intermediaries, or coyotes, losing much of the profit gained by processing the coffee down to parchment. This is especially bad when the price of coffee is low, and you are a producer in a remote location(we went to some REMOTE locations.), making it difficult to transport your own cherry to town.

With this process, most producers selling to Semilla this year received double the 2024 national farmgate price of 3500 lempiras per carga of parchment, and way more than that if they had sold as cherry, which is impossible for me to calculate, as it would depend on what the intermediary or coyote would have offered them day of.

We left Honduras with a strong desire to better our own business, to do better by the producers we buy from, and to be able to buy more from them. We committed to many lots, including 2 separated lots from Leodan. We believe so much in what Jesus & Semilla are doing, and strongly want to support and work with the producers we met.

Summary

There is obviously a lot I could go on about regarding our trip and experiences in Honduras, but I'll save that for our other releases. If you made it all the way down here, thank you. If you wish to read more about Semilla and their work in Honduras definitely check out their website, they're way better writers than me ;).

https://www.semilla.ca/projects/546cJP6GluJc1SKyotBciK

Happy Sippin'!