In 2009 we had our first visit to our friends Marcos and Felipe’s farm Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza. Marcos and Felipe Croce are a father and son team and run their farm according to sustainable and organic practices in Mococa in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They spend a lot of their time spreading their principles about sustainability, organic farming and also help replanting forests and encouraging their neighboring farmers to become sustainable.

(Marcos, Joao and Felipe)

Joao Hamilton is one of the many farmers who is a partner of Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza. Sitio Canaa is the name of his farm that he inhereted from his father and runs with his brother Ivan Dos Santos.The two brothers, Joao Hamilton and Ivan Dos Santos, are some of the many farmers whois a partner of Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza. Sitio Canaa is the name of their farm that they inhereted from their father.

Joao and Ivan have radically changed the agricultural practices on their farm for the past couple of years. After many years of conventional farming they started to realize that if they continued spraying the trees and soil with chemicals and cut down all vegetation around the farm, there would not be any fertile soil or healthy land for their kids to take over. Therefore, Joao and Ivan decided to stop using pesticides, minimize the use of artificial fertilizers, let the weed and vegetation within and around the farm grow and also plant new trees around the farm in order to prevent deforestation and also to promote a more versatile vegetation in the area. They also protect the natural springs in the area and have started a recycling program together with neighboring farms. Their goal is to transfer the farm to becoming 100% organic.

This takes time though, as the trees have to adapt to their natural cycle again and the loss of production by growing organic coffee is not yet sustainable economically. The positive effects from the changes they have made is that the coffee trees are more flexible and healthy, they have no problems with pests and diseases on the trees and the coffee tastes much better and different from before. This has consistently been our favourite coffee from Brazil. Previous years we have bought both their natural processed and the pulped natural processed coffees, but this year we found the natural processed lots to be cleaner and more complex than the pulped naturals. Therefore we decided only to buy the natural processed this year.

 

Producer: Mr. Joao Hamilton & Ivan Dos Santos together with Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza
Lot size: 600 Kg
Harvest: August 2011
Origin: Caconde, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Growing conditions: 1200 – 1350 m.a.s. No shade trees.
Farm size: 32 hectars but only 10 is used for growing coffee.
Botanical variety:  Sumatra (Derived from Typica).
Process: Joao and Ivan only picked the purple cherries by hand for this lot. After picking, the cherries are immediately dried on raised beds without being depulped. Drying takes about 14 – 20 days and Joao and his brother and father are picking out all the defect coffee cherries they can find during this period. This process is called “natural process” and is the classic Brazilian way of drying coffee. Normally the process gives you a sweeter coffee because of sugar migration from the pulp into the beans. A lot of the times coffees processed this way is of poor quality due to mold formation or over fermenting due to poor drying conditions. A lot of farmers are also mixing unripe coffee together with ripe and overripe coffee making the coffees taste uneven and peanutty. Since Joao and his brother are drying the coffee very slowly and are also sorting out all the defects this coffee is surprizingly clean to be a natural processed coffee. To ensure freshness the green coffee is packed and shipped in Grain pro bags.

Flavour description:
Flavours of melted butter, nuts and molasse. Berry like acidity with low intensity.
Rich mouthfeel. Lingering sweet finish.

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You can buy this coffee in our webshop.

Here are some more pictures from the farm:
(Click on full screen, then “show info” to get info on the pictures)