Our Blog
GUAYA'B: Huehuetenango, Guatemala
View BY :
GUAYA'B
Working as family units, the farmers of the Guaya’b Cooperative carefully handpick each day’s ripe fruit and attend to the processing of their coffee on their farms in small-batches. Rich volcanic soils, antique bourbon and typica varietals and dense shade come together in the farmers’ hands to produce small volumes of exceptional coffee. A classic example of their Huehuetenango appellation, the farmers’ coffee has a rich cherry sweetness, lush floral notes, and a deep wine-like body.
Guaya'b Civil Association is an 617-member cooperative of smallholder farmers in the municipality of Jacaltenango, department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The farmers grow coffee under a dense forest canopy that doubles as the winter home for dozens of species of migratory birds as well as local flora and fauna. It wasn’t always this way. When coffee was introduced to this remote region 40 years ago, it was promoted as an alternative to subsistence agriculture, and farmers were taught to clear forests to make way for this new cash crop. Fortunately, these farmers are closely connected to the health of their land, and have re-established their once logged forests providing much needed shade and diverse ecosystems in which coffee thrives.
Now, a new generation of farmers works to cultivate coffee and a variety of other cash and subsistence crops to increase incomes, and to protect the health of the land. Thanks to their partnership with our importer, Elan Organic Coffee, Guaya’b has perfected the art of picking, depulping and fermenting their coffee to produce deep, juicy, and full flavored coffee with a truly distinctive character. In fact, the farmers’ coffee is so unique that they periodically run into trouble with ANACAFE, Guatemala’s national coffee marketing wing, which tries to subdue Guaya’b’s flair and replace it with a more generic cup profile produced by less-inventive processing methods.
Not content to merely develop members’ coffee production, Guaya’b has a pilot organic honey project, which also helps to increase coffee yields thanks to improved pollination.
FARMER FACTS
Buying Coffee from GUAYA'B since 2005
- Co-op: Asosicacion Guaya’b Civil
- Region: Huehuetenango
- Altitude: 1,300 – 1,600 meters
- Processing: Wet / Washed
- Varietal: Bourbon, Typica, Caturra
