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10/1/2022

Links to the Email sent to our contacts (in french)

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Octobre : aucun frais d'envoi (1er octobre 2022)
Les premiers poivriers sont plantés (25 septembre 2022)
Flyer, positionnement de la marque et commandes depuis la France (4 septembre 2022)
Fête de l'artisanat de Puplinge 2022 (23 août 2022)
Nouveaux sachets 1 kg compostables/biodégradable (12 août 2022)
Le café est arrivé ...
mais à quel prix
(4 juillet 2022)
Café en mer et site relooké (19 avril 2022)
P
ollinisation de la vanille (23 février 2022) Le lien pour la vidéo contenue dans cette news a changé. Cliquez ici pour la voir.
Nos premières cabosses (5 janvier 2022)
Déjà 2 semaines ... (21 octobre 2021)
Vivement le retour (28 septembre 2021)
Lutte en saison des pluies (01 août 2021)
Prolongation rupture de stock (13 mai 2021)
Rupture de stock (5 mars 2021)
Bonne Année 2021  (01.01.2021)
Bonnes et mauvaises nouvelles (02.11.2020)
Transition bio (30 mai 2020)
Floraison et transition vers l'agriculture biologique (22 avril 2020)
Rupture de stock et attente d'une bonne pluie (6 avril 2020)
Nouvelles en bref (1er avril 2020)

Si vous souhaitez recevoir les futurs E-mail, dites-le nous via notre page contact

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2/8/2020

Flowers ... even earlier than last year !!!!

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It never rains in January February, except ...

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Last year it rained in late February, which was already very unusual. But this year it was at the end of January that we had a very heavy rain. We first thought, as we just finished harvesting, that it would not be enough to make the coffee bloom. We had to quickly become disillusioned: partial flowering is taking place, which implies a start to harvest already in September and uneven ripening which will lengthen the harvest time.

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Fortunately, this does not affect the quality of the coffee and does not prevent us from appreciating the beauty of these flowers, the work of the bees and the unusual simultaneity of the white flowers of the coffee with the orange flowers of the Poro Gigante, a tree which, apart from shade, has the particularity of providing nitrogen to our coffee plants.


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1/21/2020

The harvest 2019-2020 is over

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Due to unusual weather in 2018 (see below the news of flowering), the harvest was long (almost 3 months), but less abundant, especially for the new Obata variety whose growth is slower than planned.
The harvest was further complicated by the fact that I blocked my back on December 17 and, after 3 weeks of almost total immobility, I am in a slow recovery phase. I had to give the instructions from my bed and count on Viviane to go get the coffee sacks with the pick-up, help the employees for humidity measurements, pay them etc. She therefore deserves to appear with our employees and pickers in the photo below. The team is not complete because, given the circumstances, the end of harvest aperitif was improvised at the last minute.

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As I have not been able to go to the plantations for more than a month, this will be the only illustration of this message. More info when I can go back to the coffee trees.

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12/28/2019

Good harvest 2019-2020

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We are in full harvest and the quality is there.
We pass several times to harvest only the ripe grains and will not finish the harvest before mid-January, if not at the end of January. As shown in the photos below, the ripening is very variable from one coffee tree to another and it is not easy to select only the very ripe beans.
Transition to organic farming delayed by a few months
Last year, we had already noticed dark spots on some coffee trees, a sign of the presence of a fungal disease, anthracnose. This year, a very virulent form of this disease has taken hold and we have decided to postpone the 3-year transition period by 6 months which will allow us to obtain organic farming certification. The disease being well established, and affecting moreover our new vanilla plantations, it seemed to us prudent to envisage one, perhaps two conventional treatments in alternation with the treatments recognized by organic farming that we have already started to use .
This disease does not affect the quality of the coffee in any way but could greatly reduce the yield either directly or indirectly by the size of the affected branches or the elimination of coffee trees too affected to avoid the spread of spores.

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12/27/2019

Diversification and possible conversion to organic farming

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With the 2,500 plants planted in 2019, OBATA is the majority in the plantation. The resistance to "rust" of this variety makes it possible to envisage a reconversion in organic culture, all the more necessary given the diversification in progress. We hope to be able to move in this direction from 2020.

History: coffee farmer ... by chance

The purchase of the 5-hectare property in 2012 was intended to build a small second home on land and also test the possibility of growing vines in the tropics. The land was already planted with coffee on about 4 hectares, but the sellers had assured us that we would have no obligation to take care of it, one of their employees taking care of everything in exchange for the money from the sale to the local cooperative. The employee in question having been dismissed shortly after on justified grounds, we found ourselves alone and without agricultural knowledge at the head of 4 hectares of coffee. So we looked for one employee, then two, and asked for support from the cooperative's agricultural engineers. Gradually more comfortable, we bought the machines to produce our own coffee and decided to export it to Switzerland where we continue to spend 6 months a year. As for the secondary residence, it became the main residence during the 6 months that we spend in Costa Rica.
Youg cocoa plant
Vanilla cuttings ready to plant
Insects hotel


Diversification: vanilla and cocoa

Although the feasibility was tested during a trip to Thailand, we gave up on vine planting due to the difficulty of officially importing seedlings to Costa Rica. The fall in the price of coffee and various discussions with followers of organic farming or permaculture have led us to question the model of monoculture coffee that we inherited. After two months of reflection in the company of an intern, Léo Zoppi, we decided to plant vanilla, cocoa and many species of trees which will serve as stakes, wind protection and to provide shade for the various plantations. During the months of June and July, in addition to the 2,500 Obata coffee trees, we planted 250 cocoa trees, 1,000 hibiscus (protection against the wind between 0 and 3 m), 400 Gliricidia Sepium (future stakes for vanilla and shade for cocoa) and a good fifty trees of various species (protection against the wind and shade). The first vanilla plants (around seventy) were planted in July 2019.
During his internship, Léo had built a first insect hotel and we intend to build others soon in order to encourage the presence of various species near our plantations, including, hopefully, cocoa pollinating insects.

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3/29/2019

We already had a first flowering

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The rain that caused this flowering was not enough to make all the coffee bloom. We wait for the next rain because, especially with the wind that blows regularly these days and dries the morning dew, the buttons ready to hatch can dry up.

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7/13/2018

The 2018-2019 harvest looks good

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The beans are already rather big and healthy, suggesting a good harvest.
Some red grains are already appearing, confirming the precocity of the harvest due to the rains that occurred at the beginning of March whereas in a "normal" year, it does not rain until mid-April or even the end of April.
From mid-September, it will be necessary to pass in the plantation to harvest the very early grains. The harvest itself should be in full swing by the end of September

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7/12/2018

The coffee of the 2017-2018 harvest is arrived

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... after many adventures. It was stored in Antwerp for several weeks because it left Costa Rica with delivery address in Sweden: the Costa Rican carrier, common mistake among our friends in Central America, has confused Switzerland and Sweden!
To complete the picture, the company that had transferred the coffee from the previous year from Antwerp to Zurich went bankrupt. It took time for the company that replaces it to put things back on track and allow us to recover our coffee ... twice because we were first delivered two pallets, the third having been forgotten during the first delivery.
The coffee of the 2017-2018 harvest is already on sale in Costa Rica. It will go on sale in Switzerland and France in late August after we have tested different roasts.

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3/11/2018

Our coffee in flowers (4-7 March 2018)

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11/1/2016

Organic ?

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About the difficulty of organic farming in the tropics

Following the purchase, in 2012, of a coffee tree planted land, since then named Finca Aracari, one of our first wishes was a transition to organic growing. With no experience in coffee cultivation, we asked an agricultural engineer for advice. With benevolent mockery, he clearly gave us his opinion that this was not possible in a tropical climate.
We were, of course, not content with just this first opinion and  sought advice from organic producers in various regions of Costa Rica.  During the 2012-2013 harvest, the coffee Rust epidemic greatly reduced yields in all Central America. Organic producers were obviously particularly affected and many of them, whom we met between 2013 and 2015,  discouraged us to convert to organic growing in view of the difficulties they had encountered.
Beside Rust, another particular point has dampened our determination to switch to organic growing : the important presence in the area of ​​"Terciopelo" (Bothrops asper), an especially dangerous snake,  because, unlike most snakes, it does not run away at the approach of humans.  Furthermore, the tall grass around the coffe trees offers it shelter, and, especially during harvest time when most of the work is done, though we use mechanic brush cutters to cut the grass, the gatherers are at great risk of being bitten if we do not also use some herbicide.
This same problem arises, when considering the parallel growth of vegetable around the coffee trees, to increase the nitrogen input which is necessary to insure enough yield of the coffee trees.  The vegetables, as the grass, also harbour the snakes and again present a work hazard for the gatherers.
It therefore seems difficult, in the future, to meet all the constraints related to organic production. We nevertheless hope to limit the use of pesticides as much as possible and by introducing the Rust resistant variety « obata » gradually over a period of 3 to 4 years, which should greatly reduce chemical treatments.

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  • De flores a café tostado
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