Colombian coffees -- Hacienda El Porvenir, part 2

Initially, the hacienda was named Cafetal El Porvenir and in the exquisitely preserved original house (see photo in the first part of this blog), Orlando has kept in mint condition several of the accounting books, the harvest logs and a notebook that amazed me. /files/u1/Dry_selection.jpg" alt="Colombian coffees dry processing" title="Colombian coffees dry processing" align="right" border="0" height="400" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="300" />It was written in the late 1920s, by don Luis Mejía, and it is a complete process manual which would be envied by any systems or industrial engineer today. It deals with every detail of the process from seed selection to packing, to administrative and financial issues.

Based on these premises, it is no wonder that Orlando Fierro has continued to improve his operation.

/files/u1/Orlando.jpg" alt="Orlando Fierro" title="Orlando Fierro" style="width: 110px; height: 164px" align="right" border="0" height="388" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="250" />Take water handling, for instance. He has built a reservoir of fresh water from the streams that flow from the higher Andes and he has surrounded it by native trees to preserve the soil and provide shelter to several bird species. Then he also built a waste water treatment system.

Hand-selection is performed at various stages: harvesting, dried parchment and before packing.

This stringent quality control has made the El Porvenir Colombian coffee very well accepted in Japan and in the US, where it is sold by Pulido Imports of Santa Fe, NM. (http://www.pulidoimports.com/index.php)

/files/u1/Reservoir.jpg" alt="a reservoir of fresh water from the streams that flow from the higher Andes" title="a reservoir of fresh water from the streams that flow from the higher Andes" border="0" height="302" width="600" />