Colombia La Flecha Honey

This coffee was produced by indigenous growers from Aponte, Narino who are members of La Cooperativa de Cafes Especiales de Narino. Producers contributing to this product grow coffee above 1700 masl and their farms range in size between half to one and a half hectares.
Each producer has a small mill area for depulping, washing, and drying on their farms. They process coffee daily as it comes freshly harvested from the trees. Coffee trees are typically planted right up to the walls of the mill and cherries usually go straight from harvest buckets into the hopper.
After being depulped from its cherry but not washed, Honey processed coffee is dried on wooden tiered raised beds covered with a protective plastic layer. To begin encouraging producers to adopt this processing method, Co-op Especiales raffled off several model drying beds to demonstrate the steps of Honey processing to other producers.
Specialty coffee is particularly important to Aponte because the town is essentially the end of the road, and further up into the mountains farming tends to produce illegal crops. The stronger the purchasing power of the co-op, the more opportunity it creates for landowners to have a sustainable, legal livelihoods.