Don Wilfredo - Nicaragua

Don Wilfredo is the first coffee farmer I ever met.

Actually his full name is Wilfredo Haslan - the whole 'Don' thing escaped me when I was very new to Spanish and did not realise it meant 'Sir' - a sign of respect. A learners mistake.

As well as being the first coffee farmer that anyone from Peoples Coffee has ever met, it was the first journey to origin - to a country that grows coffee. I knew very little Spanish, was traveling alone, and yet this was to be the journey that convinced me Fair Trade was a movement that we needed to make a central part of our business as a coffee roaster.

And so the whole idea of naming our first espresso blend the name of the first farmer in our Fair Trade journey seemed apt, if not fitting. Don Wilfredo is indeed everything the little story we tell on his poster promo. He is a humble, warm, respected and committed coffee farmer.

He has approximately 5 acres of coffee - and is passionate about organic and sustainable farming. All his coffee is grown under the shade of rainforest and banana leaf shade. Like many small lot coffee farmers, you can find a veritable feast of other fruits and vegetables interplanted among his coffee trees.

Life on his family's small finca (farm) is simple. At 4am each day his daughter rises to mill the maize they harvested and dried earlier in the year. Adding water to the dry pieces of maize (corn) allows it to be turned into a wet, rough flour that tortillas are then cooked on a rough piece of metal plate over open flame. These tortillas, red beans and rice form most meals on Wilfredo's farm, sometimes supplemented with a little feta made the day before from one of their cows' milk. Meat, an expensive commodity is rarely eaten and saved for special occasions.

Don Wilfredo at the time in 2004 was president of his local cooperative which supplies Cecocafen - the union of his and other primary cooperatives, that market their coffee to roasters and buyers around the world.

In January of 2009, Rene Macaulay - Peoples Coffee head roaster went to visit the one of the co-operatives near Wilfredo's farm. Unfortunately he did not get to meet up with Wilfredo at this time - something we hope to do in the not to distant future.

Buy Wilfredo's smooth, full-bodied espresso blend