Permaculture coffee farm

Last summer I had the pleasure of spending two weeks in Colombia. While there I toured a permaculture coffee farm. A coffee plant can produce beans for twenty years but they work areas more often than that. Every year they pull up all the coffee in one area and plant nitrogen fixing legumes. At the end of one year the legumes are chopped and dropped and the new coffee plants go in. As an added bonus they don’t really have seasons. Average temperatures are fifties for lows and around seventy for highs. That’s year round! So when dealing with the legumes a calendar year is the measuring stick.
The tall canopy trees are bananas. They drop a lot of leaves to mulch the coffee while providing shade and lunch for the workers. There’s also lots of peppers, beans and tropical fruit free for all who work there. The espresso was outstanding!

Good morning Richard! The name of the farm is Las Acacias. It’s outside of Salento. The main thing I remember was chop and drop with legumes, tropical flowers and banana trees. They really had a lot of legumes, some I’m not familiar with.
Being a coffee person this would be a place you’d love! There are a lot of coffee farms in close proximity. We had coffee from another smaller farm literally across the ridge. It tasted completely different. Speaking of taste, Las Acacias’s espresso had an incredibly strong citrus flavor and smell. The first sip made my head spin! Luckily I had acclimated by the second and third cup!