Trip to Daisy's coffee plantation

These are some of the drying tables for the coffee beans. It usually takes about 5 to 7 days for the coffee to make it from the plant to packaging.
These are some of the coffee beans, they should be harvested around January.

We traveled out of San Jose on Wednesday to a coffee plantation. Our first destination was cancelled due to a lot of run and mud, which would have been bad for hiking. So we rescheduled a visit ti Daisy's plantation. It was over 1000 meters in altitude. We were able to see the coffee being grown and some of the workers attending to the plants. I believe most of her coffee beans get harvested later on in a few months. She told us that she had recently (May 16th) one an award for the best coffee in Costa Rica. It was so high in the mountains that there was little sun which is great for growing coffee. There was also a huge temperature change once we reached the mountain peak. This is our trip to Del Cafe Tal and the owner Daisy

She told us a lot about the coffee process, so i am just going to list off some of things

1. She used to grow organic coffee but switched to nonorganic because the selling price were becoming equal and the expenses are a lot less than organic.

2. When she sells the coffee, her expenses usually total 50% of her profits.

3. Normally she is lucky to receive $1.50 per pound, but recently since she one the award she is able to demand $15 per pound.

4. She normally employs 70 workers for the harvesting season

5. She never sells to the Costa Ricans because they cant afford, but she was looking into selling it to high end supermarkets in CR.

6. Her biggest exports are to The US and Europe

7. She said that she rarely sells to Starbucks because they offer low prices

8. In order to classified as organic a farmer must have zero pesticides in the ground which can take some time if the farmer was previously a nonorganic farmer.

9. Coffee plants are planted in rows because it is easy for harvesting and it helps erosion

We travel to Cafe Brit tomorrow which sells both organic and nonorganic. From what I've heard this should be a much larger business with more workers and more coffee.