Three weeks. Three countries. Eleven farms. One producer and roaster forum. One blockchain coffee auction. Countless new relationships forged. Endless great friends made. Multiple long-term plans with our primary farmers set in place. Yup, it was a pretty successful trip.

Tyler bought coffees from four different farms, which include beans from six different processes (we know, right!) that are due to land at our roastery in early August.

The most exciting coffee of her trip

She described one of the coffees “the most exciting coffee of my trip”, and this banger bean is from the largest coffee farm in Costa Rica, Aquiares. Aquiares devotes 80% of its land to growing high-quality coffee and the remaining 20% to conservation, and the community of Aquiares sits in the midst of the farm and is home to almost 2,000 people. The farm provides services, land, security and honest jobs. In return, the coffee farm has benefited from a well-educated community and relies on highly skilled professionals from its community to continue functioning. Such a level of interdependence has helped contribute to the sense of pride that Aquiareños take in both their community and their coffee – and boy, oh boy, you can taste it (we can’t wait to share it with you!)

Costa Rican farmers success

Two of our primary Costa Rican farms, Cafe Rivense and Volcan Azul, have both just scored very highly in this year’s ‘Cup of Excellence’ – we’ve got some delicious beans to share with you from these farms in the coming weeks.

Participating the world’s first blockchain coffee auction

We’re extremely proud to be working with Yave to improve the lives of coffee producers, transform the coffee industry and better educate consumers through blockchain technology.

Building long-term relationships

Whilst in Guatemala, Tyler visited Los Arroyos, the farm from which we source 60% of our main Guatemalan blend component. A focus for us at The Little Marionette is to invest in relationships at the farm gate by building sustainable buying practices so that we can support our farmers, year after year.

For about 80% of the coffee that we buy, we have direct connections with the farmers – working closely with our partners, in this case, Unitrade, to ensure that they are being commiserated properly.

Working on developing long-term, strong relationships and building rapport with our farmers means that they know what flavours and quality we’re after – meaning we can work with them a year in advance so that we have exclusive lots produced to a specific profile, and they can rest easy knowing they’ll have a steady income coming in for years to come.

We’ll be sharing her full origin wrap-up blog post soon, so stay tuned!