Trip to Guatemala - a story about the coffee farmer

At Desert Sun Coffee Roasters, we only buy coffee directly from small-scale farming cooperatives. This month (February 2026), I had the opportunity to visit 2 of them in Guatemala. This is the story of my journey.

For a brief introduction, that's me (Sean - Senior Bean at the Roastery) with the scruffy beard on the right next to Romy who's the manager of the Coffee Farming Coop I'm about to visit. 

I’m on my way to visit the Chajulanese coffee farming cooperative.

-------------

Let's get some important basic understanding out of the way.

What is a small-scale farming cooperative?

A small-scale farming cooperative is a group of local farmers who choose to work together instead of working alone.

Each farmer owns and works their own land — often just a few acres per farmer — before pooling their harvest, sharing resources, and selling their coffee collectively. 

Instead of relying on middlemen or large corporations, they:

• Set fair prices together

• Share tools and training

• Support each other during tough seasons

• Reinvest in their communities

They then directly import the finished coffee to us, so there’s no exporter or coffee broker cutting into their profits.

A cooperative is built on shared values, ownership and community— people coming together to create a business that meets their economic, social, and cultural needs.

The Journey begins

   
After a short night in Antigua, our small group hit the road and headed cross country for the small mountain town of Chajul to visit with a member of one of these farming communities. 

The first cooperative I visited was The Asociacion Chajulanese in Chajul.

The town of Chajul is part of the Northern Guatemalan Community known as the Ixil Triangle. The Ixil region has maintained its rich Ixil Maya traditions and language, largely due to being isolated within a hard to reach mountain range. 

Guatemala has one of the largest and most concentrated indigenous populations in the Americas and the largest in Central America. Approximately 42% to over 60% of the population identifies as indigenous, primarily from 23 Maya groups, along with Xinca and Garifuna. 

These indigenous populations in Guatemala survived Spanish colonization through a combination of strategic adaptation, cultural preservation, and resistance. Despite catastrophic losses from disease and war, they maintained their identities by blending Maya spiritual traditions with Catholicism, fleeing to remote, inaccessible areas, and preserving both their languages and traditional clothing. Experiencing this vibrant culture and tradition after our hours-long journey into the mountains was truly incredible. 

The Ixil Triangle where we arrived was battered by violence during the decade of the 1970's and through the 1980's as the government mounted its response to guerilla activity in the region. It was in the 1980's that an Italian priest, Rosolino Bianchetti, arrived in Chajul to lead the local parish. Under the tutelage of Bianchetti, who was promoting the principles of Liberation Theology, an initial cohort of 40 farmers founded Asociación Chajulense in 1988. The organization gained legal status in 1990 and now comprises over 950 farmers working in 56 communities of the Chajul, Nebaj, Cotzal and Chiantla areas. Since its inception, the primary objective of Asociación Chajulense is to “promote a sustainable development model that is environmentally sound, economically feasible, fair from a social point of view and appropriate from a cultural standpoint."

From Seed to Cup - a journey of the coffee “bean”

Visit to Micaela Santiago Velazco’s 1-acre farm

   
Visiting Micaela Santiago, a farmer within our co-op, started with a long journey up into the remote mountains of Guatemala. Her farm is located in the community of Xechulul, a single road precariously situated on a ridge with steep drop offs on either side of the road. The drive was roughly a four hour trip each way on these rough 4-wheel drive roads…on a chicken bus! Yes you heard that right. A chicken bus, a common form of mass transportation in Guatemala, these repurposed school buses are commonly decked out with paint, cool LED lights, chrome accents and more. Our chariot was driven by Freddy, a second generation chicken bus driver dedicated to the route we were taking. Freddy and his dad are both well known in this region for providing transportation to this rural mountainous region for decades.

After hours of winding roads, sheer cliff drops, untouched forest and thousands of hairpin turns masterfully traveled by Freddy, we arrived at Micaela’s farm. Not all coffee farmers live on their property, but Micaela’s well-tended one acre includes her home surrounded by a bio diversity of coffee, corn, chayote, sweet peas, and beyond. While a large portion of her property is growing crops, she is also raising some livestock including chickens, turkeys and a hog.

Micaela’s husband migrated to the US around 12 years prior and never returned, so she has been running the property by herself. Her six year old son Antonio was meandering about the property entertaining himself. I’m sure he’ll eventually contribute more heavily to the daily farm work as he grows up. 

Speaking of farm work…

 
Our group, now equipped with harvest baskets around our waist, proceeded to the backside of her property situated on a much steeper portion of her acreage. Much of the coffee growing portion of her home has a diversity of trees of varying sizes that include pine and banana. The biodiversity is important for soil health and of course the birds, and while the coffee tree enjoys some sun, it grows best in the shade of its neighbors. 

All of our coffee at Desert Sun Coffee Roasters is hand-picked. I learned why this is so important by learning how to properly pick the cherries off of the coffee tree. Each cherry has a small stem connecting it to the branch that it grew on. We were instructed to not “force” the cherry off the tree, but instead give them a gentle quarter to half turn. The ripe cherries are usually red, (the unripened being green still), and you can feel a plump fruit layer between the outer skin and the seeds inside. A normal cherry has 2 seeds inside (what we typically call coffee beans in the US). Peaberry coffee is actually from the much more rare cherry that only carries one seed inside. These are considered special because they often integrate more of the flavor from the cherry.

Another important thing explained to us was the importance of not fully damaging the cherry stem that’s still connected to the tree. When you leave this somewhat intact, it greatly increases the chance that it will flower during the next harvest ensuring a cherry will grow again. When cherries are mechanically picked off of the coffee tree, the stems are pulled off completely meaning they will produce substantially less cherry during the next harvest. This problem is more typical with plantation style farming.

Our wonderful group (from left to right - David from Higher Grounds Trading, Jennifer & her husband Jordan from Higher Grounds Trading, Bill Harris founder of our Coop (Coop Coffees) and Cafe Campesino, Zoe from Conscious Coffee Roasters in Boulder, Sean from Desert Sun Coffee Roasters (that's me!), Joe and Gail from Third Coast Coffee Roasters).

Harvest Season

We were excited that our visit coincided with harvest season. This usually starts in late January and goes through late March. I was surprised to learn that all the cherries from an entire coffee tree only produce around one pound of finished coffee. So much time and effort go into producing a single bag of coffee! The Chajulanese cooperative comprises roughly 950 coffee farming families with an average farm size of only one acre. The coop manager Romy said their harvest goal this year is around 16,000 quintals (a common form of measurement in the agricultural world of Latin America). A Quintal is 100 kilograms or roughly 220 pounds. By calculation, this is 3.5 million pounds of finished coffee. They ship coffee by lot numbers, a single lot equaling a full container of coffee. A container is roughly 40,000 pounds of coffee each which fills a semi tractor trailer full of coffee. All in all, this means they are hoping to ship out roughly 87 containers of coffee by the end of harvest. 

The De-pulper

After spending roughly an hour picking cherries, (during which Micaela put us all to shame by completely filling her basket while at best ours were only a quarter full), we walked back up the shaded hillside to arrive back at her home where her de-pulper is located. Here, we dumped all our cherries into a large container similar to a small kids pool. Once all the cherries were combined into this bin, Micaela started filling it with water. We learned that during this process, the bad cherries (that most often don’t have coffee beans in them) will float to the top of the bin and can be removed more easily before we de-pulp them. 

 The de-pulper is a machine that removes the seed from the cherry. Today, some farmers have motorized de-pulpers, but many of these farmers have never been able to afford one (which costs around $800 us dollars). Instead, she has a much older hand-crank de-pupler that requires good old fashioned arm power. We each took turns turning the crank, the cherry pulp falling into a basket in the front and the seeds coming out the back where a gradual wood slide sits ready to catch them. This long wooden ramp allows you to wash the beans down to another catch basket after they have fermented for 12 hours. The fermentation process allows the beans to break down and remove the sticky mucilage (fruit sugary layer) remaining on the parchment, facilitating easier cleaning. This fermentation process also significantly develops the coffee's flavor profile, increases acidity, enhances cup quality, and creates a more consistent, less defective product compared to non-fermented methods.

The remaining cherry pulp gets used as feed and composting on the farm.

Sun drying the beans

After roughly 12 hours of fermenting the beans, a large black tarp is laid out in a part of Micaela’s property that receives full sun exposure. The beans are then spread out across the tarp to sun dry for approximately three days. If there is a threat of rain, the tarp and beans are rolled up quickly and put into a dry area until the rain subsides. Rain and clouds can sometimes delay the drying process to 4-6 days.

As we were driving back to Chajul, descending through the mountains, we saw numerous yards and rooftops with sun drying beans spread out in the late day sun. One of those rooftops had a young kid on it tending to the drying beans (I think in case the wind picked up). He decided to make use of his time by making a kite and flying it into the afternoon breeze. There's something magical about watching a kite.

Full Video of this part of the journey coming soon. Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog where I visit the production facility to learn how the beans get processed and ready for export!