Carlos Napoleon Mayo

On the southern province of Zamora Chinchipe, on the western side of the sierra, there is a bustling little town called Palanda whose main economic activity is agriculture. Here, taking the unpaved road towards the mountains, at an elevation of 2,138 masl, you’ll find Carlos Napoleon Mayo at his farm La Primavera, named after the number of flowers and birds in the farm. Carlos Napoleon has been involved in coffee from a young age, as his parents were coffee farmers, and he learned from them. The passion for coffee runs in the family and his veins, as his father was able to raise him and his 8 brothers, who also have their own farms, with the earnings he made from coffee and cattle ranching. Through this journey in producing coffee, Carlos Napoleon started in 2017 looking for quality in his coffee and getting better prices for it. For this path in specialty coffee, he has had the advice of Caravela’s PECA technician, which has helped him improve the quality of his coffee, achieving better processes, and manage his coffee trees with an agroforestry system. Carlos takes care of the environment at his farm, safeguarding the water sources and strictly prohibiting logging in this farm. He lives at the farm alongside his wife, Ana Soledad. Together, they share the labort at the farm, with Ana taking care of the process at the wet mill and drying, while Carlos Napoleon works on fertilization, pruning, cleaning and other tasks. His goals and dreams are to increase the size of his farm, plant 5 hectares of Bourbon Sidra, and make improvements of the wet mill.

Napoleon is very methodical in the way he processes his coffee, which starts with a good manual picking of the adequate ripe cherries. These are then floated to take out any defective cherries and foreign materials such as leaves. The cherries are then pulped without water and undergo a second floating to clean the coffee. Following this, the coffee beans are fermented anaerobically for 24 to 48 hours, depending on the climate. Afterwards, the coffee is taken to the covered raised beds, where it takes around 19 days depending on the climate, to reach its point. As a parting message, Napoleon wants to tell you: “You’re invited to come to my farm, get to know the care we place on each detail to achieve this coffee, and of course, come and share a cup of coffee with us.”