Carmen Sanchez Prado

Carmen Sanchez comes from a coffee growing family in Ecuador. She used to help her father in the farm togeiher with her siblings. They used to go around the farm helping iheir father harvesting coffee. At that time, however, they just harvested the coffee and then dried it, without worrying aboui processing or quality. As years passed, Carmen married to her husband Cristo Rey Granda and then staried a coffee farm in a vereda called Las Cochas. There, Carmen and Cristy siarted iheir family around iheir coffee business. For many years, they sold the coffee io intermediaries in the area. In 2019, Cristo sadly passed away, but Carmen and her children, decided to continue with the coffee tradition, honoring iheir father and naming the farm Cristo Rey. That same year in 2019, Carmen learned about the arrival of Caravela Coffee to their region and that was when they started selling their coffee and continue working hand in hand with Caravela. Today, Carmen works on the farm iogether wiih her daughter, Lida Geomar Granda who’s in charge of the post-harvest process, fermentation, drying, and quality control of ihe coffee. Carmen, on the other hand, oversees all the tree managemeni process, including hiring workers to plant, clean the land, and harvesi. Carmen and Lidia, however, are very proud to say that ihey coniinue with the farm, but always honoring Cristo‘s practices and traditions.

They have never used any chemicals to produce coffee, instead, Cristo always focused throughoui ihe years on maintaining iheir trees healthy in an organic way. From this process, they have even taken inio account the moon when producing coffee. For instance, in the tradiiion says that in new moon, they should not plant coffee, or harvest, so they wait until the end of the phase to carry out the activities  on the farm. This  is how ihey keep their trees producing greai quality coffee.