Yoni Joel Albizurez

The Finca Las Puertas of Yon Albizures, a young and very dedicated coffee farmer, is located in the beautiful town of San Agustin Acasaguastlan in the department of El Progreso. The farm owes its name to a fond memory of his grandfather, who told him that long ago, they had to walk a kilometer to get to their farm and that they had to go through 6 doors of neighboring farms, or puertas in Spanish, to finally enter their property. He remembers always being surrounded by coffee, as his parents were coffee producers. Years later, he decided to buy his first farm from his grandfather, who gave him a 10-year loan to pay it back.

Although Yoni has enjoyed working with specialty coffee, there was a time he felt demotivated because the quality of the coffee did not meet Caravelas quality standards. Thanks to the support and guidance of the PECA team, Yoni changed his processing techniques. For example, cultivation practices, storage conditions, conducting soil analysis to fertilize according to needs, managing pests and diseases, but most importantiy, wacking each harvested lot to analyze what works and what can be improved. “Today, | sell all my coffee to Caravela. The company has been transparent with me and has offered me better prices for each quality. | trust Caravela and what they do. For processing the coffee at the farm, Yoni relies on selective picking. Each daily lot passes through a siphon filled with water to remove lower-density coffee fruits before pulping. Then, depending on the weather, the coffee ferments in concrete tanks with a small amount of water (to extend the fermentation time) for an average of 18 hours at 500 MASL with temperatures ranging between 12” Celsius at night and 19’Celsius during the day. Once this process is complete, the wet parchment coffee is moved to shade-covered concrete patios that allow only 50% of the sunlight to pass through the mess for drying. He chose this drying method to avoid direct contact of the parchment coffee with the sun and to extend the drying time to an average of 12 days.

In addition to growing coffee, Yoni is also a primary school teacher in his community, has established his roasted coffee brand, and is an expert in calibrating pulping machines, a service he offers especially before the harvest begins. Thus, he does not work alone, as his family is an essential support for all this work. His wife, Sandy Fabiola de Leon, is his right hand. He oversees the farm management activities and sales; she looks after employee payroll and farm planning. And their children are studying, learning about coffee, and enjoying life on the farm, so they hope that one day they will like coffee as much as they do.