In Northwestern Nicaragua, where the Coco river runs through  the mountainous Segovia district,  several hundred small coffee growers form a coffee growing cooperative known as the Prode Co-Op.  Prode was organized during the reign of the Sandinista government, to bolster the living standard of Nicaragua’s farm families.

Each farmer carefully tends his family’s one to two acre plot in the steep, inaccessible terrain. The coffee trees are grown under partial shade to protect them from the equatorial sun, and the fully ripe cherries are picked by hand.   The farmers bring them to the cooperatively-owned mill, where they are washed in the pristine river water and layed out to dry in the sun.

Prode is a certified organic producer; Absolutely no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers are used on the farms, or in the processing and transportation of the coffees.  The best of their production, meaning the highest grown (over 4000’) and largest beans, is sold under the “Sabor de Segovia” (Flavor of Segovia) label.

A couple of years ago we received a note from our green bean broker who was traveling through Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  The message goes to the heart of the difference between “hand-made” coffees like this one and commercially produced coffees: