Historical summary of Contemporary Coffee Growing in the Municipality of Santa Elena, La Paz, Honduras
By Santos Victor Ventura Vasquez
Translation: Ben Hildner
Santa Elena is located in the La Paz district in western Honduras, along the border with El Salvador. It includes approximately 88 mi2 and a population of 14,800.
Coffee is one of the region’s principal products. All coffee produced in Santa Elena comes from small producers, and is part of a well balanced diversity of production including corn, beans and livestock.
This is a coffee nursery in Santa Elena. The seedlings are planted in bags of soil and organic material. In a period of 6 to 9 months, the trees are transplanted to the hillside.
This is a partial view of one of the coffee plantations with shade trees aged 5 to 7 years.
These are coffee trees ready for harvesting.
These photos are of the workers at different plantations, harvesting. The family members and owners all participate, since every hand is needed for the task.
Here, workers take the day’s harvest to the village center for weighing and registration. From there, the coffee grapes are taken to remove the pulp.
This is where the coffee grapes are removed from the pulp. From there, the beans are fermented for 36 hours in piles. Following fermentation, the product is washed with clean water.
This is one of the small producers with his rudimentary (wood) drying tolos, drying the beans on a cement patio.
This is another producer drying coffee in the sun on another cement patio.
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