Joaquim Bernardes da Costa Junqueira, who received uncultivated land to plant, founded Fazenda Barreiro in 1820, which became the headquarters and origin of a large number of farms in the surroundings of Poços de Caldas, in the southern region of Minas Gerais.

At the end of the 19th Century, under the management of his son, Col. Agostinho José da Costa Junqueira, the first coffee fields were planted at an average altitude of 1150 m, in the fertile lands and mild climate of the São Domingos Mountain Range.

During the last 30 years, his great-grandson, Francisco Otávio Lotufo and his family, gave continuity to the coffee activities, with a perfect balance between coffee plantations and nature, preserving the farm’s woods, water sources, native birds and animals, and maintaining harmonious relations with the 30 families of employees that reside at the farm.

Coffee processing system

Coffee is picked manually or with a mechanic picker, both on cloth, after checking the adequate maturation percentage of the beans. The harvested product is transported on the same day to the mechanical facilities to be washed and to separate the cherry beans, which were mechanically pulped after being totally separated from the green beans.

The pulped cherry beans are immediately distributed on a concrete terrace where they remain for three days, and are revolved more than 15 times a day. At the end of the third day, the coffee is transferred to suspended covered terraces, where slow drying occurred for another three days, with the gradual thickening of the layers and being constantly turned.

On the seventh day of the drying process, the coffee was transferred to the rotary driers at an average temperature of 28ºC during nine hours a day, to arrive at a humidity degree of approximately 11%. Subsequently, the beans were placed in bins where they remained until the time they were ready to be sent to the accredited warehouse to be prepared.

Concern with quality

The farm has a complete coffee infrastructure, with washing, bean separator and cherry pulper, two rotary driers and two vertical driers with gas warmers, 4,500m2 of terraces in brick and concrete, 700m2 of suspended covered terraces, 10 steel bins with wooden subdivisions for up to 400,000L of coffee, modern equipment to process and ventilate the beans.

The farm, for over 30 years, has its plantations supervised by an Agronomist, and the owner is frequently in contact with specialists of the industry, always looking for new solutions to enhance coffee activities. Acquiring equipment and introducing new procedures to handle the beans after they are picked were additional investments made to produce quality coffees.

The owner resides in Fazenda Barreiro a greater part of the year, and is permanently paying attention to the farm’s operations in order to obtain excellent results from the good relationship with the employee team, the administration and the technical consultants, contributing to considerable improvements in the quality of the farm’s products.