Overview

José Fidel comes from a family that traded mainly home appliances, but he decided to study agronomy, he bought a farm at the age of 17 to practice what he was learning, but he sold it back in 1984. After that he bought La Laguna farm during the period of civil unrest (80’s) and since he didn’t live in farm, in order to oversee husbandry activities José had to walk for several hours with his farm manager or “mandador” carrying his backpack until reaching the farm. For a lengthy period of time, they stopped working the coffee plantation because of the coffee price crisis and began planting Jocotes (local fruit), which helped provide some income to maintain minimum care of coffee trees so not to lose them completely.

As many others, José Fidel was disappointed about coffee prices and even told his mandador that they would probably have to cut down all coffee trees, since he was losing money, but his “mandador” insisted on not doing so, because he could still preserve all what he invested his whole life and managed to convince him that in a near future, coffee was going to regain its value.

A couple years ago, his mandador secretly took some samples to participate in some cuppings designed to promote more participation from growers from the eastern coffee areas with the support of USAID and the Salvadoran Coffee Council, and La Laguna’s coffee ended up in the top 10, giving José and his mandador a good reason to step up cultural practices and recover his farm production. All this paid off finally and La Laguna ranked in seventh place on this year’s Cup of Excellence.

After facing these tough times, they are working to turn the farm into a tourist place while keeping the plantation intact, since it is close to “Laguna de Alegría”, a great attraction in El Salvador. The farm takes its name from this lagoon. The “Laguna de Alegría” is one of the most beautiful lagoons in our country, with emerald green waters nestled inside a dormant volcano. José wants to build small cabins so people can stay and enjoy from this amazing scenery and his coffee farm.

Additional information:
Coffee varieties: Bourbon
Type of Shade:, Ingas sp. Cuje, Pepeto, Jocote de corona orange and lime trees, etc.
Average Annual Rainfall: 2,200 mm
Average Temperature: 17º C
Type of Soil: Loam
Annual Production: (60kg) 230 bags
Mill and company where lot was process: La Violeta Mill
Other crops: Jocote, Avocado tree, lime, orange Fauna: Deer, Armadillos, Central American Agouti, Possum, hawks, snakes, torogoz, etc.

GPS Coordinates:
Latitude: 13° 29’ 45.4” N
Longitude: 88° 29’ 31.7” W