GALEAS | HONDURAS | natural

Jesus Galeas has played a key role in motivating his fellow citizens to focus on small-scale specialty coffee cultivation, largely through his work with the Honduran Coffee Institute (IHCAFE). For seven years, he worked with the organization to help coffee farms across the country understand the challenges they face, from conducting soil analyses to providing guidance on harvesting and processing coffee.
Naturally, his community of Selguapa also benefited from this in 2018. Through his work at IHCAFE, Jesus came into contact with another former IHCAFE employee, Rony Gamez. Rony had founded his company Cafe Raga, which offers specialized technical support and training to producers, and Jesus brought him samples from Selguapa for evaluation. From the two producers who were interested in selling it as a specialty, the Los Ramirez group grew to 30 members within a year.

While Jesus works in Selguapa on his farm, La Falda, his other farm, La Valeria, is located in Intibuca, in the Montecillos mountain range. This was his first inheritance from his father, which he started with a single manzana in 2010 at the age of 17. Since then, he has taken out many loans and put in a lot of hard work to expand this small plot to its current size of 5 hectares. Over time, he planted Pacamara, Catuai, Paraneima, Bourbon, and IH-90.

Processing details: Four people pick cherries daily, float them to remove imperfections, and store them in sealed GrainPro bags, where they undergo a low-oxygen fermentation for 48 hours. They are dried on raised beds in a solar dryer for 35 days before being packed in hermetically sealed bags to preserve their quality.