2005 News From The Farm

Find the following in our 2005 newsletters:

-Maximo's 80th Birthday Party (Dec)
-Pupusas in Minnesota (Nov)
-News from the Coffee Farm (Oct, Aug, July)
-Iced Coffee recipe (Aug)
-Photos from Velasquez family and farm (Dec/Feb/April) 

December 2005
We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Guillermo really enjoyed his trip home to Honduras for his father's 80th birthday. Thankfully, for those of us left behind, his cousin did a great job filming the whole thing. It was great fun to watch the wild breaking of the pinata (made to look just like Don Maximo), the many speeches given in honor of Don Max by family members from near and far, to hear the marimba band that played late into the night and watch some crazy dancing. It almost felt like being there.

Here is photo of the grandchildren presenting Maximo with a shirt and tie to wear to the party.

Here is another shot of Maximo and Natalia surrounded by their children and grandchildren at the big event. We are grateful for the full life they have lived.

Flavored Coffee
We were pleased with the great response to our request for flavorvotes. It was still really hard to choose, but we finally decided on Cocoa Mocha Twist and Eggnog for our two special holiday flavors, in addition to the regulars - Dutch Chocolate, African Cinnamon, Almond Amaretto, French Vanilla, Irish Cream, and Carribean Hazelnut. See the product page for descriptions of all these wonderful flavors available in our smaller 8 oz bags whole bean or ground for only $5.50.

We wish you a blessed holiday season and joy and laughter in the new year. We are grateful for your coffee purchases!

November 2005
Sunday night Guillermo brought home a nice Honduran treat for supper -- pupusas. You might say they are like a filled tortilla. Cheese or chorizo (spicy sausage) is placed between flavored tortilla dough (masa) and grilled. It is typically served with a cabbage salad and a spicy red sauce. We're excited to have found an excellent source for this favorite Central American dish in West St. Paul on Concord Street. A small Salvadoran vendor has set up outside Panaderia Don Pancho in one of those portable food vehicles (you know, like you might see at the State Fair). The pupusas are made fresh while you wait. Hmm, yum.

Guillermo will be filling up on more Honduran food next week when he leaves for a quick solo trip to Honduras to celebrate his father's 80th birthday. Don Maximo surprises everyone with his age, as he looks and acts much younger than he is. (Click here for pictures of Don Maximo). We wish our whole family could go, but we're glad Guillermo will have a chance to join in the extended family celebration. Hopefully the rest of us will get to go in January or February when Cathy's parents plan to make their first trip to Honduras.

Before Guillermo leaves, we'll be filling our November coffee orders. To make sure we have enough coffee on hand for your holiday gifts, please get your December orders in before December 1 if possible.

Flavored Coffee
For the Holidays, you might also try one of our flavored coffees in the smaller 8 oz bags. Currently, we offer Almond Amaretto, Cinnamon, Chocolate, French Vanilla, Hazelnut, or Irish Cream. We'd like to add one or two special flavors for December and we'd like your opinion. Check out the amazing list of possible flavors our roaster offers. Everyone who submits their flavor opinion before December 1 gets their first bag on us.

October 2005
While the temperatures here are starting to dip toward Autumn (well at least they were until this last heat spell), the Velasquez coffee farm is seeing quite a bit of rain. Guillermo talked to his dad, Maximo, last night when he was in the city for a few days (there's no phone or electricity for that matter on the farm).

Maximo said it has been raining so much that there was a small mud slide from the dirt road that runs past the farm house to an area below the house where there is an old chicken coop. Because of the heavy rain that is typical in the cloud forest, the family has been careful, especially in the past 15 years, to preserve the original old growth forest on their farms and to plant new trees when possible. Because they have seen the effects of erosion due to clear cutting and slash and burn farming, Guillermo's brothers Abilio and Sabel and his brother-in-law Alonzo have been strong advocates for shade grown coffee on their farms and in their communities.

Rain or shine, we're happy to be deliverying and mailing this shade grown coffee to you.

By the way, we learned that one of our coffee customers, Natasha Fleischman was recently featured in an article in Minnesota Monthly because she is a survivor of sudden cardiac death. It is an inspiring story and a good reminder to stay healthy and enjoy life so we decided to share the link in our monthly email.

September 2005
We hope you had a lovely Labor Day weekend. We did what many Minnesotans did and attended the State Fair one day and spent time with family. We used the rest of the time to work around the house and get ready for school to start tomorrow. Our boys are excited to be returning to Adams Spanish Immersion Elementary in St. Paul. We feel so fortunate to be part of such an excellent public school and are pleased to be able to offer our coffee as a school fundraiser. (Let us know if you are interested in learning more about selling Velasquez Family Coffee for a fundraiser for your school, church or other group.)

You might be interested to know that in Honduras the school year starts in February and ends in November. Because coffee is such an important agricultural crop in Honduras, their school year was originally scheduled to have children out of school to help with the coffee harvest during December and January, much like our school year is still based on a traditional agriculture calendar.

August 2005
We hope you are enjoying summer. We've been trying to deal with the heat by taking the kids to the beach as much as possible and hanging out in the many lovely public libraries near our home. With September (and school) just around the corner, we are determined to make the most of each and every remaining day of August.

But we're also keeping up with a steady stream of coffee orders.

We're pleased to have added Fresh Earth CSA Farm to our list of distributors. Check out this great organic community supported farm at www.FreshEarthFarms.com.

News from the Farm: On the coffee farm things are pretty quiet. Guillermo's Mom was pleased to have recently gotten a turkey hen to go with her turkey rooster and as a result to find a number of turkey eggs. We haven't heard if they've hatched yet!

Iced Coffee: With the heat, you might want to try this iced coffee recipe from www.recipezaar.com.

You'll need 6 cups strong coffee and one 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk for 6-8 servings.

1. Combine brewed coffee and sweetened condensed milk in a large pitcher.
2. Refrigerate until chilled.
3. Serve over ice. (Tip -- use leftover coffee to make coffee ice cubes with. Then you have the chill without getting watered down.)
4. Relax and enjoy!

July 2005
We hope you are having a lovely 4th of July weekend. Like many of you, we have enjoyed fireworks, a picnic at the park and extra time to work around the house. Next weekend we'll be busy too, delivering and mailing coffee.

This month, we are pleased to have what we hope is the first of many regular updates from Guillermo's brother Abilio in Honduras. The update is possible thanks to email and the help of Brian Young, a Peace Corp volunteer living and working in the Rio Negro community where Guillermo's parents and his brothers farm. Here's what Brian wrote this month:

"The news from Rio Negro has mostly revolved around the many rains that we have been receiving. The refreshing and much welcomed rain storms are aiding what looks to be a good future harvest for this coming year. In between the storms Abilio and the family has been cutting down weeds and esentially cleaning the farm for the next harvest.

In the Rio Negro school...A teacher, Bertilia´s co-worker, quit a few months ago. Bertilia (Abilio's wife) had her hands full as she took on the responsibility of teaching all 90 students in the school. After many frustrating months, a teacher has now accepted and began teaching with Bertilia. The recent addition of the new teacher has been a great relief to Bertilia and students.

At the moment, we are constructing another beautiful cabin on Abilio´s farm where hopes continue to thrive on a future in eco-tourism for the community. Others in the community are also taking advantage of the off-season to construct cabins and work on unique crafts.

The family and the people of Rio Negro want to welcome all of you that would like to visit the farm first hand. You can even come in November or December and pick your own coffee beans! We greatly appreciate your support and encouragement. Your support goes a long way to further help our community remain sustainable."

---Familia Velasquez y Amigos de Rio Negro Comayagua, Honduras, C.A.

June 2005
Well, summer is definitely here, with heat, humidity, thunderstorms and even a few mosquitos. Even so, we are enjoying our back yard and garden as much as we can.

We've had lots of great feedback about our newly redesigned Website. Next month, we hope to have some news from a Peace Corp volunteer who is living and working on the coffee farm in Rio Negro. Our next shipment of fresh coffee from Honduras should be arriving in Minnesota by then too (we hope!!) Enjoy these long summer days!!

May 2005
We enjoyed speaking with many of our regular customers and many new folks at the 4th annual Living Green Expo here in Saint Paul two weekends ago. It is very affirming to get so much positive feedback (and we sold a fair amount of coffee too!)

We are very excited to announce the launch of our new and much improved Website. Same address -- www.vfamilycoffee.com -- but many more photos, and additional information about our coffee, our monthly delivery service, and our family in Honduras. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Many thanks go to Tara Burns for her lovely design! (She also gets the credit for designing our logo and our label.)

We were also excited to hear from our family that the next shipment of over 10,000 pounds of "green" coffee should be leaving Honduras this week -- by far our biggest shipment yet.

April 2005
From March 16 to April 6, 2005 our whole family made our what has become an annual visit to Honduras. It was a wonderful time and we'd like to share some of our experience with you through this slide show.

March 2005
We are, of course, very much looking forward to our trip to Honduras. It will be great to see all of Guillermo's family and to spend a relaxing time up in the tropical mountains on the coffee farm. We'll be there over Holy Week and Easter (a first for Cathy and the kids). The coffee harvest is done now, but we'll have a chance to see the coffee that they'll be sending to us and finalize arrangements for shipping with Guillermo's cousin. If all goes as planned, your coffee will be sent on a large barge from San Pedro Sula, Honduras to Miami, where a trucking company will pick up to deliver to our roaster in LeCenter, Minnesota. (We'll probably also bring a few smaller sacks back with us on the airplane just to hold us over until the larger shipment arrives.)

As always, thank you for your coffee purchases! We just ran some figures for our income taxes and we estimate that we sent nearly $17,000 to Honduras in 2004 -- that is money that helped our family and then was reinvested by them back in the Honduran economy. Thank you for helping us make that happen!

February 2005
In Honduras, the coffee harvest is pretty much done. We are in communication with our family members about preparing this latest coffee harvest for shipment to us hopefully by April or May.

We've also just purchased plane tickets for our annual trip to visit family and the coffee farm. We'll be leaving on March 16 (just after our March 12th delivery) and getting back April 6 (just before our April 9th delivery). There shouldn't be any interuption in our regular coffee deliveries, but we will be unavailable during those three weeks. We're looking forward to being up in the mountains and will come back full of photos and stories to share.

In the meantime, here is one of Abilio picking coffee sent to us via email by Brian Young, a Peace Corp volunteer living with Abilio.