Todosantarita stands for ‘All Saints’ and refers to the infamous 1st November celebration of Saints that centralize around a yearly horse race.

Cipriano Mendosa is a technician with the Todosantarita cooperative, as well as owning his own farm. As such, you would expect to see best practises employed, and indeed they are. Stumping is the preferred method of tree renovation, and here that can mean trees will grow to 15 years before they are cut back. Best productivity though is to be found between 4-6 years of new growth.

Being part of the Mam culture which marries more western practises on the farm, pruning is often conducted in line with lunar cycles.

This also affects planting, with the plants internal water systems being affected by the moons’ phase. When the water is at the base of the plant, iot is thought the plant is set best for recovery from any action, and so this is when stumping, planting or pruning occurs.

Don Victoriano is unusual in the area in that a a single child, he owns 5 plots in total. Customarily, farms are split between family members of each generation but without siblings he has inherited them all. La Mandarina houses the wet mill, where cherries from the other plots Los Pinos, El Limon, El Aguacatal and El Chaloum are brought for processing.

Don Victoriano hires 10 pickers for the harvest, picking on average 2 quintales of cherry per day. The fruit is then washed and floaters removed and is then pulped. There is a dry tank fermentation that occurs for 24 hours before some more washing and channel separation. Finally, the parchment coffee is patio dried for 4-8 days depending on the weather.