Lot 23: MARIA BERCELIA MARTINEZ ORTEGA
MARIA BERCELIA was born in the department of Nariño and later from a very young age she moved to the department of Putumayo where she met José Vianey Erazo Gurrero also Nariñense with whom she formed a family of 3 children, Andrea Jaqueline, Diego Fernando and José Daniel Erazo Guerrero.
"We lived on a farm dedicated to livestock in an area of d ifficult access where it was very difficult to access the study of our children. We decided to sell and travel to the town to find another business opportunity in the Tigre putumayo coca-growing town in the red zone where the FAR guerrillas and paramilitary groups were fighting for control of the area. We started the project of a hardware store where at the beginning it was hard due to the lack of resources and experience in accounting management among others with the passage of time and thanks to the hard work the things improved for our family where we had already managed to have a house of our own.
In 1999, the paramilitaries arrived to destroy the town and murder many of the population. It was when we were displaced by violence, losing everything we had worked for several years.
We returned to our homeland Nariño where we spent a short time and having no opportunities to work we decided to travel to Huila and arrived in Pitalito where with the savings that we had managed to keep, bought a house to settle in and for the children to continue studying. Andrea's greatest achievement was to enter university and graduated as a Public Accountant, his brother Diego Fernando made a technician at SENA José. Daniel entered the University to study Dentistry but the situation was difficult and we could not get the money for the entire career and he had to leave it in 4 semesters in.
At that time we had already heard a lot about the cultivation of coffee and decided to look for the opportunity to get a farm. It was in 2010 when we negotiated the Los Angeles farm and paid part of what we had and were committed to pay the remaining balance in installments. We came to work in the cultivation without having any experience but with many wishes to have a future with tranquility away from everything we had to live through and the war the country is experiencing.
I, my husband and my son José Daniel dedicate ourselves to working tirelessly to carry out this new project, not knowing one of the first setbacks was the rust because the farm was only Caturra variety which we began to renew some lots with Colombia variety and also some Little Bourbon Rosé was hard not having knowledge of how it should be sown.
We became interested in specialty coffees when we went down to town to sell our coffee, and they paid us very cheaply, which sometimes was not enough except for the costs of collecting and eating. One day we saw that in a purchase it said that they rewarded up to $ 300,000 per load of special coffee, we went in and asked what that coffee had and there they told us that a traceability and good management process should be carried out from the cultivation to take it to the purchase of coffee and we arrived at the farm wanting to do all that so that they would give us that extra price.
And so little by little we were improving and already with the help of buyers who were interested in buying my coffee and the National Federation of Coffee Growers supporting us in the proper management of the farm we are improving every day to satisfy customers who want to have my coffee in their stores.
Lot Description
Reference Number: | 23 |
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Opening Bid: | $3.50/lb |
Increment: | $0.25 |
Weight: | 540.13 lbs |
Varietal: | COLOMBIA-BOURBON ROSADO |
Process: | Washed Processing |
Bags (35kg): | 7 |
Farm details
Producer Name: | MARIA BERCELIA MARTINEZ ORTEGA |
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Farm Name: | LOS ANGELES |
Region: | HUILA |
Farm Elevation: | 1760 |
Other info
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