April Farmer Updates from Don Lencho
Here is a recent update from the Don Lencho growers in Honduras. Read about how the coffee plants are acclimating to the change in weather.
The time of sun and beauty has come! Gone are the clouds and rain. Gone the mud and mire of the wayside. In its place, bees hum and crickets chirp. Birds are nesting… March has come, and dry season has arrived!
As you may be aware of, our weather here in the tropics depends on different factors than that of the temperate latitudes. Instead of the spring-summer-fall-winter schedule, we tend to have little fluctuation in temperatures year-round. Rather, temperature fluctuates according to altitude. The marked changes that do occur in our climate are the changes in rainfall. From the end of February to the beginning of May we don’t expect rain. Day after day of sunny days and night after night of crystal-clear views of the Milky Way are the norm. We revel in the warmth after enduring the cold fronts that typically mark the end of rainy season.
The coffee also undergoes a change. Harvest over, the coffee bush immediately prepares for another cycle. Tiny bracts appear at the bud points on the branch as if waiting orders. Triggered by moisture—heavy dew or, less commonly, rain—the whole bush erupts in bloom. I wish the fragrance of those pure white blossoms could be conveyed—a strikingly strong fragrance that you want to live and fly in.
As you can see, that is when the bees come—and a multitude of them do. The blossoms last only briefly and although the coffee bush may experience a series of lighter blooms throughout the dry season, the experience of walking through a scented coffee plantation tends to be a once a year ritual we look forward to and relish.
