East Timor

Message from Karst Organics our import and sourcing partners: This will be the second year that we have worked with Orlando (lead farmer) and the other members of the Samoro group who were incredibly motivated this year after seeing their coffee from the 2022 harvest being so well received in the speciality market. Lying slightly east of the Cristo Liurai mountain, this community experiences warmer ambient temperatures which in turn results in warmer water during processing. This allows for more concentrated fermentation which we have observed for a second year, produces a coffee featuring slightly bolder flavour notes. Being in such close proximity to each other, all the members of the Samoro group encourage and support each other throughout the harvest to ensure consistency and continuity in their coffee processing. We have continued to support all the members of the group, to facilitate each household with all the materials needed to process high quality speciality coffee. As a satellite group of Cristo Liurai, Luis Santos de Jesus (lead farmer of the Cristo Liurai group) has continued to mentor Orlando and implemented record keeping within the group. This allows for more precise and focussed fermentation times for consistency and also drying times in order for us to learn more about how processing needs to be adapted to allow for what climate change brings. 2023 has also seen us build our first seedling nursery in Eratoi, where together with Simao our field manager and lead farmer of the Eratoi group, we will be looking to cultivate new coffee and shade tree seedlings. For every 10kg of green beans that we sell to our partner roasters, we will commit to planting one new coffee or shade tree seedling which will be distributed to our partner farmers (including members from Samoro) for planting at a later date, so a big thank you to you for helping us to achieve this goal.