On October 1, 2005, Finca Santa Elena owner Fernando Lima was gearing up for another coffee harvest when the Santa Ana Volcano erupted for the first time in 101 years, spewing ash and rock across his farm. Located a few hundred meters below the crater of the volcano, Finca Santa Elena was devastated. The farm lost more than 97 percent of its harvest that year and it took five years for the farm to fully recover. Faced with an enormous challenge, Fernando realized that the devastation also brought an opportunity to regroup and make Finca Santa Elena a better coffee farm. Fernando replanted the Bourbon and Pacamara varieties that established El Salvador's reputation for quality, alongside a diverse canopy of shade trees. He nurtured the farm's rich volcanic soil to help these plants thrive.

Finca Santa Elena had fully recovered by 2009 when we started working together, but Fernando was just getting started. He has continued to make improvements each season with the goal of increasing cup quality and improving the sustainability of the farm. One of the most noticeable improvements was installing shaded raised drying beds to promote slower, more even drying. In Santa Ana, typically coffees are dried on hot, concrete patios, which risk drying coffees too quickly. This cooler, raised-bed drying system has improved cup quality. He has also implemented specific fermentation and processing techniques for the selections we purchase. In 2016, the farm replaced an old wet mill with a new, energy-efficient mill. It uses 50 percent less water than their previous mill, saving thousands of liters of water each season. In recent years they’ve experimented with pruning shade trees at different times of the season to measure the impact on the coffee's quality and yield.

Fernando’s intentionality in each step of his journey has helped Finca Santa Elena rise from the ashes to become a thriving, biodiverse coffee farm with some of the best quality in the region.