By Beth Ann Caspersen
 Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, is beautiful in its simplicity. There are tall pine trees, fruit trees, coffee and lots of sugar cane. Most of the coffee producers live in one part of the community for most of the year and travel to their coffee farms located at higher altitudes to renovate, prepare and collect coffee during the harvest. In addition to coffee, a variety of beans, fruits and animals can be found on each farm and these provide needed alimentation and income to the coffee producers throughout the year.
I stayed with the Bellorin Merrera family during my June 2007 visit to the town of Jicaro. On the first evening with my host family, we enjoyed a dinner of potato chicken soup and corn tortillas before retreating outside into the dark night. The landscape is so much different than New England and I enjoyed stargazing with the daughters of my host mother, Mayela, and hearing the giggles of small children as we tried our hand at identifying any star formation we could. We were awestruck by the fireflies and laughed at their magic.
I awoke the next morning to a beautiful farmscape. The house had four rooms and a kitchen with a modest patio that overlooked their farm, which included horses, ducks, chickens and, of course, the loud and reliable cry of the beloved rooster. I felt like an honored guest and I enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, tortillas, local cheese and a thick cup of black coffee. It was a wonderful way to wake up and share a morning in the life of Senora Mayela Bellorin Merrera and her family.
 In addition to coffee, many farmers grow sugar cane and use the cane juice to make a dark brown sugar, fresh cane juice, and/or a rustic form of rum. The stalks of sugar cane are put through a hulling-like device that strips the hard cover off the cane and presses the juice into a vessel. This is how cane juice is made. If the producer chooses to make sugar out of the cane, the juice is put into a holding tank and is boiled down to a yellow-brown syrupy substance and is then transported by bucket to be poured into wooden molds. The sugar molds dry quickly and can be brought and sold to the local market within hours of production. The consistency of the hot sugar cane looks like maple syrup and as it cools, the color appears to darken into a lighter shade of brown sugar.
During my homestay, I saw so much beauty in the lives of these people, and their pride and support for the co-operative is amazing. My dream is to support the farmers as they plan and implement their dreams: a simple ecotourism project and the construction of a hotel with hot springs. I can’t wait for the day I wake up in a home of one of our producer partners, hike through a coffee farm, participate in the coffee harvest and end my day with a nice soak in the hot spring with a cool, iced PROCOCER coffee. Delicious.
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Farmer Partners 
