Habitat El Salvador’s own Andrew met up with me and Maureen Krueger (a former AmeriCorps member with Habitat). While we drove to meet Aida, we talked about all of the great aspects of this project—from helping the farmers of El Salvador, to developing community through the shop itself, to raising more money for the Habitat cause and putting families in to homes.

We pulled up to a gas station where we were met by Aida Battle herself--the owner of the farm, and a woman who is well known within coffee circles for her award winning coffees. We hopped in to a large Ford F150, and within five minutes we were on what I can only describe as the most impassable road I have ever traveled. The pickup scraped bottom on a rock, and the path narrowed so that the tree limbs scraped loudly across my window. She threw it in to four wheel drive and slowed down to three miles an hour, while talking to me about her plans to be certified organic, as if it was just another day at the office. Dust billowed up in clouds around us, limiting visibility. The truck turned at a sharp angle and I looked out the window to see a cliff just feet from the wheels. Naively, I asked, "At some point do you worry you’ll have spend a lot to fix your road?"
"Well," she said, "this is a government highway."
"Ah." I had mistaken it for an impassable dirt path, leading up the side of an active volcano.

After reaching the top, we were met by the manager of Finca Mauritania--a small man named Adonai, who sported an American baseball cap and several large pruning knives. The farm was beautiful, and covered in shade grown trees and low lying clouds just as Peter had described it. It had been a sweltering hot Central American day and walking around the farm was a very cool experience, as the mountain breeze rustled the leaves of the coffee trees. The farmers I met seemed happy as they energetically filled their baskets with purple and red coffee cherries. I had heard before that the harvest was usually the happiest time of year on a coffee farm. I watched one picker named Roberto, his hand moving down the branch like a quick spider, cherries falling off in to his basket. Aida pointed to the way he picked them individually, instead of just dragging his hand down the branch—“By picking them individually, their stem remains so they can grow back the next year. The pickers that drag their hand down, pick faster, but ruin next year’s crop.”

Another requirement Aida has for her employees is that their kids be in school. She also pays her farmers three times that of the standard wage. She showed me the different organic methods she was using to become certified organic. “It’s hard” she said, “because it’s more work, it costs more money, and your trees produce less coffee. As the owner, it’s against my nature.” "But," she said, "It produces the highest quality, and that is my goal to win another cup of excellence." Oh yeah, Finca Mauritania won the cup of excellence in 2003, the most prestigious award a coffee grower can receive.