Our Big Meeting

 We don't have any pictures to document the landmark meeting we had with Hugo Hemmerlink, the premier organic cacao producer and exporter in Costa Rica.  It's too bad we don't have pictures because this is such a big deal for us. It has been three years of working to perfect our fermentation and drying production on the Chocolate Farm in order to produce beans meeting the standards for his company. He will then make chocolate liquor or chocolate from the beans and sell them to chocolate makers in Europe and the U.S.  

We talked about the different ways our chocolate will get out there to chocolatiers and the different certifications needed to meet the requirements of the various buyers.  The first one, getting the “organic” cerfification is first on our list.  Though we will not do this for now, mainly because the expense of the certification compared to the amount of beans we can sell does not make economical sense.  Rather then pay the $2000 for the certification, we actually paid for worm castings fertilizer for the trees and this year plan on a special forest derived organic mulch/fertilizer as well as compost tea all harvested from the primary forest on our land.  We’re not organically certified but we do go above and beyond any requirements for being organic and hope that we will attract people who can appreciate this.