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 Last month, just as we were getting ready for our June coffee deliveries, we received, completely out of the blue, the most amazing gift - a gorgeous video of the coffee farm, featuring Guillermo's brother Avilio. If you follow us on Facebook, you may have already seen it, but for those who haven't, we wanted to share it again through our newsletter, along with the lovely story of the couple who created for us.
First, a quick reminder that we'll doing our July coffee deliveries on Friday, July 15. If you live (or work) in Minneapolis or St. Paul and some suburbs, we can add you to our free delivery route. If you don't live in these areas, we're happy to mail coffee to you. Just get your coffee order to us before noon Wednesday, July 13 by contacting us at coffee@vfamilycoffee.com or ordering through our website. Our next delivery date will be Friday, August 12th.
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Encounters of Kindness and Beauty
Especially at this moment when the news is dominated by one violent act after another, we are pleased to be able to share the story of Ashwin and Olivia and their journey through Mexico, Central and South America and how for four days in June their lives connected with our family.
Last November, Ashwin Atre and Olivia Sparkuhl left California in their specially outfitted car, "El Champulin" for an epic journey. For the past 236 days and counting, they've been chronicling their travels through their website, blog and with beautiful photos and video posted to social media.
 When they arrived in Honduras this June, they discovered Rio Negro in a Lonely Planet Guidebook and stayed for four days with Guillermo's brother Avilio and his wife Bertilia. As Ashwin wrote in his email to us, "Avilio and Bertilia welcomed us into their home as if we were family. We were so inspired by their warmth and generosity and their commitment to sustainability and the environment that I decided to make a short video to highlight the farm, with the hope that it will help get their family and yours a little more exposure and help grow your business."
As you'll see below, it is an amazing video that in only two minutes captures the beauty of the cloud forest and Avilio's charming nature. It showcases Avilio's newest coffee plantation that he planted a few years ago in what was for decades a pasture. Guillermo tells me they used to keep their mules in this pasture when he was a little kid. After the road came to the farm and they no longer needed the mules to transport coffee down the mountain, Guillermo's father Maximo used it to graze cows that they used for milk and meat. Now it is growing coffee for us -- and some of the first harvest from these young coffee plants has just arrived in Minnesota in our latest coffee shipment.
As Ashwin and Olivia continue their journey, they offered a fond farewell to Honduras and continue to offer their video skills to others along the way. If you ever dream of traveling in Central America you'll find their website to be full of inspiration.
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We hope you enjoy this video as much as we do (just click the image above), along with Ashwin's blog post that accompanies it.
"Something new happened yesterday - Olivia and I were both brought to tears as we left our latest camping spot, struggling to say goodbye but knowing that we'd be back one day. These last four days in Honduras have been some of the best of our entire trip so far, and it's all thanks to these wonderful people. Avilio and Bertilia Velasquez own an coffee farm in the little community of Rio Negro at the edge of the insanely beautiful Comayagua National Park in central Honduras. These two infuse everything they do with love and kindness, from how they run their family to their incredible respect for and knowledge of the natural world. We were so inspired by their warmth and generosity and their commitment to sustainability that we decided to make a video to help promote their amazing product: fair trade, shade grown, hand picked coffee. And the coolest part... you can order their coffee directly from Avilio's brother in Minnesota!"
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Velasquez Family Coffee
Shade Grown | Hand Picked | Sun Dried | Fair Trade
Directly from our Family to You
www.vfamilycoffee.com
coffee@vfamilycoffee.com
651-587-5356
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