Sítio Fazenda Fazendinha
Carvalho Family — Marcos Carvalho
Cabo Verde, South of Minas Gerais
This story is part of a series of exclusive content co-created with @obrasildocafé.
Read in Portuguese here.
A dive into the green, a breath over the mountain. Just take a closer look, above and below. We are at sítio (smallholding) Fazenda Fazendinha (translating in English as ‘Farm, Little Farm’). As soon as we got there, we could feel that something would be different. Arriving in Cabo Verde Town, in the South of Minas Gerais, we met Marcos downtown. He was coming from the next-to-last day of the ‘Coffee’s Green Grading and Cupping’ course offered by SENAR. We gave him a ride home, where we would stay for the next few days. A quiet place, localized in a neighborhood called ‘Morro das Bicas’, but without many neighbors around. The quietness of the night only interrupted by the sounds that the nocturnal beings make.
Marcos’ family was one of the first families to populate the region. His grandfather was the one who bought the property in 1967, the place where Marcos’ parents got married and where he was born. Neide and Bibi, his wife and stepdaughter, were already making dinner when we arrived. Marcos had to climb the roof. The internet connection was down, and Bibi had a school lecture to attend online. Marcos and Neide got married 3 years ago, this being his first marriage. He is 49 years old, but his shyness and the focus in his work with coffee made him live most of his life very lonely. On the other hand, would this be a path of solitude, the joy of being alone?
The women of the house are from the city and appreciate more of an urban lifestyle. They moved to the roça (countryside) 2 months ago to be with Marcos while they build a house in the city. The biggest question is, ‘Will Marcos get use to a life in the city?’ He is a man of nature, who really likes the place where he was born and raised, and the kind of life that you can have it there. However, he understands that in a relationship you need to find balance between each other’s needs. All for love — or almost that.
The love story between Marcos and coffee is very old. When he was young, used to help his father with the land work. He graduated from Agricultural School of Muzambinho, as an Agricultural Technician and worked for 5 years in pig farms in Indaiatuba, Bragança Paulista, Charqueada. Soon after that, he went back to coffee.
On the way to the plantation, inside the old Ford F75, Marcos told us that in Cabo Verde he produces, in average, 300–400 thousand coffee bags a year. There are more than 100 acres of coffee. In this wildness, he proposes taking breaks in our ride to show off the beauty of the place: A paineira (silk floss tree), fully blossomed, pink, and flawless, in contrast with all the green. Marcos loves this tree, uses it as location reference to both his and the neighbors’ plantations.
He has been working with specialty coffee for almost 10 years, and said that only after taking the course he began to understand the bean as its whole. In the productive area, he knows exactly what it needs to be done to maintain the quality, but it always has been a mystery to him the meaning of specialty coffee beyond these gates. In this new course, he would learn more about his own production and started to understand a bit more about what the coffee evaluators are searching for and, that way, produce better.
Marcos usually takes his best coffee to drink at home. Unlike his father, that only took home the varrição (worst part of the crop). In addition to selecting an expensive coffee, he asks Ivan from Café Goulart to roast it. In other words, it is a well-produced and well-roasted coffee. Ivan contributes a lot to the region, cupping coffees alongside the producers and learning together on how they can improve.
He takes care of 7 acres of coffee, among the varietals: Mundo Novo, Catuaí Vermelho, Bourbon Vermelho/Amarelo e Catucaí. In average 50–60% of it, he can make into specialty coffee. In the work routine, there are he and his partners — and friends, Ronei e Jamil. Seu Jamil have been working with Marcos in the fields for about 15 years, with comings and goings. At harvest time, Marcos counts on four people to help. He mentioned it is expected about 3 thousand people to come to Cabo Verde from the other States to work in the fields. It is when this city really transforms.
Marcos’ coffees have the seal of volcanic region, an origin designation that gained recognition 3 years ago. It refers to a territory clipping between the South of Minas and Northeast of São Paulo, where a volcano has been extinct for over 80 million years, defining an area of volcanic soil, with characteristics of climate and relief, which delimits a singular territory.
There is no way to tell Marcos’ story without talking about the association which he helped found, and has been part of until today, with great satisfaction: Asspro Café. Founded in 2014, the idea came up from a research conducted by CMDRS (‘Municipal Council of Sustainable Rural Development’), showing as a result the producers’ hardships in their path of finding the market and a better way to sell coffee. In the search for quality, they came across the SOMA Project, developed at the Instituto Federal de Muzambinho. Students and teachers provided technical assistance to producers to reach a production of great quality. This contact had changed everything, once to be part of the institute’s program; it was required to have a formal group (association/cooperative). That is how the group started, also with the support of EMATER. Soon after that, the relationship with 3Brothers came along and remains very tight until today. Nowadays, 20 producers are part of the association. Marcos truly believes in the potential of the group; therefore, he puts a lot of energy into Asspro Café. He mentioned that the greatest challenge in producing specialty coffee is to be able to sell the coffee well, and together they can contribute to the collective growth.
At the end of every day, as well in the beginning, Marcos waters his little orchard at the back of the house. It is an important ritual not only to harvest good inputs, but also because while doing it, he thinks of his father, who had more joy taking care of the orchard than the coffee itself. Once again, the love, the memory, the joy in taking care of the land comes into play and fill us with energy to take the road again, until the next visit at sítio Fazenda Fazendinha.
