La Picona, Martha Lucía Albir, Nicaragua

Finca La Picona, situated in the Las Manos community of Dipilto, Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua (13.791269 °N –86.571446 °W; 1,252 m a.s.l.), belongs to Martha Lucía Albir Sotomayor, an established specialty-coffee producer who purchased the property in 2025, adding it to three other farms and her co-ownership of the dry mill Cafetos de Segovia. The estate spans nine hectares, six of which are under coffee, and recently yielded about ninety quintals of green coffee; four permanent workers (an administrator plus three labourers) are supported by a technical adviser. Maracaturra, yellow and red Catuaí, Geisha, Java, Caturra and Parainema grow beneath a 30–50 per cent canopy of Inga, native hardwoods, búcaro, plantains and fruit trees. Annual nutrition comprises two soil applications of low-impact synthetic fertiliser, three organic foliar feeds and composted pulp, while systematic shade regulation, tissue pruning and formative cuts maintain plant health. Ripe cherries are hand-picked from January to March and trucked to Finca Bethania, where washed, honey, natural and anaerobic-natural processes follow a common sequence of cherry selection, flotation and an eighteen-hour rest; washed lots ferment in tanks for 24–36 hours, honey lots ferment sealed in plastic for 24–48 hours, and anaerobic naturals ferment in hermetic barrels before all parchment is transferred to Cafetos de Segovia for storage, dry milling, marketing and export. Bethania’s wet-mill design minimises water use and channels effluent to oxidation ponds, practices echoed in La Picona’s field activities, where regular monitoring, shade management, broca traps and low-impact preventive sprays form the integrated pest-and-disease strategy. Only coffee is cultivated, and although climate-change effects are not yet fully evident on this recently acquired farm, erratic rainfall is already causing irregular plant stress and delayed flowering.