When we bought Spirit Mountain back in 2003, I had no idea what I was getting into. Coffee? I was hardly a coffee drinker. Sure, I’d sip it when someone offered, but let’s just say my expertise was more in sipping than cultivating. Lucky for me, though, Angostura de Manabao had all the right stuff for growing amazing coffee, and we’d inherited a place with a backstory as rich as a Dominican espresso.
The land had taken a hard hit in 1998 when Hurricane George swept through, leaving it…well, let’s say “a fixer-upper.” But when I saw the 335-acre spread—1,350,000 square meters of rugged mountains and possibilities—I knew it was the start of a grand adventure.
First order of business? Forest restoration. We started planting trees—over 100,000 in the first few years alone. Our approach was an agroforestry dream: nurturing coffee under the shade of a multistoried forest canopy, or at least one we hoped would grow that way. Turns out, even in the tropics, trees don’t become towering giants overnight. So, for those first few years, we were more like caretakers of a jungle gym, with saplings in need of protection from the surrounding flora that seemed intent on turning every cleared inch back into wilderness.
In addition to replanting native species, we brought in high-value hardwoods from Costa Rica, trees that were just as happy here in Manabao’s mountain climate as they were back home. (And yes, before you ask, this involved a fair bit of research, and my coffee ignorance didn’t extend to tree ignorance—I knew we needed a solid canopy to support healthy coffee plants.)
Turns out, coffee loves shade. Science even says shade-grown coffee tastes better. You’d think that was common knowledge in the coffee world, but it took me almost a decade to figure it out myself. We weren’t just growing beans—we were building a healthier, biodiverse ecosystem with every tree we planted. And slowly but surely, Spirit Mountain transformed.
But no good story is without its hurdles. A decade in, just as the trees were finally doing their thing, another challenge popped up.
When Good Shade Goes Overboard: Managing Spirit Mountain’s Canopy for the Perfect Coffee Crop
About ten years into our grand reforestation plan, we hit another snag—one that only a coffee farmer could relate to: our beautiful trees were now ‘too good’ at their job. Yes, coffee loves a bit of shade, but it also needs some sun each day to produce flowers—the very same flowers that eventually turn into coffee cherries. Turns out, without carefully timed sunlight, you get trees with lovely leaves, but not a cherry in sight. So, we had to roll up our sleeves and spend serious time each year trimming back the canopy, just enough to give the coffee plants the light they need to thrive.
This balancing act became one of our most crucial annual tasks. A well-managed shade canopy does so much more than regulate sunlight. It preserves soil moisture, keeps the ground cool, adds organic humus to the soil, and guards against erosion. It even helps slow down the ripening process, and as any coffee aficionado knows, slow-ripened cherries make for a richer, more complex cup of coffee. But as you might imagine, keeping this delicate ecological balance is labor-intensive, especially on an island where costs are already high.
