Sandra Farms - A Story Of Perseverance
Sandra and Israel Gonzalez say “Coffee” as they smile for the camera on their beautiful farm in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico.
Sandra Farms, located on a beautiful mountainside in Puerto Rico, is a coffee farm owned by Sandra and Israel Gonzalez. For Israel, farming is a lifelong dream and passion. "I love farming. That is true since I was about six years old. I love it. I mean, it's part of me in a sense," he says.
Despite the ideal mountain environment for growing coffee, the island of Puerto Rico is often hit by natural disasters. However, Gonzalez believes in persevering through difficult times. "If you do what you do here, either you give up or you persevere and find ways. So, we hope we can find ways," he says.
Following hurricane Maria, the entire island of Puerto Rico was ravaged. Gonzalez explains that was a point in the history of this farm that he feared would be the end of Sandra Farms. “We were here 10 months without power during Maria. So about six months later, we had no workers, nothing, because we didn't have income. We lost everything. So Sandra comes down here and sees that most of those trees are alive. She says, ‘Let's hire people.’ I said, ‘We don't have any money.’ So she thinks for a little bit and says, ‘Well, we have our social security income. We live here. We'll spend it here.’ Okay, good. Let's spend it. So we started spending. We hired a couple of people. For that reason, I believe we're still open today.”
The farm has also received aid from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the form of crop indemnization following Hurricane Maria. Gonzalez says, "We qualified. You won't believe-- they give us $125,000. We still have a little of that money, you know. So how long will we have gone with our social security income? Not very long at all. But then that money came in. You know, it just made the whole difference for us. Totally. The whole difference.”
However, Gonzalez faces another obstacle in the form of a lack of local labor. "Without that, we will not be open. Even with the federal funding. Just can't do it. Who's going to maintain the farm? Who's going to pick the coffee? They're not here. They left because we don't have a climate of opportunity here," he says.
Gonzalez also practices what he calls "regenerative agriculture" and does not apply pesticides to the coffee, only commercial fertilizer. "We cannot compete with South America and Africa with good coffee, because our production costs are 10 times higher. That's the way it is. So either you produce something of excellence and you sell it to the niche market or you don't, and then you go bankrupt, very simple as we've had 10,000 coffee farms do," he explains.
At the end of the day, for Gonzalez, running the farm is about living his dream and making his wife happy, rather than getting rich. "It's not corporate coffee production. We do it because we like it, and we know we can come out with an excellent product. But really, if you looked at this from an economic point of view , you're not gonna do it. Nobody's gonna get rich doing this. So to me, it's not getting rich, but rather living a dream, I guess, really. Yeah. So you don't have to be rich to live a dream,” he says.
The farm produces a high-quality coffee that is enjoyed by many, and it is a testament to the perseverance and hard work of the Gonzalez family.
Learn more about Sandra Farms and support this small business here.
