About El Tabor
El Tabor is a lightly forested area in the Pedregal area of Inzá, Colombia, located on the mountain called Tabor—the highest mountain in this area. The center of the community is made up of a long road that is its only access route. All houses are located next to the road with the farms a few meters away.
To get to El Tabor we first fly to Bogota, then take a local flight from Bogota to Neiva. From Neiva we drive 3 hours to Pedregal. In Pedregal we find the trail along which we travel for 20 minutes to get to El Tabor.
This community has good telephone signal throughout the year, except in the winter season when the rains increase. This area, like other areas, can become inaccessible during the winter season, but unlike other areas it isn’t due to mud. Here, winter brings frequent landslides that close the passage into and throughout town. Knowing this will happen seasonally, the residents of Tabor try to bank a good stock of basic supplies for the winter months.
Producers of the area grow coffee, bananas, cassava, beans, and corn on their farms. They use native shade trees such as the leguminous nitrogen-fixing ice cream bean tree and fertilize with organic compost (food waste from the house, chicken manure, and coffee husks) and NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium). Producers also raise chickens and ducks.
Processing is standardized across the region in true smallholder Colombia fashion—great focus on ripe cherry selection, manual depulping of coffee beans from their cherries, 12-24 hour fermentation, washing in clean, tiled tanks and drying on raised parabolic beds to protect from the elements. These coffees don’t leave the grainpro until the moment they are dry milled, and they go into fresh bags immediately after. Producers re-use the storage bags again for fresh parchment.
Red Fox has been working in this area with these specific communities since 2007, when the remoteness of the region meant a lack of strong market access. Now, producers here have options for where they sell their coffee, and we continue to pay premium rates so that the relationships feel mutually rewarding.
