Moving is a process: I hope you are doing well, and that crazy heat wave is behind us. It has been 2 months since we paused Hato Viejo, and 6 weeks since we moved from Lebanon to Dover, NH. What an adventure it has been! After we paused everything went into storage including all our materials for the business. Slowly we have been unpacking and getting settled. The original plan was to move into a move-in-ready house, but that plan fell apart pretty quickly, and we ended up getting a house that needed some work. Up until a few weeks ago, we were camping in our house. We spent the whole July, between painting the whole house, doing small projects,...
Six months ago, our life changed. After 24 years of living and working in the Upper Valley Dan took a new job in Maine. During this time, we have been juggling to try and continue having a regular life, between the kids, schedules, trips, hotels, Hato Viejo and being a solo parent for a few days of the week while Dan goes for a few days every week to Maine. I always said that “the knife is the only one that knows the heart of the pumpkin”. After a few weeks you start feeling it, especially as soon as spring started and sport season for the kids. Over the kid's spring vacation, we had talked about a solution to this new...
Back home in the Dominican Republic, if a kid doesn’t get a present at Christmas, it’s not the end of the world. Santa Claus may not have visited, but hope is not lost. There is still Three Kings Day. This was often our experience as children- “Don’t worry!” Our mother would say, “The three kings will bring you a present.” In 2022, we were able to go home to the DR for the holidays, and I was so excited. The kids would experience their first Christmas there, but we would also have the opportunity to prepare the Trineo de Esperanza, or Sleigh of Hope, for the children of the community. For those who have never experienced this, it is...
In 1973, fifty years ago now, my parents, who inspired me to begin this project, were married. Raised in the valley below, my mother faced some changes when she married my coffee farmer father, and moved up to Hato Viejo. In the early years of their marriage, my mother adapted to a landscape that could only be traversed by horse or donkey- nothing motorized could navigate those paths- and spent nine years living and raising children on the mountain. There was not a lot of formal education in those years before we moved back down to the valley for school- it wasn’t what my parents had to offer, but the education they did give us was less common. We were...
Coffee arrived in the Dominican Republic more than 300 years ago. With my country’s colonization by Spain, Torrefacto, the process by, which the coffee was roasted, arrived along with it. As a child, I watched my grandmother, and then my mother, use this method to roast the coffee everyone drank. The tradition was passed down for generations. Torrefacto, a particular process of roasting coffee beans with sugar, has it’s roots in practicality. When the beans are roasted with sugar, the sugar leaves behind a glaze on the beans that helps preserve them for longer. It was a cheap and effective means of extending the shelf life of the roasted beans. It also provided the added benefit of masking some of...
