Where It All Began: The Story of Finca Carrizalito
Some farms are built for scale. Others are built for beginnings.
Finca Carrizalito is the latter.
Long before it became the backbone of a larger coffee operation, it was simply a piece of land and a 21-year-old with a vision. In 1986, Ricardo Zelaya took his first step into coffee, not with certainty, but with curiosity. Carrizalito became his starting point. A place where ideas weren’t just imagined, but tested, refined, and sometimes reworked from the ground up.
This was where theory met soil.
A farm shaped by learning
Carrizalito wasn’t just planted. It was explored.
Everything Ricardo had studied about coffee, from agronomy to processing, found its way here. Rows of coffee trees became living experiments. The farm itself evolved alongside him, including the construction of his very first wet mill.
There’s something quietly powerful about that kind of beginning. Not polished. Not perfect. But deeply intentional.
And you can still feel it today.
The quiet starting point behind every farm
While Carrizalito was the first, it never became just a memory.
Today, it plays a different role. One that’s less visible, but just as important.
It’s where everything begins again.
Finca Carrizalito is now the nursery source for all the farms under Ricardo’s care. Every young coffee plant starts here, rooted in soil that has already proven its strength. With nearly eight months of rainfall each year and naturally fertile land, the farm creates the kind of environment where seedlings don’t just grow, they stabilize.
By the time these plants are transferred to other farms, they’re not fragile. They’re ready.
Not the easiest place to reach, but always worth it
Getting to Carrizalito isn’t simple.
Located in the northwestern region of Guatemala, the journey can take anywhere from six to nine hours. Roads stretch long, terrain shifts, and the trip demands patience.
But for Ricardo, distance has never been a reason to step back.
If anything, it’s part of the commitment.
Because Carrizalito isn’t just another farm in the portfolio. It’s the one that started everything.
A farm that grows more than coffee
There’s another layer to Carrizalito that often goes unnoticed, but matters just as much.
Within the farm sits a primary school, serving more than 100 children from nearby communities. It’s a space built not just for education, but for opportunity. Equipped with a computer lab, it opens doors that extend far beyond the farm itself.
It’s a reminder that coffee, at its best, doesn’t just sustain crops. It supports people.
And that kind of investment tends to ripple outward in ways you don’t always see immediately but feel over time.
Still growing, in more ways than one
Finca Carrizalito isn’t just where Ricardo Zelaya began. It’s where his philosophy continues to take shape.
A belief in learning by doing.
In building slowly, but with purpose.
In caring for both land and community with equal attention.
It may not be the largest farm, or the easiest to reach. But it remains, quietly, the most foundational.
Because every cup has a starting point.
And for many of Ricardo’s coffees, it begins here.