Monday, January 23, 2012

Butterfly Coffee Garden

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At Doka Estate Butterfly Coffee Garden we have 11 different species of butterflies as the Blue Morpho Butterfly, one of the most attractive in Costa Rica


When you visit Doka Estate Coffee Tour you will enjoy in a colorful garden with 2 levels one you will walk inside our garden, plants and butterflies, you will find small rivers coming through and if you go on the side will have a upper view of the gorgeous surroundings inside the garden as the coffee plantation.

Since a butterfly farm works towards minimizing the risks to a butterfly throughout the different stages of its life cycle, the survival rate can be brought up to as high as 90% in the farm.

At Doka Estate you will find 2 of the 11 species of butterflies we carried are breeding: the Blue Morpho and the Caligo know as the Owl Butterfly. Let us tell you more about this 2 amazing species.

The Neotropical Morpho Butterflies have metallic colors, with flashes of blue and green and the ventral side is brown. The eggs hatches into larvae are pale green with a drop of dew. They have reddish-brown body with bright lime green spots or yellow dorsal hand, the larvae molt four or six times before entering the pupal stage and adults live for about two or three weeks.

The other specie we want you to learn is Caligo known as Owl Butterfly, which stands out as a moth as well for their size. The larvae grow up to 15 cm long, almost 6 inches, and adults can exceed 20cm (around 8 inches). It´s common name comes from the large eyespots on the back of the wings, which seems like big eyes as an example of defense mechanisim.

If you want to visit Doka Estate Butterfly Coffee Garden please visit www.dokaestate.com

Monday, January 16, 2012

Did you know when is the harvest season in Doka Estate?

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In January during the harvest season Doka Estate receives around 65 “fanegas” every day approximately 1300 baskets with ripe coffee cherries

During November, December and January starts the harvest season when the coffee cherries ripen in the Poas Volcano Region. Every day the coffee pickers have to select manually the red coffee cherries during the day and around 3 pm the trucks comes to measure what they have picked and they are paid for the hard work, the measured for the payment is a coffee basket named “Cajuela”, and 20 “cajuelas” is 1 “fanega”.
 
Doka Estate Coffee Mill has more than 100 years processing coffee cherries. The first stage starts when the coffee is received into the siphon and then goes to the chancadora where these machines peels off the red skin of the coffee cherries to take out 2 coffee seeds that have to rest in the fermentation tanks where the natural sugars of the seeds are eliminated; then the coffee is washed and dried in the “patios” for around 4 days to get the perfect 11.5% of humidity to be storage until it´s ready to be processed for export and roast.

Right now during the harvest season Doka Estate Coffee Mill is receiving around 65 “fanegas” every day approximately 1300 baskets with ripe coffee cherries or 16.20 tons of fruit