Tucked away in a barrio in Esteli, Nicaragua, on the edge of a dusty stream bed, is the family-owned coffee processing company of Abraham Enrique Castillo, the Beneficio Centro America.

At one time twice its current size–before their land was seized and inhabited by others–it’s not a large, high-tech operation.  But it is a comfortable, homey place, with the delicious aroma of freshly roasted and ground coffee floating in the dusty air.

Abraham is a gentle, inviting man, getting along in years, kind and slow-speaking, and easily understood.  He’ll gaze at you over his glasses, welcome you to his shop, offer you a refresco or coffee, and show you around.

If you follow him through the building and out the back door, through the small farmyard of coffee plants and tall trees, lounging dogs and clucking chickens, you’ll come to an acre of concrete, strewn with swaths of coffee beans. It is here that Abraham and his crew dry the coffee beans in the sun.  The patchwork quilt of coffee varies from green to brown to yellow, depending on whether they’re drying whole beans (ripe or green), or the hulled beans that are a golden-to-light-green hue.

Abraham steps onto the concrete and makes the rounds, from patch to patch.He stoops over to pick up a couple beans, crushing them between his fingers, testing whether they’re ready to be brought inside. Occasionally he’ll gaze up at the clouds in the sky, and mumble about whether it’s going to rain today or not.  When he finds a batch that’s ready, he points them out to his assistants, and they begin to rake and bag them and haul them indoors.

Inside sit several machines, some new, some that look like they’ve been around since the revolution. (They process coffee, frijoles, and corn in the same sorting machines.)  Here they remove the coffee bean hulls, sort them by size, remove by hand any defective beans or foreign matter (stones, twigs, pinto beans), roast and mill the coffee, then bag the grounds by hand. In one corner you may see Abraham’s wife, Señora Castillo, sitting at an ancient Singer sewing machine, making sackcloth bags for the branded coffee sold to tourists.

Like most smaller businesses in Nicaragua, the place of business also serves as the family home.  By midafternoon—hot, sweating, and caked in dust—everyone is ready for a break, and we are invited into the dim, low-ceilinged dining room to share in a cup of coffee, served in locally hand-crafted mugs, accompanied by sweet-tangy cookies called rosquillas.

The beneficio is a family affair, dim and dusty, stacked with bags of coffee and beans, littered with wooden seats and sorting bins and lounging dogs, and filled with several generations of memories—and the sweet smell of freshly ground Nicaraguan coffee.

Sadly, Abraham is no longer present amongst the dust and bustle of the beneficio.  Just 8 months after my time in Nicaragua, he passed away at 74 years of age. His legacy as a firefighter, Lion, businessman, radio aficionado, husband of 48 years, father, grandfather, and coffee lover will be sorely missed in his lifelong home of Esteli.

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Prints from this series are available as 10×15 archival inkjet prints on archival paper, for $350.