Specialty Coffee Wiki

Finca El Suelo

Properties3
descriptionThe seven-hectare farm in El Pital, Huila that Norwegian roaster Tim Wendelboe carved out of Finca Tamana and planted in 2015 — named "the soil", run without synthetic fertiliser, and deliberately planted with varieties that catch leaf rust.
tagsfarm, colombia, huila, organic, regenerative, typica, geisha
aliasesEl Suelo, Tim Wendelboe's farm, farms/finca-el-suelo

7 min read

Finca El Suelo

Finca El Suelo is a 7-hectare coffee farm in the municipality of El Pital, in Huila, Colombia, owned and run by the Norwegian roaster Tim Wendelboe. The name is Spanish for “the soil”, and Wendelboe means it literally: “I’m farming soil, and I just happen to plant coffee in that soil.”1

The land was part of neighbouring Finca Tamana — the farm Wendelboe had already been buying from and written a book about — until roughly 1.5 years of paperwork split the plot off and sold it to him, finalised about two weeks before 13 August 2015. The first trees went in earlier that year, in February 2015.1

CountryColombia
DepartmentHuila
MunicipalityEl Pital
Size7 hectares12
OwnerTim Wendelboe12
First plantingFebruary 20151
Varieties at plantingTypica (2.5 ha), Geisha (1.5 ha)1
Farming approachOrganic, soil-first, no synthetic fertiliser13
Published cupping scorenone found
Published auction pricenone found

Story

A corner of someone else’s farm

Wendelboe did not go looking for land on the open market. The seven hectares were an untouched corner of Finca Tamana, the Huila farm whose washed Variedad Colombia he had been roasting and selling in Oslo for years (see Variedad Colombia and Huila). Separating a plot from an existing Colombian title is a legal job, not a handshake — the paperwork alone took about eighteen months before the sale could close.1

That is the unglamorous part of the story worth keeping. Most roaster-buys-farm headlines skip it; the interesting fact is that the hardest step was administrative.

Planting the wrong varieties on purpose

The planting plan reported at the time was 2.5 hectares of Typica and 1.5 hectares of Geisha, with a further 1,500 trees, plus 2,000 Geisha and 1,000 Caturra planned after that.1

Every one of those is susceptible to Coffee leaf rust. Colombia spent the 2008–2013 rust epidemic doing the opposite — replanting the country with resistant crosses like Castillo and Variedad Colombia bred by Cenicafé. Wendelboe planted the fragile ones deliberately, to test the claim that healthy soil biology can keep a susceptible tree healthy — that beneficial microorganisms in the ground can hold pathogens off without a resistant cultivar and without fungicide.13

He describes the method as “scientific-organic” rather than biodynamic: soil measured under a microscope, managed for the organisms living in it, with an explicit debt to how natural-wine growers talk about vineyard soil.1 The Coffee leaf rust note explains what he is betting against.

Soil as the product

Everything published about the farm since points the same way: compost made on the farm instead of bought fertiliser, mulching, shade trees, and bed preparation filmed and put on Wendelboe’s own YouTube channel as a running public record of the experiment.234 The farm is, in effect, a demonstration plot with an audience.

To verify

Altitude, the exact hamlet, and “compost as the only fertiliser”. The figures 1,650–1,700 metres above sea level and the location in the hamlet (vereda) of El Vegón, along with the statement that the farm makes “our own compost as the only fertilizer” from cow manure, weeds and crop residues, all come from Tim Wendelboe’s own videos.234 Those are quasi-primary — he owns the farm — but they are one provenance, not independent sources, and none could be read at source here (YouTube returned no page content, and timwendelboe.no returned HTTP 429 on every attempt). The altitude is plausible for El Pital and sits inside the 1,200–1,800 m band Huila records for the department, but treat all three as reported rather than established.

To verify

What is actually growing there now. The variety breakdown above is the planting plan as of August 2015.1 Nothing consulted here confirms which trees survived, whether the additional Geisha and Caturra were planted, whether the rust experiment worked, or what the farm’s current variety mix and yield are — a decade on, all four are open questions. The research report behind this note also states that cultivar names are “not listed in the available sources” while itself citing the article that lists them;1 the article wins, but the omission is a reminder that this farm has very little independent documentation.

To verify

Processing, scores, buyers and prices — none of it is documented. No source consulted describes whether El Suelo lots are washed, honey or natural, nor fermentation times or drying method. No cupping score, no FOB or retail price, and no auction record exists for the farm in anything checked here: nothing at Cup of Excellence or via the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, and Best of Panama is restricted to Panamanian farms, so it cannot appear there at all. It is reasonable to assume Wendelboe’s own Oslo roastery is the main buyer of the crop, but even that is inference, not a documented relationship.

Notable lots / records

YearLotScorePriceAuction
—none published———

The farm has no public competition or auction record. That is not a gap in the research so much as the shape of the project: a roaster who owns the farm and roasts the crop has no reason to put a lot through an auction to discover its price.

Why it matters

A direct-trade buyer can pay more, visit often, and ask nicely. Only an owner decides what gets planted — and planting a rust-magnet variety on purpose is a decision no visiting buyer could ever make on someone else’s land, because the downside lands on the grower.

That is what makes El Suelo unusual among the roaster-owned farms in this wiki. Finca Saza exists so a Japanese company can grow its own Geisha; El Suelo exists to argue a point about soil. The crop is the evidence, not the objective — which is also why the absence of scores and prices matters less here than it would anywhere else.

  • Official site — Tim Wendelboe — the farm has no separate site of its own; it is documented through his roastery’s site and YouTube channel. The site returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on every attempt from this machine, so its contents are unverified here

Footnotes

  1. Sprudge — Tim Wendelboe Bought A Coffee Farm (Jordan Michelman, 13 August 2015) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the farm name and its meaning, 7 hectares, El Pital in Huila, the separation from Finca Tamana, the ~1.5 years of paperwork, the February 2015 first planting, the 2.5 ha Typica / 1.5 ha Geisha split and planned Geisha and Caturra trees, the deliberate use of rust-susceptible varieties over Castillo, and the “scientific-organic” description ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  2. YouTube — Introducing Finca el Suelo, Tim Wendelboe’s Coffee Farm In Colombia — the owner’s own channel; source of the 7 hectares, 1,650–1,700 masl and the compost-only statement. Could not be read at source here (the page returned no video content); cited via the research report ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. YouTube — Our own farm Finca el Suelo: A Journey into Regenerative Agriculture — the owner’s own channel; source of the on-farm composting from manure, weeds and residues, and the soil-first framing. Cited via the research report, not read at source ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. YouTube — A Tour of Finca El Suelo — the owner’s own channel; farm tour covering bed preparation, mulching and tree management. Cited via the research report, not read at source ↩ ↩2

Graph View

Backlinks