Mausi Kühl - "Treat each other and our planet thinking of the future"

I would like to introduce you to Mausi Kühl. “She has a farm in Nicaragua.” This farm, Selva Negra, is not just an ordinary farm, but an extraordinarily magical place high in the cloud forests in the northern region of the country. Coffee is the primary crop grown on this farm and is sold around the world as one of the highest quality coffee beans produced in Latin America. Mausi has won awards from the Sustainable Harvest organization for her bio-dynamic growing methods, and over the past 35 years, has grown her small family farm into a world-respected model for sustainable agriculture and socially responsible community development.

Come with me now as we are given a tour of this 2000 acre estate by Mausi as she drives us in her Land Rover from one end of the farm to the other.

We begin in the eco-lodge and restaurant at the highest point on the farm. All of the food served in this restaurant is grown and produced from Selva Negra without artificial fertilizers or chemicals of any kind. The small guest’s cottages that surround the restaurant are a re-creation of a quaint German village from a children’s fairy tale book. The roofs are planted with plants and flowers, as are the grounds around the houses and lodges for guests.

We drive down the hill to the school, which is one of Mausi’s points of highest pride on her farm. Here are elementary school children from first grade through 6th grade. All the children on her farm receive an education and are supported to continue on to high school in the nearby community. Within the same area is a health clinic where a nurse works 5 days a week and on-call when an emergency happens on the weekends. Mausi has built houses for all of the permanent workers on her farm and has provided flower and vegetable seeds for the worker’s gardens. Even paint is provided so the people can decorate their own houses with artistic depictions of life and their world on Selva Negra.

We drive back onto the open roads on the farm now as we see rolling hills with free-range cattle, pigs, and chickens. Mausi has built a meat processing plant and a dairy building for production of milk products and cheeses. She has a greenhouse area where coffee plants are seeded and grown and even a small research lab where new and improved plants are tested and developed. Her fertilizers are all natural and most from her earthworm beds. The lush tropical hillsides are covered with exotic plants and trees and all are documented so that guests and researchers can identify the vegetation. As we get out of the truck to look more closely at the coffee plants we see lemons the size of grapefruits hanging from lemon trees and hibiscus flowers blooming every color of the rainbow.

Mausi’s coffee farm is an extraordinary example of how human creativity, determination, and commitment can improve the quality of life for an entire community of people in one of the poorest countries in all of Latin America. Every year, Mausi holds a worker fair on Selva Negra to celebrate the worker’s efforts and initiatives from coffee to cheese to hospitality services. Over the last 15 years of work in Nicaragua, InnerCHANGE WORKS was so honored to partner with Mausi and Selva Negra to provide health promotion fairs for the workers and their children. We developed a health assessment tool administered by the farm healthcare nurse at the clinic to all the workers on the farm. We then partnered with a Nicaraguan medical school and dental school at Universidad Americana (UAM) to provide the health checks and health education workshops during the fair for the workers and families.

As mentioned earlier in this article, Mausi’s highest point of achievement for her farm is the school for the children on the farm. Second only to this is her commitment to gender equality and gender balance. Her coffee workers on the farm are equal numbers of women to men. As shown in this photo below Mausi stands with her women coffee farmers. She has traveled widely in the United States and lectured at many universities on this topic of gender equality in a developing country. An example of this commitment is when, on one of my visits to the farm to set up one of the health fairs, we entered a worker’s home to say hello and Mausi found that one of the teenage daughters was pregnant. She gently asked me to leave for a few minutes while she talked to the mother that there is birth control available in her farm’s health clinic for workers and their daughters to prevent teen pregnancies. Because this is Mausi’s private health clinic she can do this even though the government of Nicaragua does not provide birth control through their government run health facilities. She is committed that all girls on her farm will get an education and will be able to pursue a productive future.

Until we can travel again, we offer you a way to get involved in helping to support Mausi and her farm, Selva Negra (http://www.selvanegra.com/en/). You can order this amazing coffee here in the US from her roaster in Atlanta… her daughter and son-in-law who will ship the coffee directly to you: https://javavino-online.square.site/

Please order some Selva Negra coffee and let’s virtually meet for a cup of coffee and daydream about traveling the world again. One of our first stops will be Nicaragua to stay at this magical, mystical farm in the cloud forests of the country. We will sit together on the patio of her restaurant and talk with this fascinating woman of courage and commitment in the world, Mausi Kühl.

Mausi Kühl’s Biography

Born in Westerstede, Germany in 1947, Mausi came at the age of two to Nicaragua, where her parents started an industrial business in Managua. Mausi studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua, then, in 1967, married Edi Kuhl. Together, they founded the Mountain Lodge and Coffee Estate Selva Negra in 1975. Before long Mausi was diversifying the farm to support eco-tourism, opened a coffee roaster, and introduced cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, quails and goats. She also established great living facilities for the farm’s workers, with running water, electricity, a health clinic, food, a school, and sports activities. Selva Negra has been recognized by Specialty Coffee Association of America in 2007 as one of the most sustainable coffee farms. Her coffee exportation company, La Hammonia, was certified by Rainforest Alliance in 1997, and in 2004 by Café Organico. Mausi lives and works on her farm with her husband, daughters and grandchildren.

NOTE: Photo credits go to Andrew Russell and Chuck Austin

In gratitude,
MVTO