La Providencia has been in the Palacios family since the 1950s, and in that time it has been passed down through three generations. Today it is owned and managed by Max Ariel Palacios Villatoro, who has been working on the farm since 1975.

La Providencia is 220 hectares in size and sits at an altitude of 1,550–1,950m above sea level. The topography is steep and irregular, making harvesting very labour intensive and time consuming. All of the coffee is picked by hand by a team of 100-250 seasonal workers, most of whom live locally and join the farm each year. They typically do a least four passes throughout the season (which typically runs from December–April) to ensure only the very ripest cherries are selected.

At the end of the day, each of the workers delivers their carefully selected coffees to the beautifully maintained wet mill, which is located at the heart of the farm. This mill begins at a high point on the steeply sloped property and has been designed to take full advantage of gravity, using water to carry the coffee through the pulping process via a series of intricate canals to the drying patios below.

Here, the coffees are carefully hand-sorted and then weighed, and then pulped using Penagos Eco-Pulpers that reduce the environmental impact of wet processing by reducing water usage and waste.

After pulping, the coffee is fermented for 30–32 hours and put through a washer to remove any remaining mucilage. It is then graded by weight in long channels and carefully dried — first on the farm’s pristine patios for at least eight hours and then in Guardiola driers for 24–26 hours.