What actually happens on harvest day at our family farm in Loma de los Ángeles, La Vega. The unromantic version.
Most cacao marketing shows you a ripe orange pod and a chocolate bar. The 50 steps in between get skipped. Here’s what happens at our farm between the tree and the sack.
5:30 AM — First light
Cacao harvest happens in the cool morning. By 9 AM the sun is too strong to work for long stretches. The team starts at the edge of the grove with machetes and woven baskets.
Picking the pods
Cacao pods grow directly off the trunk and main branches — not on twigs like apples. The trick is knowing which pods are ready: fully colored, firm to the squeeze, hollow when tapped. Yellow varietals turn yellow-gold; red varietals turn deep orange-red. Pick too early and the beans haven’t developed; pick too late and the pulp inside starts to ferment on the tree.
We cut each pod with a quick machete strike at the base — you can’t pull or twist, that damages the trunk and the next harvest. The pods go into baskets, the baskets get carried to the breaking station.
Breaking
At the breaking station, each pod gets struck once or twice with the side of a machete — not chopped, just cracked open. Inside: 30-50 beans surrounded by white, sticky pulp.
The beans get scooped out by hand into clean buckets. The empty pod husks go back to the grove as mulch — they break down and feed the soil for next season’s trees.
The fermentation boxes
Within a few hours of breaking, the wet beans (still surrounded by pulp) go into wooden fermentation boxes. This is where chocolate flavor is actually made.
Our boxes are traditional — cedar planks, about 3 feet square, layered with banana leaves on top. The beans sit for 5 to 7 days. During that time:
- The pulp liquefies and drains away
- Wild yeasts ferment the sugars
- The bean’s color shifts from violet to brown
- Bitter and astringent compounds break down
- The complex precursors to chocolate flavor (volatile aldehydes, esters, alcohols) develop
We turn the beans by hand every 24-48 hours so the fermentation is even. Under-fermented beans taste flat and astringent; over-fermented beans taste like vinegar. Getting this step right is most of the craft.
The drying platforms
After fermentation, the beans go onto raised wooden drying platforms in the sun. They start at about 50% moisture and need to come down to 6-7% to ship safely. That takes 7-14 days depending on weather.
We turn the beans by foot every few hours, walking through them barefoot or with sandals to make sure every bean dries evenly. Raised platforms (rather than concrete or tarps on the ground) let air circulate from underneath, which gives more even drying and prevents the moldy off-flavors you get from ground-drying.
If it rains, we pull tarps over fast. Wet beans during drying are a disaster.
Sorting
Once the moisture is right, every bean is hand-sorted. We pull out:
- Broken or chipped beans
- Flat beans (under-developed)
- Moldy or odd-colored beans
- Debris (twigs, husk fragments)
This is tedious. It’s also non-negotiable. A clean bag of beans is the difference between a chocolatier ordering once and a chocolatier ordering monthly.
Bagging and shipping
Sorted beans go into 50 kg burlap jute sacks — the export standard. Each sack gets a label with the harvest date, lot number, and moisture content. They’re stored in a dry, ventilated warehouse until shipping date.
From La Vega, the sacks travel to Rio Haina (the port near Santo Domingo) and then by container to Miami, where we receive them for US distribution.
The point
Cacao isn’t a fast crop and isn’t a fast product. From pod to sack is roughly 3 weeks of active processing. From tree planting to first harvest is 4-5 years. From the moment Rosina planted the first sapling on this land to the moment I started shipping to chocolatiers, it took over a decade.
Every sack you order represents that whole chain. When you make chocolate with our beans, you’re working with a year of weather, decades of family soil knowledge, and three weeks of someone’s hands on every step.
That’s why we say single-origin. That’s why we say family-run. It’s not branding — it’s just true.
Work with us
If you’re a chocolatier, ceremony facilitator, or craft beverage maker looking for traceable single-origin Dominican cacao — we’d love to send you a sample.
Order a sample kit See the wholesale program— Joselly Ramos
Founder, Rosina’s Ranch Farm
La Vega, Dominican Republic → Miami, FL