"There are multiple components of an authentic Costa Rican farm. It's not just about selling coffee or sugar cane for us. Family and God are the center of our life here. Our family in particular has a long history of loving and working the land, and we put a lot of thought into how we treat it. My parents also always stressed that my siblings and I obtained an education, and we carry on that tradition by sharing what we know with those who visit the farm."
-Eugenio Leiton Vargas
Finca Florencia
The Leiton Vargas family's ancestors were the first people of European descent to officially settle the San Luis area.
Around 1917-1918, when Juan and Florencia Leiton first arrived in San Luis, there was no "trocha," no running water, no electricity, and not a single house to be found. The mountains were lush with primary-growth forest and horses trotted along the jagged, dirt roads instead of rumbling Toyota pickup trucks and ATVs. As the first non-indigenous settlers in the valley, they fabricated a modest house and were subsistence farmers. About a century later, their granddaughter, Erminda Leiton Vargas, and her husband, Francisco, live in upper San Luis. They have 12 children, the eldest being the wise and bright-eyed Eugenio, who is one of the primary caretakers and tour guides of the farm.
Finca Florencia, named after Florencia Leiton in 2011, has been in business for decades. In their youth, Eugenio and his brothers worked on the farm when they were not studying at the Quaker's Friend School in Monteverde, and have witnessed the transformations of the farm over these many years.
In the early days of the farm, the family grew solely coffee plants and lacked diversity of plant cover. Each year, however, Francisco gradually and constantly reforested in and around the farm and grew more
diverse plants, including mangos, papayas, sugar cane, flowering bushes, bananas, and platanos. Finca Florencia has not been using chemicals for 25 years and was officially certified Organic and became part of MAOPAC (Movement of Organic Agriculture of the Central Pacific) in 2006.
The farm sells coffee beans to local coffee producers and each year it roasts a small batch of its own limited edition coffee brand, Finca Florencia Coffee. Additionally, the farm uses its trapiche to process sugar cane and hand-craft molasses and dulces.