Exciting Developments at Ocean Grace Farms

Things are happening here at Ocean Grace Farms! Thanks to Katie and Cody Wortman, the orchard is looking beautiful, with companion plants growing and blooming, windbreaks being planted, and three new areas being prepared. We have just ordered a 20’ x 30’ greenhouse where we will propagate vegetable starts and grow tomatoes (yes, getting back to my roots!), peppers, and cucumbers. We are also installing 10 4’ x 8’ planters for vegetables and herbs and a 12’ x 20’ pergola where we will conduct several farm activities, including Korean Natural Farming ferments and drying wet cacao seeds after fermentation.

Over 80% of the cacao trees have been grafted, and the new grafts are slowly growing and should be producing fruit again later this year. We have terraced the upper hillside on the farm, which will give us space for another 100 trees, bringing our total to around 400 trees. These last 100 trees will already be grafted when we plant them later this year. The purpose of all these improvements is to evolve our varieties in terms of production, quality, and flavor. The quality of the final cacao bean is largely determined by the quality of the fermentation. The larger the ferment (we’re aiming for a 100-kilo ferment), the better the quality of the dried cacao bean, which significantly contributes to the flavor of the chocolate - almost as much as the roast. I expect to work towards that volume goal over the next one to two years, and by 2027, we should have plenty of beans.

Maybe we’ll have our first Ocean Grace Farms chocolate sometime next year? We planted our first trees in 2017, and we are ready for some chocolate!