Rebuilding Tío Conejo After the Earthquake
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$2,035 raised of
21 donations
We’re sharing our story here because we need your help to repair and rebuild our homes after the earthquake in Colombia.
The structural damage is serious, and we need to rebuild before the houses fall or become unsafe to live in.
On Monday, August 10, the mountains around us shook with tremendous force. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake destroyed many homes and buildings across Colombia’s coffee-growing region. We were lucky. Our family and our team are safe. Unlike other places, our losses were less severe, and for that we are deeply grateful.
When things finally settled, we walked through all of our houses. La Conejera and Santa Chila are still standing, but their roofs, ceilings, walls, beams, and columns suffered significant damage. Since then, we have not been able to receive visitors or use those houses for our work and daily life.
These houses are not just houses to us. They are the places where we learned to be friends, where we brewed coffee, where we danced, laughed, and learned to be happy. Over all these years, we have been lucky enough to watch them fill with people. First, there were our families, our friends, our team, and so many people from Manizales who have known this story since long before Tío Conejo reached places we never imagined.
Then people started arriving by many different paths. Some found a bag of our roasted coffee and wanted to know where it came from. Others discovered our green coffee on the other side of the world. Some walked into La Madriguera for a cup of coffee and ended up getting to know us. Others heard about a farm in the mountains of Manizales and decided to come find us. Producers, roasters, baristas, coffee buyers, travelers, curious people, and friends we did not know were friends yet came here. Some stayed for a few hours, others for several days, and these houses became their homes too.
There are also those who have never made it up this mountain: people who have bought our coffee, roasted it, brewed it, served it, or shared it somewhere far from here. People who have followed our adventures, our good ideas, and probably some not-so-good ones. When the fire came, many of you showed up again. You called, you wrote, you asked how you could help, you bought our coffee, reached out, and helped us get back on our feet and keep moving forward. You stayed close even from thousands of miles away.
That is how we came to understand that Tío Conejo was never just a farm, a few houses, or hectares planted with coffee. Tío Conejo became all the people who came, and all those who keep coming. Today, in one of those turns life sometimes takes, we are the ones who need to knock on the door.
It is not easy to ask for support from the people who care about us, but repairing and rebuilding our beloved houses will cost around $30,000. Repairing roofs, tiles, ceilings, walls, beams, and columns requires love, dedication, knowledge, and also a lot of money. We know how lucky we were, and we know that other people and communities suffered far more than we did. We still have our farm, we still have our houses, and most importantly, we still have each other. Tomorrow morning, someone will surely get up to make coffee, pick cherries, or fertilize the trees. Life on the farm goes on, but we also have to rebuild our homes.
Ways to help:
However you choose to help, we will be deeply grateful. Even though the mountains shook, coffee stayed alive at Tío Conejo. We are still here, alive and happy.
Let’s protect the houses that protected us for so long.
With love and gratitude, The Tío Conejo family, Manizales, Colombia
The structural damage is serious, and we need to rebuild before the houses fall or become unsafe to live in.
On Monday, August 10, the mountains around us shook with tremendous force. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake destroyed many homes and buildings across Colombia’s coffee-growing region. We were lucky. Our family and our team are safe. Unlike other places, our losses were less severe, and for that we are deeply grateful.
When things finally settled, we walked through all of our houses. La Conejera and Santa Chila are still standing, but their roofs, ceilings, walls, beams, and columns suffered significant damage. Since then, we have not been able to receive visitors or use those houses for our work and daily life.
These houses are not just houses to us. They are the places where we learned to be friends, where we brewed coffee, where we danced, laughed, and learned to be happy. Over all these years, we have been lucky enough to watch them fill with people. First, there were our families, our friends, our team, and so many people from Manizales who have known this story since long before Tío Conejo reached places we never imagined.
Then people started arriving by many different paths. Some found a bag of our roasted coffee and wanted to know where it came from. Others discovered our green coffee on the other side of the world. Some walked into La Madriguera for a cup of coffee and ended up getting to know us. Others heard about a farm in the mountains of Manizales and decided to come find us. Producers, roasters, baristas, coffee buyers, travelers, curious people, and friends we did not know were friends yet came here. Some stayed for a few hours, others for several days, and these houses became their homes too.
There are also those who have never made it up this mountain: people who have bought our coffee, roasted it, brewed it, served it, or shared it somewhere far from here. People who have followed our adventures, our good ideas, and probably some not-so-good ones. When the fire came, many of you showed up again. You called, you wrote, you asked how you could help, you bought our coffee, reached out, and helped us get back on our feet and keep moving forward. You stayed close even from thousands of miles away.
That is how we came to understand that Tío Conejo was never just a farm, a few houses, or hectares planted with coffee. Tío Conejo became all the people who came, and all those who keep coming. Today, in one of those turns life sometimes takes, we are the ones who need to knock on the door.
It is not easy to ask for support from the people who care about us, but repairing and rebuilding our beloved houses will cost around $30,000. Repairing roofs, tiles, ceilings, walls, beams, and columns requires love, dedication, knowledge, and also a lot of money. We know how lucky we were, and we know that other people and communities suffered far more than we did. We still have our farm, we still have our houses, and most importantly, we still have each other. Tomorrow morning, someone will surely get up to make coffee, pick cherries, or fertilize the trees. Life on the farm goes on, but we also have to rebuild our homes.
Ways to help:
- Buy our green coffee. If you are a roaster or green coffee buyer, continuing to work with our coffees is a very meaningful way to support us.
- Buy our roasted coffee. Every bag helps us keep working and put our own resources toward rebuilding.
- Contribute to this GoFundMe. Every contribution will go directly toward repairing and reinforcing our homes.
- Share this story. Help us reach others who know Tío Conejo or who simply might want to lend a hand.
However you choose to help, we will be deeply grateful. Even though the mountains shook, coffee stayed alive at Tío Conejo. We are still here, alive and happy.
Let’s protect the houses that protected us for so long.
With love and gratitude, The Tío Conejo family, Manizales, Colombia