Journal

When the estate was taken back on, the soil in the old coffee plots was compacted and low in organic matter. Planting cocoa straight away would have meant losing both the plants and the years. Work began with what cannot be seen: composting the estate's own biomass, sowing leguminous fertiliser plants and keeping the ground permanently covered. Only then came the shade trees, and only after them the cocoa and coffee. Soil organic matter figures are not yet measured under a verifiable method. They will appear on the impact panel once there is a dated baseline and third-party verification.

Between June and September the wind shifts and the rain stops. It is called the gravana. At the estate's altitude the air turns dry and cool, with low mist in the morning and steady sun after ten. For a European visitor it is counter-intuitive: the best walking weather in São Tomé is not the European summer on the coast, it is the gravana inland. Trails dry out, stream beds drop and birds are more active in the early hours. Christmas and early January bring a second, shorter dry window.