Soil first, in the highlands above Boquete
Black Moon Farm sits in Alto Quiel, above Boquete, in Panama's Chiriquí province, at roughly 1,700–1,780 metres above sea level. It is run by Hunter Tedman, who took on a former intensive vegetable farm with tired soil and has been rebuilding it, since 2018, into a coffee farm organised around soil health. That starting point matters because it gives the farm a clear operating logic: soil before yield, system before single harvest. Black Moon is not a long-established estate trading on reputation; it is a working farm being rebuilt from the ground.
From vegetable farm to coffee ecosystem
The land had been farmed intensively for vegetables, which left the soil depleted. Tedman treats the soil as the farm's primary asset rather than the surface a crop sits on. Coffee was first planted in 2018, alongside around four thousand other trees — native species and fruit such as avocado and citrus — to build a canopy and move the farm towards a biodiverse food forest, where coffee grows as part of a working ecology rather than in cleared rows.
Black Moon's working logic is plain: rebuild soil fertility, increase biological life, and improve the conditions under which coffee grows. Drawing carbon down and returning it to the soil is one of the farm's stated aims, but the practical point is the chain it sets up. Better soil can support healthier plants; healthier plants ripen fruit more evenly; and more even ripening gives a stronger basis for quality. The trade-off is patience — progress is slower this way, and practices that might raise yield or speed at the soil's expense are left out.
From vegetable farm to coffee ecosystem
The land had been farmed intensively for vegetables, which left the soil depleted. Tedman treats the soil as the farm's primary asset rather than the surface a crop sits on. Coffee was first planted in 2018, alongside around four thousand other trees — native species and fruit such as avocado and citrus — to build a canopy and move the farm towards a biodiverse food forest, where coffee grows as part of a working ecology rather than in cleared rows.
Black Moon's working logic is plain: rebuild soil fertility, increase biological life, and improve the conditions under which coffee grows. Drawing carbon down and returning it to the soil is one of the farm's stated aims, but the practical point is the chain it sets up. Better soil can support healthier plants; healthier plants ripen fruit more evenly; and more even ripening gives a stronger basis for quality. The trade-off is patience — progress is slower this way, and practices that might raise yield or speed at the soil's expense are left out.
The growing environment
Alto Quiel's microclimate does real work. The area is cool and often misty, conditions that can slow the rate at which cherries ripen. Slower ripening gives fruit more time to develop sugars and aromatic precursors, which can support cups with clearer structure. Black Moon pairs this with timing, harvesting in the drier part of the year to concentrate the fruit and keep drying more controllable. That matters because quality built on the tree can still be lost after picking; steadier drying conditions help preserve detail and keep lots consistent.
Hunter Tedman's role
Tedman holds the system together. His contribution is operating discipline more than origin story: how the farm is structured, how closely it is recorded, and a willingness to work on long timelines. He is also active in Panama's specialty coffee scene and sits on the board of the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama, close to the conversations about how quality is judged in competition. The point for a reader is method: Black Moon is run by someone who treats coffee as a system to document and improve, not a single good season to repeat.
Varieties and genetic direction
Panama is best known for Geisha, and Black Moon grows it: the farm presents its trees as Green Tip lineage connected to Costa Rican stock from the late 1960s. The stronger point, though, is not the lineage but the intent behind it — preserving a clear variety identity while deliberately expanding beyond Geisha. The farm's best-known coffee is Chiroso, an Ethiopian-linked landrace that gained wider attention through Colombia. Black Moon has taken it to the top of the market: its Chiroso "Constellation" placed first in the Varietals category at Best of Panama 2024 with a score of 94.13, and sold at auction for $1,630 per kilogram — the first non-Geisha to pass $1,000/kg in that category. Pink Bourbon, Wush Wush, Sudan Rume and Mokha round out the planting. The pattern is a range of high-aromatic varieties chosen to show detail under a soil-first system, rather than reliance on one famous name.
Processing and documentation
Where many farms record little beyond "washed", "natural" or "honey", Black Moon documents each lot closely: harvest date, fermentation method and length, drying environment and duration, resting time and storage. A recurring feature of recent harvests is dark-room drying — enclosed drying over long, controlled periods, used to stabilise aromatics and reduce variability. This is process control rather than novelty: recording variables consistently is what lets a farm compare seasons and improve on purpose rather than by instinct. The records run as far as the moon phase at harvest — a detail that matters less in itself than as a measure of how much the farm writes down. Documentation here is part of the quality system, not a layer on top of it.
The farm also takes a clear position on where flavour should come from. Across specialty coffee there is ongoing debate about "altered" coffees, where flavour seems to come from added cues rather than from variety, place and fermentation. Black Moon appears to be taking a different position: that the flavour in the cup should be traceable to genetics, environment, biology and process. It reads as a preference for coffee that can be explained by its own system, not a judgement on how others work.
"Documentation is a quality tool, not a marketing prop."
Why this matters
Black Moon Farm is worth understanding because it makes its own coffee easier to understand. For Glass, the appeal is that Black Moon makes more of its system visible: place, elevation, variety, harvest timing, fermentation, drying environment and rest. These details do not replace tasting. They give the cup a clearer context. The coffee is not presented as a mystery or a story alone, but as the result of decisions that can be followed from soil to processing.
