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Marvin Pérez and his nephew Freyder milk their cows every morning to make cheese, butter and cream.

Marlon Villarreyna and his family pick coffee cherries.

Coffee beans are washed in a stone trough.

Two coffee growers wash their beans and separate them for quality.

As the parchment separates from the coffee, he picks it up by the bowlful and pours it out slowly, letting the wind carry the parchment away.

Since late 2012, an epidemic of coffee rust, a plant fungus has ravaged Central America's coffee crop. While many news articles focus on how this problem will affect the first world’s caffeine addiction, it is the vulnerable growers who are truly at risk. I traveled twice to El Sontule, a small, rural, coffee growing community in the mountains of northern Nicaragua and spent time with the Pérez Villarreynas, a family who grow organic, shade coffee, to understand what it's like to grow coffee in Nicaragua and how the rust is affecting them.