Guate travels: Juan

One of the days that we went to Alberto's field he took us to his son Juan's farm to meet his family. They were great and their coffee trees were very well maintained.

Due to the height difference of the trees and Juan's family who picks the cherries. The first picture shows how they work around this issue. They use a rope tied to the tree and pull is down with a hook tied to a stump on the ground. That enables them to get the cherries at the very top of the tree.

The next picture is Juan picking some of his great coffee. And the third picture is of his wife.

Their work is a whole family affair, Juan's daughters, wife, and Father (Alberto) all work the fields to produce the wonderful coffee that makes up La Armonia Hermosa.

El Salvador: Casa de la Tia Nena

During our trip to Guatemala, we came in contact with Rodolfo, a finca owner in El Salvador close to Santa Ana who is part of the organization called Casa de la Tia Nena. He requested that we come down to visit his family's finca (camp). It was a great experience as we learned the coffee processes in El Salvador. Their farm/beneficio is much larger than the one we work with in Santa Maria. Rodolfo is incredibly hospitable and very willing to show us around. We learned a lot from both him and his land. Here are a few pictures from our trip...

The first image is of unripe coffee drying (with the cherries still on the bean) on the patio of Rodolfo's brother-in-law. When they sort the ripe coffee cherries from the unripe coffee, they keep the unripe cherries to use for themselves and dry them on patios around their land.

The second image is of a coffee tree nursery. Notice how good these seedlings look.

The third image is of the bags of coffee cherries that the pickers picked. Imagine carrying one of those on your back up a huge hill!







The fourth image is of Rodolfo weighing the bags of cherries that have been picked by his pickers. When Rodolfo took us around his land he had us walk up the mountains like the pickers do. We, however, didn't have 100 lbs of coffee strapped to our backs. The agility, strength, and determination of these pickers are incredible. I'm fairly in shape, and I was huffing, puffing and falling all over the place.

The fourth image is of their beneficio (wet mill). This is a large scale beneficio. The one we are constructing in Santa Maria will not be this large.










The fifth image is of Rodolfo giving Les some green samples of his coffee (these beans are not roasted) to take back for Vienna Coffee to sample roast. Notice in the background that they have a large warehouse full of coffee ready to be shipped to different roasters around the country.

Like I mentioned before, the trip was very informative. We hope to continue the relationship with Rodolfo, and see if we can help each other in the future.

John in Guatemala

John made his way from Atlanta to Guatemala city this past week in preparation to take an "origin" tour of different beneficios (coffee mills) and fincas around Guatemala with the Roaster's Guild.

Before his official tour John spent the weekend with Les, Jamie and the farmers of Santa Maria de Jesus. These are pictures of John depulping 250 pounds of coffee! Now that's a lot of coffee!

In the first picture Julio, Les and John are picking out the green (unripe) cherries before they go through the depulper. These exact beans were picked by some new farmers who have decided to join the co-op. We are excited to have them because they had some of the best picked coffee we've seen. "Solo rojo."

The second picture is of John actually cranking the depulper. The cherries go from the top and get squished along the copper grate which pushes the beans out of the cherry pulp. This is some tiring work. The stuff coming out at the bottom of the depulper is only the pulp that is later composted back into the soil.

The third picture is the beans coming out of the depulper. There are a few of the cherries left with the beans, but those will be sorted out in the washing process.

More updates from the field coming soon...

Beneficio in Santa Maria

Les had a great meeting with the farmers this week. They have created a contract for the land that the beneficio (wet mill) will be constructed on. Because of the demand during picking season, construction will not start this season. Things move quite slow here in Guatemala, but it looks like construction might start in April! This is great news!

Just yesterday Julio and his nephew received and processed more than 18 Quintales of coffee cherries from various farmers within the coop. That's a lot of coffee cherries to process on his small depulpper. Therefore the idea of having a beneficio with a larger depulper and drying patio is a great idea for efficiency, and it will allow for more of the farmers to get more involved in the processing of their own coffee.

This is a video of the land that will have the beneficio on it...

Photos of Alberto's land

As mentioned before, here are some pictures from Alberto's field. The first image is of the coffee cherries from one of Alberto's trees. They are almost ready for their first picking!

The second picture is of Alberto on the left, Julio (the main contact and organizer of the cooperative) in the middle and his son Melvin on the right.

The third image is of a coffee cherry with the two coffee beans that are found inside of each cherry. The beans are covered in a sweet tasting mucilage (the tan color). This mucilage is what ferments after the cherries have been depulped (depulping is what I did manually to show the beans inside. It is basically just taking off the outside ruby red flesh). From there the bean (with the mucilage on it still), is set out on drying racks and the mucilage turns into paper-thin parchment (this phase is called pergamino). I will show more of the phases later.

And the fourth image is of the coffee bean flowers. Before there are cherries, these white flowers form on the branches. Once these are pollinated then they will turn into the beautiful coffee cherries. The cherries start out as green to yellow to orange to light red to ruby red. If you don't pick it early enough they kind of turn a reddish brown color. All of these pictures were taken at the same time. Therefore, as you can tell there has to be multiple pickings of ripe cherries because some of the cherries are ready to be picked while others are still in their flower form.

More to come later...

Guate travels: Alberto

Jamie and Les left the freezing USA last Monday to go to the deliciously warm Antigua, Guatemala to work with and visit the coffee farmers of Santa Maria de Jesus. To their great happiness, their first week in beautiful Guate was great consisting of farm visits, shared meals, and many meetings.

Here is a snippet of one of their trips to Santa Maria de Jesus...
"After catching a ride on the back of a local's truck and taking the long hike down from the village onto the farmland, we came to Alberto's land where the harvest is looking great. (photos will come shortly). He has shade trees full of avocados, lemons, Kumquats, bananas, pacaya and many other delicious treats. His coffee trees are full and plump with beautiful coffee cherries ready for the picking. Alberto, a masterful farmer, has a great selection of different varieties of coffee which helps if a coffee blight takes over one of the varietals. You can tell Alberto has such great passion for his crops not only by his enthusiasm when showing off his land and the twinkle in his eye, but also the health of all of his trees and plants. BEA-U-TI-FUL!"

The picture is of Volcan Agua (the Volcano Santa Maria de Jesus is located on)

Please check back in the near future for more about Les and Jamie's trip and pictures.