Working on Community Time: Coffee Harvest Season!

Sometimes field visits move at the pace of the community. When we arrive to give workshops and check up on projects like the home gardens, families also have other things going on in their lives and work. I think it’s important to tailor the visits to what is going on in the community and their lives.

For the last few months, it has been the busiest time of the year for rural families— coffee harvest season! The plants are brimming with bright red berries. Families wake up very earlier and spend hours harvesting coffee cherries. If they don’t harvest them while they are ripe, they can rot. This is a loss of their hard work in growing good, productive coffee plants and an economic loss for what they can earn from selling them.

Harvesting coffee with Marco

We arrived to continue building a water tank which will help the community have a water source during the approaching dry season. However, the family we were visiting was also eager to harvest their coffee plants which were bursting with red cherries. While the team resolved some problems with the materials needed for the water tank, I got to work harvesting coffee with the family. Each of us had a small bucket strapped across our shoulder to collect the coffee cherries. When we filled it up, we dumped it into a big sack which they would then carry down to their house to be de-pulped. Since the family and other community members were there, we spent the time chatting and it went by quickly. However, after a few hours of coffee picking I was tired!

The process of de-pulping, fermenting, and washing the coffee beans, done in local homes

Then we went down to their house to see how they de-pulp the coffee cherries. Through this manual de-pulping machine they separate the red, fleshy cherry from the interior coffee bean. Then the coffee bean ferments with its mucilage (a sticky covering) for a day. Then they wash the sticky mucilage off. That's what my friend Nico is doing with his feet. I would add buckets of water as he washed off the sticky exterior covering and we drained the water out. What's left is just the coffee bean which is laid out on their patios or rooftops to dry.

Coffee out to dry and curious animals nearby

The next day we got to work on an agroecology workshop about the projects for the year. There are some exciting projects! They will be constructing compost toilets and fuel-efficient stoves in the homes of many community members. Compost toilets will help community members save more water during the dry season. The fuel-efficient stoves will help families use less wood and will produce less smoke in the homes. The participants were eager to start the projects, especially the compost toilets to get them done before the drought!

Then we made mountain microorganisms which the women will use in their patio gardens. As always, everyone of all ages pitched in and got their hands dirty.

Reproducing mountain microorganisms for gardens

In the picture above, there is the recipe for the mountain microorganisms posted on the wall. The other pictures show how we collected microorganisms from the forrest-- it's the white mycelium that you want to collect! It's full of beneficial organisms that improve the quality of the soil and the growth of your plants and crops. Then we reproduce it by adding the food it likes-- a carbohydrate like bran (salvado) and a sugar like molasses. After a few weeks, the microorganisms will reproduce and can be added to the soil. This is a common practice in agroecology :)

There was a lot going on in the community during these days. Besides harvesting coffee, the families were also preparing for a casamiento or wedding. The kitchen was full of people, conversation, and hot tortillas. The heat from the hotplate and wood stove warmed up the house on this chilly morning in the mountains. There was a giant pig in the patio that would be the wedding meal the next day. Everyone was busy preparing food and getting arrangements ready. We ate a lot of delicious food. Below you can see the beans we ate with sautéed greens from the garden. They also make tortillas called tostadas by grinding up both corn and beans together. Since these tortillas have beans in the dough, they have a different taste and texture. They often take a bunch of these when they go to work in the fields because they are nutritious and easy to carry.

Tostadas and a meal of beans and fresh greens

A participant from the community also gave us a snack of dandelions one day. She brought us salt to dip them in. Apparently the whole plant is edible and has lots of nutritional benefits. They tasted fresh and since I like salads and raw vegetables I ate a bunch of them.

Dandelion stems snack

While the agroecological technicians arrive to teach the communities helpful practices such as reproducing the mountain microorganisms to improve soil quality, the community also teaches us about many practices and traditions that we have lost in urban life. We learn about the values of living in community and the knowledge of rural life (such as the different non-traditional foods we can eat, like dandelions). During our visits to communities, I have the double benefit of learning sustainable practices from the organization's agroecological technicians and local practices from the hospitable and welcoming community members who receive us.