Got Coffee?

Tags

coffee beans, coffee cherries, how coffee is grown, how coffee is processed, jama ecuador, roasting coffee and cacao, rural life in coastal ecuador

Coffee Anyone?

Many farm houses have living quarters on the second floor and an open area at ground level.

Manabi Ecuador

Last week after the coffee-picking trek, my friends and I stopped by a  farmhouse on the way back to Jama.   Enjoy the photos while listening to Frizztext’s updated version of “Calling Mississippi.”

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As in the last post, these images of Ecuador’s rural farmlife remind me of my childhood years in the Mississippi Delta.

Artfully hung, the corn dries beneath the house.

Brittany, a natural guide, greeted us and showed us around the grounds!

Cacao seeds are dried in the sun in several stages.

I was pleased to see that I could still call a turkey! This one approached then ruffled his feathers and probably called me a trickster!

The tall bamboo is called, ‘canya,” and is a versatile building material.

Just down the road, we stopped at a petite little store and waited for the moto taxi.

The building reminded me of a store from my childhood, where I rode my horse onto the front porch, leaned inside and requested a lemon cookie while fishing my nickel from my pocket!

“Arturo” told us about his family. His sister lives in the house we had just visited, and his brother was the photogenic “Antonio” from the coffee farm!

Antonio

I suspect that Bobby won a few brownie points with the lovely heliconia for his wife Jody!

Cynthia and I were surprised that I captured this image as the mototaxi passed this trio on horseback!

Beautiful lovely coffee cherries! Now what does one do with a bag of coffee cherries?

Harvesting the coffee cherries required close attention to each fruit; after picking for almost two hours, we did not have a lot of cherries to show for our work! Squeezing the seeds from the fruit is not an easy task! Imagine squeezing a watermelon seed across the room. Now imagine that seed being the size of a marble with a thick grape-like skin. There’s just enough flesh between the ‘marble’ and the skin to make the seed pop out – IF the seed is ripe enough. I quickly learned that I should have left many on the plants to mature a while longer! Like watermelon seeds, many of the coffee seeds sailed out of my fingers in wild tangents!

The tough skins have to be removed…

A slippery pulp covered each seed; the shelled seeds then took a long soak in a container of water, which was changed daily. After two days, the seeds took a sunbath! (Those images are mysteriously lost!)
The seeds dried for three days under cloudy skies; next they will be roasted and ground.   There’s one minor problem:  I know nothing ’bout roasting coffee!

The skins were dried in the sun for a future artistic project.

Cacao (chocolate) can be ‘roasted’ on the stovetop; if one can make a roux without burning it, surely one can roast the coffee beans!  Yes or no?

I think I’ll do a little test!  Perhaps I’ll also try roasting the cacao!

Three stages of cacao (chocolate beans) drying on the sidewalk in Jama.

Wish me luck and stay tuned!

Z