Life’s best moments often seem to be tucked deep inside the ordinary ho-hum minutes of our days. On Tuesday, the boys and I gave our turtle Popcorn a bath. His name alone makes me smile- one day Ben went out looking for some popcorn (which he couldn’t find anywhere in town) and came back with a turtle. Popcorn’s bath was a simple thing- but to see that turtle’s joy at the vast amount of water before him kind of made my week. That’s strange, I know, but lately I’m realizing it’s all about the little things. Laughing with a friend in the gym, watching an epic rainy season storm roll in, taking a long walk on one of our coffee producing hills, giving myself permission to listen to Christmas music in October… and greeting farmers like Spes.
Spes is one of the first woman coffee farmers I connected with back in 2013 and I love seeing her every coffee season. Greeting her, finding out about how her five children are, talking to her about the future- there is something familial and joyous about seeing the same farmers harvest after harvest. Spes has a small number of trees, only 500, and she’s one of the farmers whose land we have been rejuvinating with new coffee trees.
With new trees comes great responsibility- farmers have to agree to being trained in mulching, fertilizing and pruning practices in order to recieve trees from our nursery. Before the nursery project began our farmers were averageing just 400 grams of coffee cherries per tree and now the average in the hills around our station is 1 kilogram. It’s training alone that has made that difference. We hope, one day, that our farmers will be gleaning 3 kilograms per tree. One day.
Ok, we do get pretty geeky about the coffee trees around here- but seeing transformation is really what this is all about for us.
Follow our #fridayfarmers hashtag on Instagram to see more!