Costa Rica Part 6

I think my favorite excursion was to the coffee farm. Phil and I went by ourselves, as the other four had taken the tour the previous day while Phil was at the dentist.

The farm as very small. The family's modest house was surrounded by a yard full of lovely flowers, which had a purpose, as we were soon to learn.

We were the first to arrive for a tour that day.  Gabriella, the farmer's young interpreter, asked if we would mind waiting for an hour until another group arrived. (The group comprised two dozen dentists from Seattle and their traveling companions.) "No problem," we said. We spent an hour that balmy spring morning enjoying the flowers and hanging out with the family's cat, who was sunning on the patio.

As soon as the dentists arrived in their posh Toyota tour bus, the farmer invited us to inspect some coffee plant seedlings in pots.  My brother-in-law, Ron, wrote the following paragraph, which nicely summarizes what the farmer told us: 

On Monday, we (Ron, Barbara, David and Simone) visited a small organic coffee farm. It was nothing like what I expected. The coffee trees, only four to eight feet high, are not arranged in rows, as in larger commercial farms, but helter-skelter on the small hills on the side of the mountain. Interspersed among them are fruit trees of every description: lemon, lime, grapefruit, mango, avocado, orange, and more. The fruit is never picked! Rather, it drops to the ground, to provide nutrients for the coffee trees, which receive no commercial fertilizer. 

There are also orchids and other flowers everywhere, in order to attract the bees that pollinate the coffee flowers. When one breaks the shell off one of these coffee beans, one can taste the honey on the bean. Large coffee producers wash off this honey through their vigorous washing system, but here, the washing is more gentle, and the honey remains on the bean, making coffee taste sweeter and more chocolate. The mix of coffee trees, fruit trees, and flowers made this yet another beautiful vista.

Ron added:

The cloud forests are changing, because of global warming, and are very fragile. Plants that are rooted in the earth can tolerate periods of little rain, but epiphytes (such as orchids) cannot survive three days without moisture. For now, this is a very, very, special place, and I am enormously grateful to have been able to be in it.

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After we had seen the coffee plants at various stages of growth, the farmer told us about the production of coffee. He took us into a small one-room cabin where his wife had lived as a child with her parents, brothers and sisters. He showed us how the beans were laboriously ground and  roasted in his grandparents' day.

Gabriella, our guide, explains how beans were roasted years ago.

We were then shown modern production methods, from harvesting, drying, roasting, and bagging.  The tour ended in in a little coffee house (which was being enlarged in compliance with government regulations). Our hosts served everyone cake and their own home-grown coffee. It was a delightful day.