Zona Cafeteria

The view from our cozy, country hostel.

Here is the shortened, abbreviated, devoid of facts history of coffee. The stories generally involve either a boy in Ethiopia sometime in the pre-1000's finding a herd of goats full of more vigor than normal, putting two and two together (plant + goat = BAM = coffee) and voila, we have a future 21st century success story. Or, the other story goes that instead of a boy, it was a man. But anytime you take the discovery of something so general, you tend to get the Hiriam Bingham Boy syndrome. Coffee was probably discovered before (or after) one of these events and by a multitude of people independently, but alas, we like a good (or at least personal) story, which is probably why the boy story tends to precede the story of the man and why Wikipedia says that the stories don't appear in writing until sometime in the 16th century, giving more credence to the view they are simply a stories.
What does seem to have some truth or at least general acceptance--which passes for truth more often than not--is that the origins of the coffee plant are in the vicinity of present-day Ethiopia. You might even be able to extend that grossly large zone to the horn of Africa (making it grossly larger and more inaccurate, though the inaccuracies of just Ethiopia as the primer growth zone might be inaccurate in of itself), but since this is really devoid of facts anyways, that would probably be just fine. More importantly than the above is that coffee does seem to have first been roasted, then mixed with water and drank somewhere in Arabia and the first coffee shops probably somewhere in Turkey (Starbucks thanks you, I do too, but Seattle, you're--as a friend of mine might say--on my shit-on-your-counter-list). Globalization, trade, colonization and deliciousness eventually spread this dark little bean across the world entering into the beloved Colombian (read: South American agrarian) culture somewhere in the 1700's.

Celebrating Spencie´s birthday with a ¨Feliz Cumpleaños¨-marked Aguila. (Though I do not recommend this beer. Colombia´s other two beers and the ever-popular, easily available Budweiser, are much more tasty.

Which brings us to our current situation, Colombian coffee in the Zona Cafeteria. Colombian coffee has done marketing wonders. The man, the donkey, the legend: Juan Valdez has to be one of the most recognizable symbols of the coffee bean in the world. He brought a pre-Starbuckian world into its coffee-own, paving the way for the future uber.com/consumption of the late 90's and continuing through the 2000's. Which makes it no surprise that a) we decided to visit the coffee region of a country famous for it's coffee (the second most famous exported crop-derivative in Colombia, in fact) and b) that we toured a coffee plantation. (1)

(1) c would be that we also went to a small, organic family farm instead of a large, industrial chemicalized farm, but it didnt really fit into the context of my a, b, c's.

The following is what we saw, slurped and sort-of understood from our guia de cafe.

This is a banana tree. Apparently banana trees are (at least for an organic farm) immeasurably helpful for a coffee farm. They provided shade from the sun, food for the farmers and help to replish the soil of some of its nutrients. Our guide informed us most coffee farms utilize banana trees. He listed off a few alternatives, but none contained all three of the benefits which banana trees supply.

Free coffee at the end of our tour of Don Elias. They were incredible cups of joe, fresh, straight out of the roaster, and completely organic. Our only complaint, they were drip-coffee strong in an espresso-sized body. We could have used a tad more coffee considering they had plenty at their beckon.

Our guide grinding our just-off-the-oven coffee beans. This farm is part of a collective, which means they don´t have their own industrial-sized drying, roasting or grinding facilities. They simply sell their first crop of the year to the collective (they harvest twice a year) and keep the second harvesting for themselves to drink (our guide says he has 6-7 cups a day) and sell to tourist at completely bloated rates (us, for example). They sell the coffee beans to the collective shucked from their shells, but still wet.

Since they aren´t distributing massive amounts of roasted coffee, they simply roast the beans ov´r an open fire, in a pot. Our guide said they simply layer the bottom of the pot, put a cover on it and roast them for an hour. Listo, ready to grind and swill away.

This is their grinder. Not exactly Starbucks-like, but efficiently hand cranked and owning to an exponentially more tasty coffee.
This is their drying tent. The beans on the ground are almost dry. The guide said if it is warm that it only takes about a few days to dry the beans, but if it is damp and cold (which if our visit is any indicator, is about 85% of the time) it could take upwards of eight days. Not exactly the Juan Valdez method of coffee production, but a nice family farm with great organic coffee.
Beans. Dried, but not roasted.
I believe the english name for this is hopper. It takes the unshucked coffee beans, then shucks them. The beans then have to sit in water for no more than 24 hours, for reasons which were un-understandeable to me.

Part of the Beth Takes Pictures of All South American Dogs That Are Cute Series. I think this is number 342, a conservative guess.
Who knew, apparently coffee plants have flowers too. It´s the romantic coming out in the coffee plant.
Unripened coffee beans on the plant. When they are ripe they turn bright orange and red, at which point they are harvested.


Quick rundown of plants. This farm utilizes two types of plants: the Arabic strain and the Colombian strain (which must be some derivative of the Arabic strain since that is where the plant originated, but I digress). Our guide said the Arabic strain produces for 20 years while the Colombian strain produces for only 10 years. However, all-else-being-equal the Colombian plant is supposedly much more resistent to plagues, disesase, etc. Thus the diversifying of the plants within the farm. Once those times are reached, the farm can cut the plants off (like pruning roses) and grow them anew for another 10 years and 7 years, respectively. At the ending of these periods, the plants go through menopause and are no longer...fertile.

More beans.
And, lastly, me, walking through the coffee farm. Because what good post wouldn´t have a picture of me with a dumb face on...