Gautemala Day Five: Coffee Picking & Dry Mills

Today was our day to get out into the fields and pick some coffee! Edwin Jr (Eddie) started about by fitting us with our coffee picking baskets.

But like Edwin warned us the Guatemalan lifestyle is all about flexibility so we had a welcomed distraction from our itinerary. The current farm manager Diego and his family treated us to some morning coffee his style. It’s kind of like their version of cowboy coffee: he starts with green beans right off the drying patio, roasts it on his stove, grinds it and brews it all within a matter of minutes. Talk about fresh!

And yummy! I think Lindsay would’ve left out the sugar but she still enjoyed it.

From there we headed up the hillside to get our coffee picking on. After a quick intro to coffee picking to make sure we didn’t ravage the trees, Edwin lined us up in rows and gave us about 10 minutes.

I totally would’ve won if I hadn’t of dropped my basket, and had a better tree, and…gone faster, ok I wasn’t very good. Klaus was a master! I think he’d done it before, the cherries were practically flinging themselves at his basket. Anyhoo Victrola had a good showing with half basket in 10 minutes! Go team!

After another filling lunch it was time to say goodbye to the Finca and head back to downtown Huehuetenango. I’m going to miss the people so much they were incredibly warm and welcoming not to mention the kids are the cutest ever.

This is one of the ninas tagging along with her mom (They were getting coffee from a tree in front of their house)

After saying our goodbyes, we headed to the Cofeco Dry Mill where all the washed/dryed coffee at Finca Vista Hermosa is sent to remove the dry parchment layer and get it ready to export.

Here Edwin is describing how each lot is designated. The whole place looks like a sea of coffee bags when you first walk in. It pumps through millions of pounds of coffee, it was a pretty gargantuan operation. We saw the entire process of hulling the coffee, sorting different bean sizes and grades and finally bagging them.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures of the inside because it’s super dusty and can totally gum up your camera.

To end out the day we made a stop at the Zaculeu ruins which were beautiful and were able to catch an amazing sunset.

Pictured: Lindsay, Mike, Mark (me), and Perry

Guatemala Day Four: A Four Hour “Walk”

There’s nothing like watching the sun creep into the valley every morning, it’s too bad we can only be here to see it twice!

On our second day on the finca Edwin Sr decided it was a good time to give us an extended tour of the farm which included seeing the old wet mill and homestead among other sites. It was quite a “brisk” tour heading from site to site with not a lot of breaks for photos and well…breathing. Imagine trailing behind the guy on man vs wild but with stopping to look at coffee bushes every once in a while. The old wet mill was very cool much like stumbling into some ancient ruins, after pushing through shrubs and trees you hit a massive cement structure jutting out of the hillside and totally overrun by foliage.

The Old Wet Mill

We got a little insight into where the farm started and what it was like back when his father was running things. They had to drag all the processed coffee uphill quite a ways to get to a drying patio. He recounted one renowned farm manager who could purportedly haul two hundred pounds of processed coffee (yikes!) uphill to the drying patio. We saw the old homestead, some other waterways as well as few churches and a cemetery. It was very hard to distinguish between what was Finca Vista Hermosa and what was another plot because the boundary lines aren’t symmetrical but weave through the hillside. There were a few times we didn’t realize we were actually walking through someones backyard (oops!) its that tightly knit. You really get a sense of community though because everyone we encountered knew Edwin and was very welcoming.

Pictured: Caturra (left) vs Maragogype (right)

We were able to see the different varietals of coffee they grow there. They have Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuai varietals that they cultivate although we did see some Maragogype also. Maragogype (cherry pictured above) produces massive beans compared to the other three varietals and is a very large tree. I wasn’t able to get pictures of each kind like I was hoping but it was good to hear their take on each coming from the farmer’s perspective. Edwin explained why they have a high percentage of Bourbon on their farm while other producers are choosing to plant Caturra. He said it did take much less time for Caturra to produce and they also have very plentiful crops, but will stop producing by the sixth year. Bourbon on the other hand takes up to seven years to start producing but can continue indefinitely. We saw a few Bourbon plants that Edwin estimated at 50-60 years old based on the size of their base. The third, Catuai, was a cross of Mundo Novo and Caturra which gives it similar characteristics as the Caturra. Ripe Bourbon cherries are bright yellow while Caturra are a rich red. Check out a comparison at Sweet Marias: http://www.sweetmarias.com/Kona-2004/Kona-2004-Pages/Image2.html.

The hike was a little more lengthy than any of us really expected so we all took a bit of a time out. The perfect end to a long hike like this is definitely some hammock time! I decided to skip out on the sheep pen and coffee tree nursery to take an extended siesta.

That night around dinner we got a full dose of Edwin Sr humor. It’s really hard to describe how he gets you to laugh. It’s like a mix of incredibly dry, dead pan delivery that totally takes you off guard, followed up by him laughing so hard, so then you start laughing and the whole thing is hilarious. We had a great time.

Guatemala Day Three: A La Finca!

We had a quick stop at a local market in the morning then it was off to the Finca! (Thats “farm” in spanish) We had a good 2 hour drive from HueHue into the countryside. The final ascent was breathtaking. Although Finca Vista Hermosa does take up a good portion of land, it’s nestled among many other farms on the same hillside. Much of the coffee is shade grown so the terrain is spotted with tall trees mixed in with the coffee shrubs.

After unpacking, Perry, Ben and I immediately ran over and checked out the coffee trees, yup the cherries taste like sweet green pepper.

Eddie didn’t waste any time and got right into explaining how their wet mill works. We were able to watch the entire process, from the workers dropping the beans off fresh from harvest, separating the ripe from unripe, depulping, fermenting, washing and drying them on the patio.

The whole thing was quite fascinating. The workers are paid according to how many ¨boxes¨they can fill. The beans are then dropped into a massive holding tank where the ripe and unripe cherries are allowed to separate. (The unripe float).

After some lengthy soaking the ripe cherries are pumped through the “depulpador¨ which removes the cherry and funnels them into fermentation tanks or “pilas”. Fermentation serves to remove the slimy mucilage left over by the cherry before washing. After they stew a bit in fermentation their pumped through channels where they’re agitated back and forth by paddles in running water, this gets rid of any left over mucilage. Finally they’re spread on one of their large drying patios.

We took a small tour of some fields close by then ended out the day with a good ol coffee “hullin” competition. Eddie had some green coffee samples that still needed the parchement removed, so we took a good hour and hand hulled em all for him, it was a lot of fun

Guatemala Day Two: Anacafe & Off to HueHue

 

Our second day started with a presentation by William Hempstead the president of Anacafe on the Guatemalan coffee industry. We were met by none other than Klaus Thompson & Mads Lykke Hogsted from Copenhagen (I was a bit star-struck to say the least) as well as Ryan Brown of Ritual and Ben Keminski of Barismo. It was a great introduction to everything to do with Guatemalan coffee as well as what they were doing to better the quality of their export and get more support for their producers.

There was a great emphasis on connecting the individual producers with individual consumers on a global scale. They’ve been working with the Google Earth to offer a way for people to zoom in on individual lots and see specs on what coffee is grown and by who. It’s really an intriguing idea.

Ryan and Ben had been meeting with local exporters leading up to this meeting and shared their experience of having difficulty sourcing individual producers. Most of the coffees exporters shared  were mixed lots making the task of focusing in on individual producers seemingly impossible. There’s definitely a lot of work ahead for us specialty coffee people although what Anacafe is doing with raising quality standards and catering to the specialty coffee market is very encouraging. It’s a tough job finding high quality coffees for small scale operations. Hopefully the projects they’re working on now will help us connect with more producers and give a framework for other countries to network small scale production with small scale buying.

They sent us off with a bag of goodies and we got a wrap up tour of the rest of the building which is quite beautiful. They have soil and “vegetal protection” labs in the building as well as an expansive cupping facility.

We headed off on our six hour drive to Huehuetenango where we’d stay the night in the main city before heading up to the Finca (an extra two our drive out into the countryside). That night we had a glorious Guatemalan meal with a massive spread of veggies,rice and chicken soup. Yum!

Guatemala Day One: Arrival in Guatemala

After staying up till 2am watching Sunshine & No Country For Old Men, 7am sure did come quick. We had just enough time to run into 15^th location to grab some coffee from the V1 crew who were all smiles and we were off! Along with me was Perry our head roaster as well as Mike & Lindsay who work in wholesale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hit Guatemala city and wow, has it grown up! The last time I was there was in ‘97 (for a mission trip) and the airport was pretty much a glorified barn Now it’s a massive sprawling complex, very upscale and clean. Edwin Martinez Jr (Eddie), who runs Finca Vista Hermosa with his father, greeted us and took us to his grandparents house in Guatemala City to stay the night.

 

Dead Portafilters = Money

So I was doing a bit of excavation at the cafe on 15th and found this:

wow like 20 dead portafilters…thanks for holding on to these guys.

So what do you do with 20 dead portafilters?   So many possibilities: Authentic Victrola Art Sculpture? Super ugly paper weights? Well if I ever need to sink a body to the bottom of Puget Sound….yeah anyways…luckily Mark from Synesso saved me from doing something too newsworthy by recommending Pacific Iron & Metal down in SODO.  Apparently the brass is worth something to scrap metal companies so I ran down and got a woppin’ $18 bucks for the lot of em   Yeah it’s not much but it’s like getting paid to recycle, which is cool.  So don’t trash your brass!

The Sale of Victrola Coffee

So I got asked some questions today by the Seattle PI so I’m bettin word will be out soon anyways. If you haven’t picked up the rumors yet Jen & Chris the owners of Victrola Coffee have been in negotiations for the sale of the company for quite some time. We had an all staff meeting about a month ago, where we actually got to meet the new owner Dan Ollis of Whidbey Coffee. That’s right our baby has been handed over…well kind of. The meeting stayed quite positive although emotions, understandably, ran high.

Dan was to my relief a pretty likeable guy, middle-aged, good sense of humor and approachable, not what you’d expect from someone who runs a 14+ cafe operation.

We had all the usual questions ranging from “Are we getting blenders?” to “Why are Jen & Chris leaving?” but the bottom was clear: what are you going to do with our baby? Dan’s resounding message was that he loved Victrola and what we’re doing here. He wanted us to keep doing what we’re doing. Well of course the proof is in the pudding, a lot of companies have heard the same message before being handed coffee bean hats and a headset but we’ll see aboy that.

So so far I’ve had a month and whats come of it? Well first off no ones leaving In fact Dans been working very closely with our management team, running any possible changes by them and making sure nothing’s going to upset the feel of what Victrola is as a company. At 15th we’re getting an new ice machine & a new POS system I’ve had a chance to meet with Dan a few times about training & management and I really appreciate his style. He’s very hands off, letting us have ownership while adding little business sense to make sure things are grounded in the bigger picture.

Oh yeah and I’m going to Guatemala! March 13th I’m going to HueHue it’s like a total dream for me. That was one thing Dan was adamant about and it’s gonna happen! 16 days & counting

So what about Jen & Chris? Well they’re not leaving at least for a while. Chris said he wanted to focus in on the roastery, which has been a desire of his for a while but has been too busy working on the rest of what goes on in the business. Jen of course has a little baby boy who likes to take up all her time so that’s what she’ll be doing.

Stuff like this takes a while to settle in but I’m really encouraged by the team we have and I think the added support from Whidbey could really push old Vickles to the next level.

A couple beauties from last week

^^Yeah yeah symmetry, it’s purdy darn it!

A brief flicker of hope in my war with nonfat:

Caffeinating Democracy: Caucus 2008 At Victrola!

So last Saturday was definitely one of the greatest times I’ve had at Vickles. We caucused the 43rd District, (1870 precinct that is). Our Caucus covered like 7 blocks or something but we ended up packing like 150 people into the cafe, it was sweet. The whole thing was rather civil considering the tight quarters and general lack of organization. Our good Vickie loyalist John ran the show which basically meant he’d jump on a chair every five minutes to tell everyone that they needed to vote on the other pamphlet because they needed to switch the vote thing so the delegate people could….yeah I had no idea what was going on…but it was fun! and we made a lot of coffee Nothing like caffeinating democracy to make ya feel all warm & fuzzy!

I gotta say though it was really inspiring. I don’t care if it sounds cheesy but seeing all those people mob the place and work together and be so positive about it, it just really gave me that sense of hope ya know, that there’s still people out there who care, who want to help bring change.

Later

Oh yeah and of course Obama won 6 to 2

See More Photos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/32649908@N00/