Working on a Colombian coffee farm
The descent down to Finca Florida from the main road is a treacherous slip and slide cutting through the Red Bourbon and Caturra trees as high as lamp posts.
The Clouds are thick and the horizon is only as far as the neighbouring farm.
As we approach the Patchwork Roofed Farmhouse we are warmly greeted by Manuel who chaperones us down to the house. The house is crumbling on either side but has a countryside charm about the exterior.
The inside is basic, the living area is the hallway with dark brown doors lining each wall.
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We bunk up in what seems to be the warmest room. Blankets from the 60s and no pillows for the first night.
Finca Florida
Up at 5:30 to catch the first of the sunlight.
We are handed our belt strapped buckets and wellington boots then ramble down the plantation car-washed through the morning dew of the coffee trees.
“Solo Rojo” instructs Manuel, only the red cherries. Positioned like a Himalayan mountain goat straddling a washbasin we start picking the beans.
I fly out of the traps and dive straight into my first tree, seeing it as a competition.
It’s not until after thrashing around for half an hour I turn to see Manuel seemingly dancing through the trees already working on his second bucket.
The dexterity that the man possessed was amazing, a little like a guitarist playing a set of chords, he would pick only the cherries that needed picking quicker than your eye.
This was down to years of experience and probably starting work earlier than he should have done with both of his parents coffee farmers.
Life was good for Manuel though, he gets paid a good salary for a Colombian Coffee farmer and doesn't have to worry about the instability of a paid per bucket job.
He lives for free and the owner of the coffee farm pays for his sister in law, Marizela to help out in the house and cook 3 square meals a day.
2 and a half hours of picking coffee and 1 heavy bucket, I’m spent. Marizelas' shout provokes joy like the school bell. I lurch up the hill back to the patio where our first delicious meal of the day is waiting for us.
Eggs, last night's rice and crackers with a hot cup of oats, milk and panela. We often tried to predict the amount of different carbs we would get for each meal, 6 been the record.
Lunch time at the Finca
When the Sun was out, Morigacho was a spectacular place.
Nestled midway up the semicircle of a horseshoe valley the views would reach for miles encapsulating dozens of leafy green coffee fincas and small pueblitas with a movie set backdrop of snow capped mountains.
The reverse of this was today, with an altitude of 2200m Moragacho can sometimes be a cloud. As idyllic as living as high as the clouds sounds, the romanticism will quickly diminish when you’re trying to pick coffee at 6am.
Once the coffee for the day has been collected and decanted into sacks, the processing starts. Set in a building adjacent to the house is the (de-fruiter or de-pulper). It looks as though it belongs in an industrialisation museum and probably had been there for years.
Pouring the days pick into the top of the de-pulper. Learn about Cascara Tea
It functions like a huge coffee cherry grater, the cherries are poured in through a massive funnel on the roof of the building and drop through a chamber onto the rotating cylindrical grater spitting the beans into a concrete bath filled with water and the fruit discarded on the floor, which is later spread around the base of coffee trees as compost.
Once all the days cherries are collected and processed they are left to ferment for a day or so in the bath.
The water is then drained and the soaked coffee is shovelled into sacks and lugged up to the top of the building to dry on the flat roof.
Every day the coffee was raked so it would dry evenly. It could take up to 7-8 days to dry sometimes depending on the weather. Once the coffee was dry enough (you shouldn’t be able to break the bean in half with your nails) It was then put back into sacks and put into storage.
The drying process of the coffee.
The coffee is then sent to another processing plant to be hulled before being sold.
We visited the farm during one of the 2 and a half harvests of the year. So it meant that there was always an abundance of coffee to pick.
Each tree has to get harvested at least three times during each harvest as only the red berries are picked. This must feel like a never ending merry go round of coffee.
But Manuel was one of the happiest and jolliest people we met on the trip and seemed to love ‘conseguir cafe’ (collecting coffee), every morning started with a song and occasionally a skip around the patio.
Photo: Laura, owner of handmade rug shop Woven Rosa
He had mastered the art of singing to someone and maintaining eye contact without it being awkward, I don’t believe anyone in the UK possesses this skill.
Having worked on a farm in Australia I knew how labour intensive it can be so I was prepared, but I hadn’t seen how many jobs on the general upkeep of the farm there was. Picking the coffee is only half the job and there is always something to do.
Finca Florida was an amazing yet humbling experience. I left the farm so grateful that I had the opportunity to work on a coffee farm and have first-hand experience as to where our coffee actually comes from but also meet such amazing people that live and breathe coffee on the other side of the supply chain.
Although it was a small operation, I feel there is plenty of progression at Finca Florida as Geisha coffee was getting planted just after we left, so look out for them in the next few years.
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What are coffee farms in Colombia called?
In Colombia coffee farms are referred to as fincas.
How many coffee farms are in Colombia?
It is difficult to determine the exact number of coffee farms in Colombia, but it is estimated to have over 500,000 coffee farms.
