Coffee Harvest Tour

Friends and family know how much I love coffee, and now I have a deeper appreciation for it and for the farmers who grow the coffee plants and process the fruit. I learned that it's hard, time-consuming work and I will never look at a cup of brewed coffee the same way again.

Yesterday, I joined the Coffee Harvest Tour in the community of Sayatan in Tublay, Benguet. Sayatan is a project site of the Cordillera Green Network, a Baguio-based environmental NGO. Since 2001, the organization has been working to help transform communities in the Cordillera into models of sustainable resource management.

Let's back up a little bit--how did I get to join the tour? Well, I was helping a friend look for a place to stay in, and Tala came to mind. I go to Cafe Yagam every now and then when I have friends over and see people coming and going from Tala, the guest house just below. I got curious about it but never pursued looking into it, until now.

I checked Tala's Facebook page and learned of its connection with the Cordillera Green Network, and also learned that the org conducts educational tours as part of its advocacy. Coming up was a Coffee Harvest Tour, and I signed up.

Aside from showing us how a cup of coffee is produced, the tour also gave participants that much-needed break from city life, and for the foreign students, the chance to practice their English. :)

The group met up at 7:30 (everyone was so punctual!) at Tala, where organizer Kanami gave a short orientation and where we introduced ourselves. It's a very 'international' group comprising Filipino, Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean and Vietnamese coffee lovers. When we were all set, we climbed aboard CGN's jeepney and off we went.

When we arrived at Sayatan, we were introduced to the "coffee queens," the ladies who manage the community organization. They told us about the CGN's advocacy as well as coffee's journey from farm to table. They also showed the proper way to harvest coffee cherries to make sure the plant bears fruit again.

Orientation and introduction at Tala.

A quick stopover to buy snacks

Bread, bread and more bread

Toploading ftw

Ate Lily explaining the process of how a cup of coffee is made

Pick just the fruit--avoid taking the stem along with it!

Before harvesting: hot coffee!

Sweet sweet dog

Coffee plant

Looks like Christmas

Just pick the ripe cherries (the red/red-orange ones)

The cold climate makes Benguet conducive to growing arabica coffee

Trying out guava

Picking coffee cherries...until the ants came (the fruit is sweet)

Coffee seedlings at the nursery ready for planting! The community sells these for Php 7.50 each.
It takes around three years for the plants to bear fruit.

At the old nursery (they're preparing a net to cover the seedlings)

This view.

Why did the chicken (and her kids) cross the road?

To say hello to the grazing cow, of course!

Here's Johnny making sure our meal's cooking well

Pinikpikan!

After lunch it was time to try pulping (where the fruit pulp is separated from the bean) and hulling, where the remaining mucilage is removed from the seed. After pulping, the beans undergo wet fermentation for 24 hours, washed and then dried before hulling.

Forgot to take a photo of the (manual) pulping machine, but here's the output: the pulp at left and the seed or bean at the right. 

The beans are first pounded to remove the mucilage or hull from the bean

Separating the hull from the bean

Separating the dried hull from the beans is challenging at first, but once you've mastered the movement, it's beautiful to watch.

 

More hulling

After sorting the beans, these are roasted for an hour. While there's a roasting machine that can get it done in 20 minutes,it's in another town and for the purpose of the tour, a kawali can do the job just fine. 

Almost done! Heavenly smells all around.

Ready to be ground up!

These beans will be grounded, ready for brewing

Hanging out with "Sweet Dog" (we don't know his real name)

And done! (Don't you just love these cups)

I had a great time learning about coffee and meeting new folks. Thanks to Tala - Kanami and Sevy - and the CGN as well as the community of Sayatan and the women farmers who showed us about how coffee makes its way into our cups.

Fact: To make 450 grams of roasted coffee beans, you'll need around 4,000 cherries. A cup is usually brewed from 10 grams of coffee, so you'll need around 90 cherries for just this one cup.

And that, my friends, is why you should savor each and every sip.

Speed Ball Training with Siri (Mongki as coach)

Who needs expensive kitty toys when you have a plastic cup, some string and puffy balls lying around?

scared

some work-related adjustments are opening up opportunities for me to write again, and i'm scared as sh*t.

as the few readers of this blog can surely see, i haven't posted anything in months. i meant to, it's not for lack of topics, but perhaps a lack of will. and confidence.

the kind of work that i do (i currently copy-edit stories for an online publication) requires me to be strict when it comes to factual accuracy and as much as possible, be perfect in all things grammar. i'm no grammar nazi. i make mistakes myself, and i think i've learned to just ignore the errors i see in other people's work, especially if writing isn't really part of their profession (i quietly judge them sometimes though, but usually just the ones who say they're reading this book and that, or watching this show and that, because hey if you're really an avid reader/viewer, you should have picked up proper english by now - snooty me).

i envy them sometimes - how they are able to come up with words to express themselves, tell the interwebz about their life without minding whether a particular piece conforms to ap style.

i've grown more conscious about word use, but in return i've lost confidence in my own writing style. i've come to believe that the way i write has not really improved. my working vocabulary is still the same, i haven't really incorporated new descriptive words. things are still pretty simple in this corner of the blogosphere.

i'm afraid to let loose, afraid i don't really have anything interesting to say.

i've been looking at writing prompts online to somehow get me started with writing again, but i find myself uninterested. or i begin to think, that's a long story, and i don't have the time patience to sit and write that down.

in january, a friend and i went for a day hike up mt. ulap, which is just around 40 minutes away from the city. he pitched the idea of a collaborative project about our little adventure: he would take photos, and i could write about the experience. it's july and i haven't really written a word. i have some phrases written down on a few sheets of paper - my impressions of the place, the things that interested me the most. but i couldn't do the colorful captions, the ones you usually read in travel sites describing a place.

that's nothing new for me, really. i've always struggled with the "show, don't tell" part of writing a narrative. i don't think i have the right verbal creativity needed for travel blog-worthy descriptions. or perhaps this is just me coming up with excuses. i've always wanted to write about the things i've done, the places i've visited, the stuff i've learned. but when i see all these other people already writing about the same stuff, i lose heart.

now i realize i'm forgetting the whole point.

writing, like sketching, is an activity that lots of other people may be doing, but you all come up with different outputs. one's experience is different from another's. there may be similarities (in subject and location), but the way you tell it - the way you express yourself through lines and words - is unique to you. your own perspective, and your own way of showing who you are.

i should really listen to myself more often.

---

but that's when you're writing for yourself.

i'm scared about writing for something else. will i be able to pitch good story ideas? will i be able to pull a story off without sounding like a self-absorbed b*tch?

i guess i'll never really know unless i try (again).

wish me luck (and discipline)!