Farm Friday, January 6th, 2023
Visiting coffee farms in Honduras
Today finds me in Honduras visiting coffee farmers on behalf of Farmer to Farmer Coffee. Our non-profit brings coffee up from Honduras and Guatemala and funds scholarships and other projects with our partners in both countries. I get to lead trips to visit the farms and distribute scholarship money. Here are a few photos:
They dry the coffee in solar-heated greenhouses.
Ripe coffee is known as a cherry in English and a grape in Spanish.
Climate change is causing conditions that favor coffee rust, which can kill the plants and cost farmers thousands of dollars. They try to plant resistant varieties, but the rust is always evolving.
Don Roman looking at one the parinema plants that resists rust.
The farmers grow a lot more than coffee, including these bananas. Our friend Hector brought us up the mountain in his vintage Land Cruiser.
One of the farms had a bucket hanging by the front door. Inside was a hen sitting on eggs.
One family has a roasting business. They built their own roaster and now they build roasters for others.
The roasted coffee needs to be quickly cooled when it comes out of the roaster. This machine stirs it while passing cool air over it.
Ready to pick!
© 2023 Andrew Gaertner. All rights reserved.
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