The new harvest begins

After many weeks of struggling with the weeds, we are about to start the new harvest. I’m anxious to taste the quality of this year!!!! Anxious to see the result of nine months of non-stop work every week, doing all kinds of field work.

The harvest is the culmination of a whole year’s work. And the truth is that I am looking forward to seeing the fruits of a year, with a lot of suffering, with two cyclones: Isaac and Sandy.

I always say that coffee is a grateful plant. If you take care of it and look after it, it rewards you with good fruit and a good harvest. However, you have to do all the activities according to the manual. If you don’t, the coffee tree will take its toll!!!! And in what way!!!! It doesn’t bear fruit, the coffee is of poor quality, the plant has no leaves. In other words, a disaster!!!!!

This week we have picked the first can of coffee grapes, in La Lanza, in the Hipolito’s lot, where we have removed all the beans that were ripening too fast because of the heat and the drought these days.

In Los Lirios we have also harvested 2 cans, in Rebeca’s lot. In this lot I am very hopeful about the quality it can give, because it is my favourite plantation; it is tall, has a good variety (Caturra), and the plant is very healthy.

For me now is the most delicate moment of the year. One bad decision or one bad practice can ruin the whole year’s work! We have to be very attentive to the ripening of the fruit, it is essential that we are very conscious of the fact that the fruit has to be ripe and uniform. This is going to be our main concern from now on. The problem is that the cutters (that’s the name given to the people who pick coffee) are paid per can harvested and that implies a big risk, because what they want is to harvest very quickly, to have as many cans harvested as possible and thus earn more money. The disadvantage lies in the quality of the harvested coffee, which cannot have beans that are not at their optimum point of ripeness and must be free of semi-ripe and green beans. When we are going to measure (this is when we measure the cans that each cutter harvests) we have to be very attentive to the quality of the fruit, that it is well ripe and that we do not have fruit that is not at its optimum point of ripeness.

These three cans that we have harvested do not worry me, because they are not of quality, the quality will be given to us in 15 days when we make the first hand of ripe coffee.