It is nearing the end of the coffee season in Nicaragua. We were keen to join in, having lived in a coffee growing community, Sontule, for much of our time here, always enjoyed a good cup of coffee and worked with coffee cooperatives. It's taken months for the cherries, each containing two coffee beans, to ripen from hard green pellets to bright red, juicy fruit, ready for picking. In Nicaragua, there is a national price set for coffee picking - 25 cordobas, or around 80p per lata or 'tin'. This turns out to be a surprising amount of coffee. One lata is a bit more than one of the full baskets we're holding in the photo above. A good coffee picker with a good strip of coffee trees to go at with lots of cherries can pick up to 8 latas in a day, which would earn him or her around £6.50. Most people pick 4 or 5 latas a day. 
Tipping the coffee into a lata to see how much we'd all picked. On that day, I reached my personal best of just over 1 lata. I wouldn't be able to enjoy many banana smoothies on that performance.On bigger fincas up in the mountains, coffee pickers go to farms for the season (around October-February), stay in dormitories and are given food. Although it seems like they are paid very little money, it's a good earner here in Nicaragua. However, people can earn more in Costa Rica, and there have been years when the army has been drafted in to pick coffee because too many temporary workers went south.
With the Villareyna family, who we stay with in Sontule - grandsons Minor and Ivancito, and son Marlon.
With the Villareyna family, who we stay with in Sontule - grandsons Minor and Ivancito, and son Marlon. In Sontule, coffee picking is very much a community and family affair. It seems to be most people's favourite time of year and there's a real buzz in the countryside. People are up early and out picking by around 6am. They finish in the coffee fields around noon, then it's time to bring all the coffee in, measure it to see how much each coffee picker has earned, and then put it through a de-pulper - a sort of mangle - to remove the fleshy fruit from the glistening coffee beans.
Together with American Rachel, we had our first coffee picking lesson with a friend Henry one morning on his dad's land. It's a beautiful setting - the coffee is mainly grown under shade on the forested mountain slopes. We were each given a basket to wear on our fronts and a sack to tip the coffee in when we filled our baskets, or for us, when they got too heavy. 
The coffee trees are planted in rows, which had become a bit higgledy piggledy. Some of the older trees were twice our height and we were taught to pull them down by their thin trunks to reach the top cherries. It's quite an arm work out. I also realised that I wasn't wearing the best top as little beetles from the coffee plants kept falling straight down it. 
Other than that, it was a fun, surprisingly relaxing experience. We were also accompanied by 6 year old cousins, Bryan and Kevin, who were in Simon's school class. It was their family's land. They taught us songs as we worked and picked a bit of coffee themselves. 
Bryan
The coffee trees are planted in rows, which had become a bit higgledy piggledy. Some of the older trees were twice our height and we were taught to pull them down by their thin trunks to reach the top cherries. It's quite an arm work out. I also realised that I wasn't wearing the best top as little beetles from the coffee plants kept falling straight down it. 
Other than that, it was a fun, surprisingly relaxing experience. We were also accompanied by 6 year old cousins, Bryan and Kevin, who were in Simon's school class. It was their family's land. They taught us songs as we worked and picked a bit of coffee themselves. 
Bryan With the money they earned over the coffee season, Bryan brought his school uniform, which we saw him in, looking the smartest kid at school, on the first day back; whilst Kevin bought bangers and sweets. At the end of the morning, we took the coffee to be de-pulped, which turned out to be another arm work-out.
We continued to pick coffee in the mornings for a few more days in Sontule, in different patches of land up in the hills, with Rogelio and Lucia's children and grandchildren, whom we know well. There was always a great atmosphere, lots of laughing and singing whilst sometimes lurching from tree to tree to prevent ourselves from slipping down the steep mountain slopes. On more successful days, when the sacks weighed too much to carry, Jackson was summoned on his horse to carry them back to the house. 
We were on the final pick of the coffee trees that week as it was nearing the end of the season and they had already been picked twice. We were told to pick everything, including the unripe green beans, and overripe or bad black beans, which we would then sort out later back at the house. 
Indira, Valeska and Simon removing the green and black coffee cherries before they go through the de-pulper, while Monkey the puppy chills out. The removed beans will eventually be used to make fairly ropey coffee to serve at their house - it always comes with plenty of sugar to make it drinkable.
We were on the final pick of the coffee trees that week as it was nearing the end of the season and they had already been picked twice. We were told to pick everything, including the unripe green beans, and overripe or bad black beans, which we would then sort out later back at the house. 
Indira, Valeska and Simon removing the green and black coffee cherries before they go through the de-pulper, while Monkey the puppy chills out. The removed beans will eventually be used to make fairly ropey coffee to serve at their house - it always comes with plenty of sugar to make it drinkable. A couple of weeks later, we went on another coffee picking expedition in the beautiful mountains near to Matagalpa. This time, we had Lynne, Simon's mum, with us to make her coffee picking debut. 
We were picking coffee with Nick and Rachel at Nick's friend Byron's farm. 
It was the morning after a full moon, and our timing in this was deliberate as Byron believes it is when coffee is at its sweetest and best. 
Byron with a banana flower
It was the morning after a full moon, and our timing in this was deliberate as Byron believes it is when coffee is at its sweetest and best. 
Byron with a banana flowerThe coffee we were picking will be roasted and sold at a stand at Harvest at Jimmy's festival near to Ipswich this September http://www.harvestatjimmys.com/ and we may have some for our wedding too. Byron honed our coffee picking skills, teaching us to pluck rather than pull the cherries from the branches to avoid the stalks coming too. If we de-stalked the branches, we were told, there would be no coffee cherries growing there next year.
After the coffee is picked and de-pulped, it is fermented in big tanks for 36 hours. After that, it is rinsed in channels, scooped up and laid out on patios to dry. 
In Nicaragua, when the coffee is oreado or damp (46% humidity), it is delivered to a dry mill to finish the drying process, down to 12% moisture. This is the legal humidity requirement for importing coffee into the EU, it prevents potentially carcinogenic mould developing. The farmer cooperatives in communities like Sontule are part of bigger central cooperatives which own their own drying, processing and quality control facilities. This has been a great achievement for the farmers over the last 15 years or so, greatly aided by Fair Trade markets, as they now own the coffee supply chain all the way up to exporting the coffee. This means they are in a much better bargaining position than they were when they sold their coffee up in the hills to whoever would buy it from them for whatever price they were offered. Three very successful coffee cooperatives in Nicaragua are Prodecoop http://www.prodecoop.com/, Cecocafen and Soppexca http://www.soppexcca.org/. The photo below shows a water-balloon game with workers at Soppexca's mill. 
In the background, the coffee is wrapped in plastic. In the early morning, the plastic is spread out and the coffee left open to the sun to continue drying. This takes several days. On one road heading into Matagalpa at this time of year, coffee is drying on fields and concrete patios for as far as you can see. In the evenings, there are these plastic humpback piles everywhere. Once the coffee is dry, the green beans, which will be exported and roasted in the consuming countries, are still in a protective cover, the texture of papery-parchment. This is removed by milling just before the coffee is shipped.
In Nicaragua, when the coffee is oreado or damp (46% humidity), it is delivered to a dry mill to finish the drying process, down to 12% moisture. This is the legal humidity requirement for importing coffee into the EU, it prevents potentially carcinogenic mould developing. The farmer cooperatives in communities like Sontule are part of bigger central cooperatives which own their own drying, processing and quality control facilities. This has been a great achievement for the farmers over the last 15 years or so, greatly aided by Fair Trade markets, as they now own the coffee supply chain all the way up to exporting the coffee. This means they are in a much better bargaining position than they were when they sold their coffee up in the hills to whoever would buy it from them for whatever price they were offered. Three very successful coffee cooperatives in Nicaragua are Prodecoop http://www.prodecoop.com/, Cecocafen and Soppexca http://www.soppexcca.org/. The photo below shows a water-balloon game with workers at Soppexca's mill. 
In the background, the coffee is wrapped in plastic. In the early morning, the plastic is spread out and the coffee left open to the sun to continue drying. This takes several days. On one road heading into Matagalpa at this time of year, coffee is drying on fields and concrete patios for as far as you can see. In the evenings, there are these plastic humpback piles everywhere. Once the coffee is dry, the green beans, which will be exported and roasted in the consuming countries, are still in a protective cover, the texture of papery-parchment. This is removed by milling just before the coffee is shipped.This is more or less the coffee harvesting process over here. Now go and treat yourselves and support the farmers by buying some yummy Cafedirect Nicaraguan coffee.
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