We have coffee cherry! These pictures are from early September. Our first picking was in the last week of August. It seems like the new TLC (tender loving care) that the coffee land is receiving is paying off. In just the first picking, we have 150% of what was picked over the entire 2017 season. AND, with the pruning we’re doing, one third of the trees were removed from producing fruit this year. Last year we heard from a few farmers, though, that they had a smaller harvest than previous years. That’s farming!
With the pictures above, you can see how the fruit matures. You can see that it doesn’t ripen all at once. Real people (vs. machines) examine the trees and hand pick individual coffee cherries when they’re ripe (red). Multiple rounds of picking are required, four to ten rounds in a season is common. Our crew picked a little over 500 pounds a day over a few days in this first round. The harvest season is about August until maybe January.
Lastly, for those following the story of our pruned trees, this is what a few look like now:
