We had a nice, big coffee picking last week, with many pickers working over two days. We use an Estrada wet mill from Colombia to wet mill the coffee the same day it’s picked. Water and machinery free the seeds from the skins and fruit. The seeds (coffee) sit in a fermentation tank overnight, then the next morning they’re raked out to dry on a covered deck before being mechanically finish-dried later that day or the next day. The end result is parchment. The parchment is put in burlap bags and the scant moisture is allowed to even out for weeks/months before it eventually gets dry milled into green (unroasted) beans.
In case you didn’t realize, we post a variety of photos about coffee and scenes from our farm on Instagram and Facebook. The bottom of each page of our website has a little camera icon (Instagram) & F icon (Facebook) which you can select if you want to follow us. Recently I’ve been sharing photos of the pigs on our land, which we’ve finally been seeing at night and around sunset.
It has been a real parade of pigs lately. One night it was like a movie. Pig noises woke me up, so I peered out the window. I saw a bright flashlight beam (my neighbor cousin’s) wildly moving about, then I heard and saw a spotlighted pig run down the coffee road next to our bedroom. Then I saw the beam quickly move back up the hill, dart about, then repeat. I heard and saw in the flashlight beam another pig run down the road. Then another. I got up and went to our lanai with our bright flashlight and shined it on the road and in the coffee land. Pigs trying to hide throughout the land.
There was a pause in the action, and I went back to bed. When I heard more pig noises, I went out again to look. There was a gang of eight pigs defiantly holding their ground on the coffee road. Then I saw two separate spotlights (my cousins) coming down the road. I heard something land nearby — my cousins had thrown something at them. Finally, the pig gang scattered.
Hubby slept through it all and had no idea. The next day I suggested we collect a bucket of rocks to keep on our lanai so we’d have something to scare them with. We also researched hunting rules and licenses, air guns, slingshots, rock chuckers, crossbows, bows and arrows, electric fences, etc. We personally don’t want to kill them, but they are destructive and a nuisance, and they are most definitely not welcome here. And there are too many!
The next day at sunset, we wanted to take pictures of the rain over the ocean. We immediately saw pigs! Within 15 minutes we saw about 14 pigs, in four different groupings, traversing and lingering on our land. The next evening, we went out looking for pigs, but we caught the sunset. It’s like life, you’re searching for A, then B shows up. Look for B, you see A. Moral: keep your eyes and ears open and be prepared for anything. OINK! Or rather … loud, sharp groinking bark!
