tercer cosecha de cafe

Hoy yo coseché por tercera vez, esto tiempo con don William Valverde, Jack´s host father. Jack was still around when I came, and he gave me a bungee cord to attach the basket more firmly around my waist. The sling has the tendency to slip a little. I found William and his father, don Evelio, a little ways up the hill, and shortly thereafter Sara joined us. We harvested for about 3 hours today and picked 6 cajuelas´ worth of coffee. Some of the trees were so laden with cherries that I only needed to scrape handfuls off the branches and let them fall directly into the basket. It was so much easier! Plus after yesterday, it is much easier to get into a rhythm.

As we worked our way into a lower part of the farm (all the coffee was on a slope), don William showed me the leaves of one of the plants. ¨Esto es ojo de pollo,¨ he told me, ¨y es una enfermedad de las hojas. También, don Roberto lo tiene en su finca.¨ I remembered yesterday, working on Roberto´s farm, how laden the trees were with both fungus and coffee berries. Some of the coffee, though still green, had a rotten look on some parts of the skin - much as I was seeing now with the berries in my hands. I wondered if perhaps the ojo del pollo was having an effect on the berries as well (though it probably shouldn´t impact the beans themselves, as they have a wet cáscara separating them from the rest of the mesoderm). Roberto´s farm seemed to have more of the fungus; I wonder if altitude has something to do with it. I hope that Roberto´s homemade fungicide works on it.

We finished just a little after 11 and walked back down to the house. Evelio totally impressed me when he bent down and hauled the sack off the ground; I had to help him get it over his shoulder a bit, and then he carried the heavy thing down the muddy embankment. He is 82 years young. He and William paid me a high compliment earlier; at one point they looked in my basket, and William smiled, ¨Solamente falta un poco de llenado.¨ I was pleased. He turned, smiling equally, to Sara and said, ¨y usted tiene solamente la mejor calidad en suyo. Mio es más feo.¨ I leaned close to Sara and whispered, ¨See, Folger´s ain´t got nothing on you!¨


Didier just told me some math that is good to note:
20 cajuelas = 1 fanega. 1 fanega = 80-90 libras (pounds) final product; 110-120 libras seco(pergamino). 1 libra = 16 oz. 1 libra de café = 15-30 cups of coffee (according to Robbie). How much makes it back to the cafetalero? Hmmm...