Picking Coffee in Salento, (with a step by step of the coffee process)

One little window of good weather in Manizales. This is the main
drag of town, which goes along the top of a mountain ridge.

Manizales was allegedly supposed to be a hip college town with many beautiful sites and a notable nightlife. The upside was that our big hotel room cost us 12 dollars a night, the downside was that it was raining the entire time we were there and the college was on a break, leaving the bars pretty much dead. For 3 days straight, we would wake up, secure breakfast, put on our walking shoes, and then a torrential downpour would ensue. This made for lots of time watching movies on the two (2) American movie stations in English. We couldn’t even score drugs because the nightlife was back at their padres’ houses for the week—we tried once, but the guy never showed up and we ended up waiting on a quiet side street for 30 minutes to no avail. On the third day, we decided enough was enough…

Four hours and two small buses later we were in Salento, a tiny little coffee town with a population of about 4,000. It was much like the little agricultural towns (of probable fantasy) I envision to be in the rolling hills of Oregon and California; it seemed like there was a common agreement that no one was going to work too hard, no one was going to walk too fast, and no one was going to give someone else trouble for partaking in a doobie. For lodging, we decided to go with the Lonely Planet pick, The Plantation House. It was a bit out of town, at least 7 or 8 minutes from the town square (‘far’ by local standards).

The Lonely Planet had deftly reported that the Owner was English, and after seeing his wife, who was a smoking hot older Colombian woman, we figured he’d be a dashing James Bond type Londoner, complete with a popped collar on his custom tailored trench coat. He turned out to look more like a grody version of the old guy from Jurassic Park. Picture Dr. Hammond, less a cane and even-growing facial hair, with the addition of about 35 shades of yellow on his teeth and a strange conversational mannerism that teetered between a stutter and a drawn out ‘um.’

This description may be peppered with bias and envy though, because he is living the dream (my dream). He bought a small coffee farm, which is 7 hectares by satellite, but situated on high sloped hills, so the amount of land which he is being taxed for is actually about half of what he actually has. It had just switched to organic (read much less efficient) when he bought it and was operating at a total loss, so he likely got a good deal. He turned the farm house into the first building of his hostel, and then bought the neighbors out, creating an impressive compound of gringo-sanctuary. He employs some of the local teens and older guys to work the farms and hostel, and sells about half of the coffee produced; the other half is consumed in the hostel, by the workers, and other locals in the favor of the Jurassic Park guy. Three times a week he would give a lecture on the economics and history of coffee farming

Hot wife, check; favor from the locals, check; a renewing audience to BS to, check; new and sometimes interesting world travelers coming in every day, check; boo coos of organic coffee, check. Not too shabby ol’ chap…

The view from our window... you can't put a price on this kinda beauty, but the room cost 8 bucks per person.

They have also cooked up an ingenious scheme for labor. Any gringo can work from 7:30 in the morning to noon at the coffee farms, doing repetitive, semi-arduous labor with the teens he employs, in exchange for a set lunch brought down to the farm (valued at about 7,000 pesos, or 4 bucks). Brilliant… folks from London, Switzerland, Norway, and other spots where a hamburger will run you 20 dollars, all working for less than a dollar an hour. The gringos don’t feel ripped off at all, however. For once we are getting to do something and not have to pay for it, and we're getting an ‘authentic’ coffee picking experience.

From about 8:30 to 10:30 we went around with big baskets strapped to us, picking the red, semi-red, and brown coffee berries off the trees. It was actually loads of fun, it definitely appealed to the inner hunter-gatherer. The idea of picking berries for hours got even better when a distinct smell and plumes of smoke started coming up from where the real employees were…

What the bosses don’t know, and what we were later told to keep privy about, was that every one of the employees we were picking coffee with was holding, hardcore holding. Not the holding that a 45 year old does at a Tom Petty concert when he sneaks a doobie in to spark up during Last Dance, we are talking the holding that a self-respecting high school pot dealer would have with him on 4/20 at the movie theater. I was elected to break the ice with them and see if we could join their silent reggae session. Instead of passing me the joint he had, Alonzo reached into his fanny pack. While I thought the fanny packs they had might have important work papers, or cell phones, or wallets, or even a Colombian ID… nope, just copious amounts of the finest Mary Jane in town. I suppose they did have work papers, but all of which were of the rolling nature. He put a handful of the leafy substance in my palm and handed me 5 rolling papers—being used to paying for everything I asked how much, and he shook his hands as to say ‘on the house.’

We edged our way up the hill, singing songs and joking, occasionally picking a few berries here and there. My guess is that the 5 of us picked about half the amount the 3 pros did, but at least we had a good time doing it. As the midday sun started coming out they said the work out here was over. We didn’t want to go, we were all enjoying this leisurely manual labor, but we found that even more leisurely work awaited us.

Next we shucked beans for another hour while guzzling down fresh coffee and riding out our stoning from earlier. This is the part of the process after the berries are de-seeded and the seeds are left out to dry, the husks are removed by hand and with a sifter and the beans are then roasted to the familiar dark brown color you see when you open your sealed bag from the grocer. Our ‘free’ lunch came and we chowed down, after we were invited to go enhance our hunger with the locals, that is. Here is a rough idea of the process we learned in a single morning's work:

Step 1: Baby coffee beans, built by adding coffee berries and dirt with  water and sunlight.

Step 2: Big coffee plants, made by letting baby coffee plants grow for a while.

Step 3: Picking, red means go, yellow means maybe, and green means no.

Step 4: This machine takes the fleshy and sour outer part of the berry off, leaving a white seed (this becomes the coffee bean!).

Step 5 and 6: After the inner seed is left to dry for a week, the outer layers are peeled off, because they taste bitter  and burn during roasting.

Step 7: All those shucked, dried, and reshucked seeds get put in a big ol' pan for roasting.

After a few hours of frequent stirring, we now have something that resembles what you get in a store!

In the 2 hours of work we did in the fields, including that of the pros, we picked (optimistically) 5 pounds of coffee once the berries were all dried, husked, and roasted. This is B-grade coffee as well; coffee totally unfit for the likes of an American Quizinart or K-cup—it tasted great to me; the beans just weren’t as plump as those from your typical bag of Eight O’ Clock. After the farm, the finished product gets shipped to the states, packaged, shipped to grocery stores, and sold for 8 dollars (4 when on special) a pound. Our day’s work would equate to 3 to 6 or so bags in total, and our coffee wasn’t even export grade. So, ipso facto, this leads me to believe that either someone on the coffee supply chain is getting heavily subsidized or thoroughly screwed in this ordeal (or maybe a bit of both).