Finca Ometepe Coffee-Delicious!

Six years ago we put coffee trees in the ground.

They didn’t look like much. A few glossy leaves and some thin stems. We cleared space for them with machetes and hoped they’d take.

Every year since, we’ve cut weeds back by hand so they don’t get swallowed. In January we walk the rows with clippers and prune each tree one by one. In February the branches fill with small white blossoms — plain, almost fragile — and then they’re gone again.

The rest of the year is quiet work. Rain. Sun. Waiting.

In November and December the cherries turn red and heavy. We pick every one of them by hand. No machines. Just fingers, baskets, and time. It’s slow and repetitive and good.

This year we harvested about 75 pounds of beans. After drying and roasting, that became 46 pounds of coffee grown right here on our farm.

We dry the beans in the sun on a rack we built ourselves. We turn them by hand. We watch the clouds. They finish on black plastic until they reach just the right dryness — something you feel more than measure. When they are just dry enough, they make this little tinkling bell sound when you shake them in your closed fist.

Then we roast them to a deep medium-dark.

This year’s coffee tastes like chocolate and caramel, with a faint lift of citrus at the end. It’s smooth, deep, and full. Delicious.

It’s a strange and satisfying thing to drink something that started as a small tree and a bundle of hope.

If you’re nearby, come try a cup. We’d love to pour it for you.

If you want it even leaner — almost journal-entry simple — I can strip it down one more layer.