Coffee

Have you ever thought about where your daily cup of joe comes from?  I don’t mean whether it was brewed at Starbucks or from a can of Folgers, I’m talking about the journey those beans took to get to your cup.  I admit, I hadn’t thought much about it before this trip.  But coffee plays a big role in the village of San Jose, as it does for much of Nicaragua, and we got a crash course in Coffee 101.

These are coffee seedlings. They are growing under a homemade greenhouse made from lashed together sticks covered with banana leaves.

Once the seedlings are big enough, they are transplanted into little plastic bags. But those little plastic bags don’t come filled with dirt. Someone has to fill all those little bags to get them ready for the seedlings.  Enter our team.

We arrived at this spot to find a pretty large pile of dirt.  Just sitting there. Now you might imagine that this dirt was earthy, fertile, nutrient rich soil, just perfect for growing little seedlings into productive mature coffee plants.  Not so much. In fact, not really at all.  The soil was more like little pellets—hard, rocky, and not very much like any soil that something would want to grow in.  But this is what the soil is like before the rainy season in San Jose.  And coffee finds a way to grow in it.

We filled those little plastic bags for hours. On our hands and knees, without any tools, under the hot sun.  Now before you start feeling sorry for us poor gringos, let me remind you that although the work was tedious, it was a perfect introduction to the life of a farmer.  Farmers don’t get the joy of the harvest every day. In fact most days, they toil. But farmers don’t see their daily tasks in isolation, but rather as parts of a labor that will in time produce a harvest.

I think I can learn a thing or two from farmers. It is no wonder that the Bible is filled with so many passages about agriculture.

We also were taught how to prune the coffee plants.  Using a saw-like knife (like the one I’m holding in my right hand), we cut away all of the dead branches, and even many living ones, so that the plants had room to grow.  It seemed like I was cutting off perfectly good branches. But if there are too many branches competing for the nutrients of the soil, water, and sun, they will choke each other, and the plant won’t grow. 

Hmmm…Are you seeing the metaphor unfold?

Eventually, after much laboring, those little seedlings that have been pruned and cut, will grow and mature into coffee plants with beautiful, brightly colored berries.

And all that work will have not been for nothing.  There will be a harvest.