My Spanish instructor, Nicotu, suggested to take us to a coffee
bean processing plant and the local market for a field trip.
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Coffee beans are dried in the sun before processing
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On Saturday morning the three of us went on a little 20 minute walk to
the local coffee processing plant owned by the Cooperativa, FEDEPMA, which
stands for Federation of Mayan Coffee Planters. This cooperative is very special
as it serves as a model to other operations in the area for its environmental sustainability
and their own marketing efforts so that they can eliminate coffee selling
middlemen who would cut into the cooperative’s profits. From there most of the
beans are shipped raw to Germany and some coffee gets roasted immediately for
the local market. In addition each coffee planter makes honey which is
collected at the plant for resale. Last but not least, the third product is
organic waste that is turned into organic fertilizer.
Obviously, Suzy and I are not coffee experts (we don’t even
drink coffee on a regular basis), but the field trip and paid tour was a great
way to learn about Mayan coffee planters and to improve our Spanish. The photos
and their captions may give you some idea of what goes into producing coffee. At
the end of the tour we each had a fresh cup of the plant’s own coffee, which sent
us coffee novices on “caffeine trip” for the rest of the day.
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| Coffee beans are separated by quality. In water, good beans sink and bad ones rise. That's just one of three selection processes |
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| The beans are then shoveled to the next selection process |
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| The cooperative's own small-scale roasting operation for the local market |
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| Quality-testing |
From the Cooperativa we went to the local market to stock up
on some food for our upcoming volcano hike on Sunday. We also bought a large
Mayan style painting that we will send back rolled up to the US. I explained to
our host family that it will be for gratos recuerdos (fond memories) when we are
back home.
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| Siesta time in the park by the Catholic church |
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| The park near the market |
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| Proud owners of a giant painting |
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