We got plenty of rain this summer, every thing grows fast here, including weeds and extra coffee shoots. Usually we start picking coffee in September, but this year our coffee trees loaded with green coffee, green coffee grow bigger day by day, seems not eager to change their color.  While we were waiting for the coffee getting ripe, Terry and I pulled suckers one more time last month.

When we were working on the farm, we noticed few ripe coffee here or there, and they already tracked borer beetles inside of them. Since we were doing nothing except waiting for the harvest season start, I convinced Terry to pick this ripe coffee with me. It took us 2 weeks to pick the whole farm, every morning we picked about 20 to 30 pounds between us. It was not a fun job, but glad we did it.

Last weekend a coffee picking crew came and picked our real first round coffee, they didn’t finish picking the whole farm and came back yesterday. It still has one corner of the farm with ripe cherries need to be picked, they couldn’t finish it yesterday and no time to come back. I told them that we would do it.

Terry raked the wet coffee, and talked story with two friends who were visiting. I was glad to be among ripe coffee trees, I picked 50 pounds before lunch. I love picking coffee, especially at time like this, when the beans are so beautiful,and I’m picking coffee without pressure. It’s a simple job, but it requires long hours of persistent and patient work. Not everyone like to do it, and not everyone can do it well. As a coffee farmer, she or he should have picked many  bags of coffee  themselves.

Sonny seems very excited whenever we have coffee pickers. When he was younger, he followed them. If the picker brought their kids, he played with them or brought the kids to our house to play. Quite often he had lunch with our coffee picker, he likes bean and tor torttias, and soda (which we usually don’t have in the house). Sometimes, there were coffee picker’s kids playing with Sonny, they had lunch with us too.

I remember one coffee season, Sonny was 4 years old, he was asking for soda to drink. I told him that those soda were for our coffee picker, the workers. Later, Terry drove truck to pick up coffee bags, Sonny went with him. When they came back, first thing he said, was ” Mom, do you know I’m a worker now ?” I said:” good “. Then he asked:” So, can I have one soda ?” It made me laugh right away.

After his long hours of watching TV and playing toys, he saw some pickers near the house, he got a small bag and ran to them, and picked beside them. When I took this photo, he said:” Mom, do you remember? I picked one this bag last year and you paid me 2 dollars.” “Yes, I remember.” ” So, can you pay me 2 dollars for today?” I looked his bag, said:” Your bag is not even close to full, you might get a quarter for what you picked.” ” OK, give me a quarter.” One quarter is enough to him, he was ready to quit.

This year’s coffee is big and beautiful. We can see it right away when we were pulping; hardly any CBB damaged beans came out from demusalage machine, not many floating beans in the soaking tank. Coffee on the drying deck looks very nice, we are going to have a very good crop this year. The rain helped; CBB trap helped; fertilizer helped; spraying “MyControl” helped; and all the time and labor we put into the farm, make it a good promising year.