When you remove all the gloss and glam of fancy cafes, Corporate logos, and over priced coffee laced adult milkshakes, the core ingredient is coffee. And that coffee is farmed the world round with hard work, nurtured earth, and attention to detail. I recently learned this statistic: the average 150 pound sack of green coffee requires 400 hours of human labor to produce!
I started this coffee business for two very fundamental reasons: I needed a source of income, and I love coffee. The income was needed because I could not earn it raising chickens or produce on a micro scale. The cost of living is simply too high. My experiences as a small scale farmer and growing up on a Vermont farmstead instilled in me a great respect for the fruits of the earth.
When I roast coffee I am making my best possible effort to do honor to the farmers who put in the lions share of work to produce that pound of coffee. On average, it takes me about 15 minutes to roast and bag that pound of coffee that took more than 2.5 hours of farm work to produce. I have the deepest respect for the work that brings this amazing beverage to my senses, and I can only do my best to highlight their work.
I am not a fan of flavored coffee or coffee drowned in too much milk and sugar. Those things are adequate fixes for flawed coffee, but only pollute the amazing nuances of a good coffee that is properly roasted and brewed.
With this first post I make 2 pledges as I embark on the expansion of the coffee roasted business that sprouted at our North Monterey county farm in early 2012:
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To always honor the farmer and the source land where the coffee is grown, and to do all I can to support the source financially.
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To bring these values to my own community and help increase awareness and understanding of coffee among our own customers.