Hi There Australian Coffee Community!
I’m Muki Yeung, board member of IWCA and Specialty Coffee Trader for C.Dorman in Kenya.
Previously from Sydney, as of December 2019 I’ve been based out of Nairobi, Kenya. I really love my work and hope to share with all of you a little insight into what life is like at “origin”.
Over the past month I’ve been spending a few days a week “upcountry” in Central Kenya. Visiting cooperatives, estates and farmers as they prepare for the main harvest. I travel with an agronomist, who checks processing and crop health, advising farmers if there are any issues with pests or disease, and advising factory (wet-mill) managers if they need to amend their processing and drying procedures.
Last week I was in Nyeri in Central Kenya. Nyeri is sandwiched between the Aberdare Ranges and Mt. Kenya. It’s a perfect zone for specialty coffee production. Rich red volcanic soils, high elevation, temperate climate and consistent weather and rainfall. Harvest is right on the cusp of beginning, some factories (wet-mills) already receiving deliveries from their members (farmers).
One of the factories I visited was Karindundu, a factory that was established in 1985. It’s located at 1767 masl and currently has 2000 farmer members/farmers who deliver their coffee to the factory for processing. It’s here that I met the lovely Bella Wambui Muriuki. She’s been farming coffee for over 25 years. Bella very proudly showed me her harvest for the day, all handpicked from her half hectare plot, where she not only grows coffee but also maize, beans, cabbage and napier grass. She tipped her harvest out of a repurposed feed bag, all perfectly ripe. It didn’t require any sorting. The factory manager had a quick look over the cherry and she was approved to take it to the weighing station. Here she placed her bag on the scale and gave her farmer number to the clerk. The clerk confirmed the weight and a receipt was printed out. Her delivery? 5kg of cherry. She took the receipt and emptied the bag into the cherry hopper, where her 5kg of cherry joined the other deliveries of the day. Later, the days’ cherry will be pulped all together and the process towards green coffee.
5kg of cherry will get you roughly a kilo of processed and clean green coffee. A kilo of green coffee will get you approximately 800g of roasted. A full day’s harvest from Bella, 800g of roasted coffee. The full harvest from her small farm will make up approximately one 60kg bag of green coffee. She’ll keep harvesting and delivering to the factory, a few kilos at a time, until the end of the season.
So don’t waste a single bean if you can help it!
Until next time.
Muki Yeung
Follow me on Instagram for regular updates and photos from the field.
@coffeegirlmeetsworld
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