14 year old running a coffee farm. True life story of a Colombian coffee farmer
Real coffee farmers – real stories of your coffee…
While we are jumping from town to town, from one coffee farm to another, we scheduled a meeting with Fabio for the next week, to hear his true life story and how he got into growing Colombian specialty coffee. For the weekend we are going to stay in Jardin and catch up on some work on our devil’s boxes, also called laptops. We got a place with a nice public balcony. Overlooking the main square, which came with it perks – no sleep till 2 am. Colombian Coffee people like to socialize and stay up late. They just drink coffee to have energy to hang out longer and drink more coffee while talking about all that happened to their coffee and what new experimental coffee processing ideas they worked on during the week at their coffee farms. That nice balcony of ours was right above one of the main socializing spots in town, that explains where that mellow green coffee smell was coming from. As a result, we didn’t get much sleep that night.
Shhh.. let’s listen to Fabio!
The new week rolled in and we are rested and ready to go again, really excited about meeting the specialty coffee farmers of Antioquia who were experimenting with different coffee varieties and processes. We are fortunate to come across this unique coffee farmer, named Fabio. He runs the farm since he was 14, after his parents left to another region to look for better life, so story of the little man taking everything into his hands begun. And he has done an amazing job, we have never seen the farm being so well organized. He plays music to his farm animals six days a week. Classical music in the morning, to get ready to seize the day, some news and local radio stay up to date with the region and the world and of course meditational and calming down music for the evening to get relaxed for the better sleep. Funny right? But Fabio said chickens lay more eggs, goats are less anxious and dogs stopped fighting. I assume they listen lots of reggae in the afternoon, although chickens we chilling with the beat of “Despacito”, it was also friday afternoon so they probably were just in the mood to go out and meet some chicks, that come to town on saturday for the farmers market.
Specialty coffee lots on La Simeona coffee farm
He had all his specialty coffee lots neatly organized and labeled. Organic coffee lots were at the top of the coffee farm, shade grown and covered by the lush plantain leaves, to develop better quality. All the cascara compost was diligently taken care and contained in one location. It was also equipped with with broca trap to those little evil characters.
Valley of coffee lots and waterfalls
Next morning we moved to the place with even more beautiful view through the window and the redeemer overlooking the valley of coffee lots, plantains and waterfalls. I think we also made the history in this town by delivering the first message by a drone. The letter contained a really sensitive information about the lunch location, lousy drawing how to get there and in it had to be delivered immediately to another part of our group, who went on the expedition to explore some waterfalls, were captured by the beauty of the nature, and forgot about their starving friends. It was very exciting to deliver the breaking in the old fashion way using technology of today. I bet that is how people felt when they used pigeons for that. Just think of it, mail pigeon or messenger message is more exciting to get.
