First processing of home grown coffee berries
Coffee processing at home takes a little practice. I ventured into the old ‘food forest’ this morning. It’s a little way from the house so I’ve only now got far enough down the list of to-dos to consider cleaning it up. There’s a lot of weeds to clear up and a good amount of tree maintenance. It was good timing, though, because the coffee is just beginning to ripen. There are a few coffee trees, but the best ones are growing under a canopy of tall trees.
Picking
Fortunately the coffee trees bend well, because most of the fruit is well above 2 m high. I was reading that coffee can be hard-pruned, so after the fruiting I will bring them down to a more pick-able height.
This is this morning’s pick from the three best trees. It would take a lot of patience to get a kilo at this rate, but there are a lot of berries still ripening, so I’ll see. By the way, the berries have a very pleasant taste, maybe like a sweet carrot, so it’s no chore to prepare the beans by mouth, so to speak. The traditional way is apparently to soak the berries until the fruit rots off, but if I get sick of eating them (websites would have you believe the berries have anti-ageing properties) I’ll try a jam or something, rather than throw them out. Then who knows? My own bag of green beans to roast?