In August 2019, the first official harvest of coffee occurred in the Bolivar Garden, collected by Hugo Guerrero, our garden custodian.  Since then we have had four more harvests from the 113 coffee trees in the Bolivar Garden. On average each tree produces around 10-40 beans of coffee, which actually are not bean,  but the fruit the plant produces. The seed inside is what is commonly know as the coffee “bean”, from which coffee is produced. From the plant, we collected the ones ready for the next process where the fruit pulp (the red fleshy part of the fruit) is removed. 

   

      

We were able to start the harvesting process 1 year and 10 months after the coffee was first germinated, following which it was planted. This demonstrates how long and complex this process really is (actually this is incredibly fast for producing coffee). Harvesting includes looking at all the beans and exclusively selecting the red or yellow beans that are ripe which means they are ready for being picked. We went around all the 113 trees and collected all the beans that showed a reddish color. The beans that didn’t present these colors were left for later collection, so they have more time to mature.

 

After this, the processing starts where we pulp the beans, soak them and then dry them. Each time we are able to collect more and more beans which have allowed us to start producing the actual coffee to drink which has become an extension of the production.