Live From Rancho Ebenezer

A fence we are building for  Rancho Ebenezer

Grown at an elevation of 5,000 - 5,500 ft., our Honduran coffee is grown on the slopes of the San Matias mountains. The farm began with donated saplings to sustain Ranch Ebenezer, a home for orphans and disadvantaged children. In 2001, the home was built to give the children an escape from the city. Coffee represents a second chance at life and also a huge part of their country’s culture.

Tim, Liz, and I are here on a mission to help the farm get better quality coffee, and work alongside the outreach to the children here.We brought with us a great team of people from Chicago who wanted to learn and work with us while we are up here. It's been a lot of fun getting to know everyone.

Me: sorting through Green Coffee

I'm writing you today from the top of a mountain. Hiking up these mountains is a WORKOUT... the air is thin and I feel soooo out of shape, but it's good. The temperature is great it's not hot or cold. It's T-Shirt weather while the sun is up, and sweater weather at night. It's beautiful and so nice to be away from the sound of traffic. The farm has banana trees and orange tree but the main non coffee fruit that is grown is Blackberries. They make tea and jam here from the black berries.

At lunch Tim and I met with an employee of the Government who works to help farmers. We submitted some coffee from the farm into the Cup of Excellence competition (which is a really big coffee competition). I spent last night going through green coffee trying to find the best beans for the submission.

The scenery here is pretty nice. We are on a mountain and pretty secluded. We look out on misty mountain forest all around us. We are in the dry season but everything is still pretty green and wet. It's humid here. Because of the humidity here it takes a long time for the coffee beans to dry to a stable level (around 10% moisture content). We are working to create basically a little green house to dry the beans in. This will help the beans dry much faster and help the farm be more efficient. When I'm not working on the drying station I have been building a fence. The fence is a boundary marker, and a fire breaker.