Coffee Harvesting
The day after the wonderful cultural night, the headmaster of Gia Bac school invited us to help him harvest his plot of coffee plants. Now, this is something outside of our usual activities of tree-planting and teaching, and everyone was excited to learn something new as we headed to the school to meet up with the headmaster. We were then led to the plantation site by a teacher. The familiar route to the coffee plantation made me wonder if we are going for another forest adventure.
Turning off at one of the corner of the road, we saw a steep slope, where the coffee plantation was situated at, and IS mates started helping each other down to the plantation. Once everyone was down at the coffee plantation, we were amazed at the sight of it. For me, it was my first time seeing a coffee plantation and it was neatly planted, with all the plants looking green and healthy. The local farmer and the teacher gave us a brief introduction about the plantation and instructions on how to pluck out all the coffee berries (those red/green beans on the picture) from the tree.
Before everyone began plucking the coffee beans, the local farmer helped us lay a large sheet of canvas on the ground. The canvas can help speed up the process of plucking the coffee berries, allowing the berries to fall onto the canvas. From the photo below, we can see everyone trying their hands at plucking the coffee berries, and all of us tried our best to help out the task given.
Since we were a big group, we were divided into smaller groups and started working with around four people to one tree and we tried to harvest as many coffee beans as we can. When one tree was completely empty of coffee beans, the group would move on to the next tree, but they would have to drag the whole canvas along. With more beans harvested, the canvas becomes heavier and makes it more difficult to move around. Here’s me, in the photo below, helping the farmer move the canvas. It takes a lot of strength just to drag the whole canvas along, and needless to say, to move it around the uneven terrain while making sure that the beans are not spilled.
This is one of the canvasses that our group filled up (see photo below). To complete harvesting, there will be people carrying a bamboo woven basket to fill up with the coffee beans. The person will then carry it over to the storage area and then this cycle will continue until all the coffee beans are emptied from the canvas.
The weather was really hot! Everyone felt drained after working for 2 hours, but thankfully, the coffee trees provide a good shade to rest and to have our water break.
Here is Jing Jing, our team leader, with the local farmer. From what the farmer told us, the coffee plants need to grow for at least 3 to 5 years before they are ripe for harvesting. And to produce the coffee that we drink, coffee berries are first picked, generally by hand, which was what we were helping them with. Then, the coffee berries will be sorted by ripeness and color and the flesh of the berry is removed, usually by machine, before the seeds are fermented. When the fermentation is completed, the beans are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue, which generates massive amounts of coffee wastewater. Finally, the seeds are dried. A way to let the coffee beans dry is to let them sit on a cement patio and rake over them in the sunlight. Next, the coffee is sorted, and labeled as green coffee before being roasted.
Enough of details, 11 a.m. arrived very quickly and we had to return for lunch and to prepare for our lesson with the students later in the afternoon. BUT, before we headed back, we took a lot of group photos! I felt that it was our privilege to be able to harvest coffee beans and know how their specialty (coffee) is being produced. This traditional method of farming is not something that is being done in Singapore. Now we know how the coffee is produced, maybe it will help us appreciate coffee better!
Written by: Lizhi
