Unveiling Daily Delights: Life Behind the Scenes at Our Indian Coffee Farm.

Salutations to you HIVERS for being a part of this wonderful coffee community. Nice to connect back to you after a good long week. This post is going to revolve around the fun we have at the farm. Life here seems to be ever bustling with workers and the micro-wildlife.

Let me take you on a walk into my coffee farm. Don’t forget to grab onto your virtual boots 👩🏻‍🌾🤣 Soak in the greenery and rippling sounds of the river that surrounds our property.

Meet my little cousin, who is also going to be a future coffee planter. His names Luke, an ever budding youth intrigued to learn the art of coffee picking. 🍒✨ that’s exactly what we will be showing here in this post.

We walked an acre to find the right red berries on the trees. Juicy, rich in fructose and ready to be fermented. As you can see this is the start of the coffee picking season, and hence there is a mix of green and red berries on the tree. Considering this is round 1 of picking we will be selecting only the mature ripe berries.

Normally you get to see us picking them and placing them onto a plastic gunny bag or big aerated baskets. But this time I took my cap and filled it. All we needed was a 500g selected collection of cherries.

Teaching the art of picking to my cousin was a success as we were collaborative with our approach. The bunches of coffees had a minimum of 30 cherries and it went upto 45+ cherries.

Luke wanted his sister to take some interesting cinematic shots on her phone. To show off later with the aunties at home. Of course I won’t just let him pick them up but also learn to taste the cherries and understand the flavours that characterise the fruit. These characters are usually what end up showing in your coffee cup as an enhanced version as they are allowed to ferment and bring the best of its offering.

Just look at them… so bright and beautiful. 😍

Do you think this will come out to 500g? Let’s find out soon.

You might be wondering why is Luke all over excited and angry with me 🤣😤

I told him to weigh them so that we can futher pack them and send it to a distributer who wanted to work on ripe cherries before it is dried. And there’s nothing I love more than experimenting 🔬

Coming to my cousin 🤣 he just wanted me to click a fun shot of him dropping the cherries into the weighing bowl. Perfect to make a slow motion video for Instagram. I kept taking photos of only the Berries which got him so annoyed at me. Funny enough I captured all his emotions within this shot. Lol.

Here’s a photo to make up for his lack of good looking photos. This kid needs a much bigger cup of morning coffee ✌️ after bugging me about the slow motion videos. 📽️

The worker women keep bagging the cherries before getting them to be processed in machines that start rumbling from 4:40 Pm to 7:00 Pm. This is because they pick tons of coffees on a daily basis. The cherries are often stripped of its skin to make daily brewing coffees that have a subtle, less sweeter cup. Customers apparently prefer low sweeter coffees or low fruity flavour in their cup. Funky coffees are only for special days. What do you like? Funky fruity coffees or Subtle low fruity coffees.

The focus is on increasing our productivity and hygiene at the same time. As you can see the cherries are washed well with additional water to keep the product fresh and dust free. Not just sustainable but also good for the tummy. The water is recycled in an adjacent tank to improve efficiency and reduce wastage from over flowing water. ♻️

The bags with a ton of coffee ready to be dumped into the machine and stripping out the excess sugary mucilage and keep them warm and white. The next phase is fermenting these in barrels that bring out the existing characteristics of the coffee by the indigenous culture of bacteria and yeast.

Forbidden sugar with bubbles 🫧🍒🍉🫐

Bunches of coffee cherries. 🍒

The numbering of each bunch is different. The least you can find is 1 cherry, and ranges to 24,35 and then 47 at times. The common average found in a specific block is 32.

Below this branch is the blossoming flowers that will bud in a months time and give rise to new cherries for the next harvest.

The subtle white warm beans are put to dry on the tiles beds at the farm. These are specially sun dried to bring out the chances of fungal growth to down to 0. Sun is always our friend. ☀️ The rich rays bring down the fermenting activity of the Bacteria. These beans come to a stand still within 3-5 days time.These beans are called parchment coffees because the ivory skin of the bean is similar to the parchment paper that you get at stationary shops.

Nightlife at the farm is usually the opposite to the works that happen in the day.

Busy, bustling life suddenly calms down to a relaxing evening ☺️ The campfire is mostly for the winter cold that is felt during the nights.🔥🪵 The sparks fly every time the breeze blows through the farm. The moon on top and the stars twinkling in the background and the calm of the village fills into the experience.

Facing the fire and feeling the warm.

We cousins started roasting marshmallows. We din’t have barbecue skewers so we started using bamboo sticks which we normally use for fruit cheese snacks that are pierced and eaten. The gooey tops of the marshmallows started to brown and pull apart like cheese on the pizza. Which made an interesting addition to our fun. 🤩

My diabetic mom dint want to miss out on the fun. So she had one marshmallow.
Do you think she will love it?

Looks like such cheesy pulls! Yum 🤤

But no she dint like them because she said “ It’s toooo sweet.”🍬
Hilariously enough she gave only lectures for eating more of these caramelised marshmallows.

They got all dressed up to party, took so many photos of them posing and
playing with the lighting of the room. 🎉

Brought out kingfisher beers 🍻 and Chandon Prosecco. The bubbly drink was indeed a hit among the cousins. The beers and chicken drums were a treat. Mom cooking two types of dishes for the beer snacks, one was the Hariyali chicken 🍗 and pork chops.

That’s it for today. It’s been a long trip taking you through our farm life. Hoping to see you guys in India visiting us right at the origin. Toodles 👋

Throughout my career, I have organised and hosted numerous coffee-related events, including coffee launches, brewing workshops, cupping sessions, and farm visits, where i get to share my passion for coffee cultivation and wildlife conservation with enthusiasts and industry professionals alike.

When I’m not tending to my coffee plants or conducting research in the field, I enjoy immersing myself in nature, photographing wildlife, and engaging in community outreach initiatives to raise awareness about the importance of sustainable coffee farming.

Connect with me by visiting my Instagram handle to learn more about my work and upcoming events. Instagram