Continuing with the visit to the coffee zone of Bergantín Venezuela, we wake up like every day very early, being already the 4th day of our visit at the Coffee Farm 4D. Only with looking from the window of the house the high mountains of approximately 1300msnm the lowest and the highest peaks of 2400msnm, while we taste a rich hot coffee, we can imagine the tourist and agricultural potential that still needs to be developed in the area.

Although in this visit we only dedicate ourselves to enjoy the benefits of the mountain climate and to know the process of coffee closely, we already want to plan another visit in the area to know its other natural alternatives such as rivers, waterfalls and streams, pine forest and they even told us that in the summer season they are practicing adventure sports such as mountain biking, hiking and paragliding.

A little later, after the rich breakfast, I was able to capture this photo in the gardens of the main house, while waiting for one of the companions of the area who would take us to the coffee plantation again.

Walking to the Microlote of coffee Buorbón, I could enjoy the singing of native birds and enjoy the colorful parakeets in the wild and which abound in all its varieties in this area, as they feed on the coffee cherries, the plants of grape, the fruits of the milkman, among other trees that coexist next to the coffee plantations. I could not pass the moment to capture these images and I wanted to learn a new hobby, the observation of wild birds, and this area has a great diversity of birds to observe and capture good images.

It is clear with these photographs that my beginner camera is not the best option to capture good photographs of birds in trees of 20 meters high hehe, but for something you start!

Once at the ranch we entered the micro-batch of Buorbon coffee, but we had already harvested some days earlier in this area, so we went to the micro batch of typica or criollo coffee, which is considered the best or one of the best in the world. Arabicas Cafes, for having good qualities of aroma and flavor in the cup. Although it is not very productive, it is considered ideal for the production of special coffees due to the size of the grain and other more technical aspects.

Well, now, we started to harvest!

As I mentioned in the previous post, to guarantee the quality of a coffee cup, we should harvest only ripe cherries, but not only red cherries are ripe, there are also other varieties of coffee within Arabicas such as Buorbon, Caturra or Catuai that produce yellow fruits in their optimum state of maturation.

And once the bags of coffee are full, they are mounted to the donkey and sent to the profit center of the hacienda. Something very important is that technically, if we are going to do a process of wet profit or washing, the coffee can not remain in bags for more than 24 hours in the hacienda since the fermentation process starts in the sack and the quality is decreasing , resulting in unpleasant tastes in the cup and loss of grain weight, which translates into economic losses for the producer.

Once the coffee arrives at the profit center another selection is made, where cherries are extracted green, pintonas, on ripe and dry, in addition to strange objects such as sticks, stones, among others. Little by little, the quality of the coffee that will be reflected in the cup at the time of the tasting is guaranteed in each process.

Once the sack of coffee cherries is cleaned, the pulping process is carried out and then it is decided whether it is washed or the drying process is carried out with the mucilage, which is called the honey process. In many cases we lean towards the honey process because it is an ecological process and does not require the use of clean water. In addition, the honey coffee is very demanded by baristas and connoisseurs of good coffee for its balance between acid and sweet, in addition to having a good body. In the following image you can see in the African bed a small amount of coffee beans with three different benefits, the clearest one is a washed coffee, followed by a honey coffee and finally and in smaller quantity a sample of natural coffee. The natural coffee is dried without removing the peel, that is, dried as it is harvested from the plant.

And as everything I know, as we say in Venezuela, the day has come to return to the city, an experience with new knowledge about coffee growing, and we know from these experiences that we will value this precious beverage more, for the hard effort made by producers in the field, so that this drink is possible.

Once back, going down to Bergantin, we could not lose the opportunity to buy a freshly made cassava.

 Cassava cassava (or simply cassava or cassava) is an unleavened bread, crispy, thin and circular made from cassava flour, this is cooked in a budare, comal or grilled. Its production and consumption goes back to pre-Hispanic times; It is made from cassava or cassava. Cassava was one of the main crops of the pre-Columbian era along with corn. Due to the conservation possibilities, the casabe was one of the main sources of food for the indigenous peoples of the north of the subcontinent, and was part of the traditional diet of the Taínos, Carib and Arawak native inhabitants of the Caribbean. (Source)

I hope you enjoyed the visit to the coffee zone of Bergantin if you do not see the first part below I leave the link, it is all for today, blessed day and remember to give upvote!

One week harvesting Coffee at Coffee Farm 4D - Bergantin Venezuela ----- 1st Part