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Coffee

Coffee Roaster

Why roast your own coffee, and what does this have to do with heirloom gardening? Good question!

More than 95% of coffee in the world is consumed stale. Coffee stays fresh about 2 weeks after roasting and 3 days after grinding. Green coffee beans on the other hand will retain their quality for a few years at least. Since many of us don’t have easy access to good quality fresh roasted coffee, roasting your own is a good alternative. Roasting a batch of coffee takes about 15 minutes, and is easy to do once you get the hang of it.

There was a time when all coffee was grown in the shade of trees. Because of the climate required for coffee, this usually meant it was grown in rainforests. This turned out to be a win-win situation for both farmers and the rainforests, because growing coffee did little damage to the environment and was economically sustainable. Since coffee is the most valuable commodity in the world after oil, it was easy for the farmer to make a fair profit. Farmers could also operate independently, because the original coffee plants were old varieties, free from intellectual property rights and needed little in the way of chemical sprays or fertilizers. Growing coffee resulted in near 100% profit for the farmers, and in a bad year the worst that happened was they didn’t make any money.

Then everything changed. Along came a new variety of coffee, an F1 hybrid, that could tolerate direct sunlight. In addition the yields of this type of coffee were much higher than the older varieties. Since this new type of coffee was a patented hybrid, it meant the farmers had to purchase the seeds instead of saving their own. In addition the plants required full sun, so couldn’t be grown in the shade of trees anymore, and it required the use of chemical sprays and fertilizers which were also patented.

For the coffee farmers, it was an opportunity to make more money, or so it seemed. By growing this new type of coffee, with possibly double or triple yields when compared with their older varieties of coffee, their higher profits more than made up for the additional costs. For many farmers the need for direct sunlight was also an easy problem to solve, by simply cutting their rainforests down.

Suddenly the world’s coffee markets became flooded with this new kind of coffee. Prices fell, and the increased yields were no longer enough to make up for the extra costs of the new coffee. Suddenly farmers found themselves not only unable to make a living wage growing coffee, but having to pay royalties on their seeds, pesticides and fertilizers just to keep their farms alive. The only farmers who could survive were the ones who could expand fast enough to grow even more, and flood the already saturated world markets with still more coffee. Suddenly there was no going back to the old ways of growing coffee.

Yes, it’s true. You can make a difference by buying Fair Trade coffee, but that only addresses part of the problem. By roasting your own coffee it is a little easier to buy shade grown coffee as direct as possible from coffee plantations or cooperatives. If you are on holiday in a coffee growing region of the world, you can buy the coffee at it’s source knowing it will last several years after you bring it home. Being able to roast your own coffee offers more possibilities to buy coffee over the Internet, from the right kinds of places.

If you have easy access to fresh roasted socially responsible coffee, having a coffee roaster may not change much. If not, and you drink a lot of coffee, it might be worth considering. If for no other reason, drinking fresh coffee instead of stale coffee makes a big difference!

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Past and Pending Trials

In the comment discussion of my previous post, it occurred to me I never explained that most of what I do in my garden are trial plantings.

I have been gardening the same bit of land now for 2+ years. The first year I didn’t know what would grow there, so I planted a bit of everything. What grew well were beans, peas, cole plants, beets and chard, carrots, leaks, celeriac (celery root) and garlic.

The next year, I did more trials with things like turnips, rutabagas, wheat, and spelt. I also did expanded plantings of some of the things that had done well the previous year. I planted about 30 different cole plants, 5 different carrots, 28 different kinds of garlic and related plants, 10+ kinds of beets, 10+ kinds of swiss chard, and so on. What did well were the garlic (but it’s not yet harvested), the purple cauliflower and red brussel sprouts I posted about before, several carrots and peas.

At this stage many things are not clear. Many things that did well the first year, didn’t do well the second like the cole plants and beets. I also had problems getting my wheat seed to germinate. Many of these things can be attributed to weather, weed infestations, planting depth or distance problems, watering issues, soil fertility, pest or other problems. Some of these things are just not clear what went right or wrong. In any event, more future trials will probably shed some light on these things.

There are many goals in these trials. What grows well in my garden, what tastes good, what has pest and disease resistance, what has high yields, what fits well in rotation schemes with other plants, from which plants is seed saving practical and so on.

Often there are goals unrelated to the type of plant that can change the outcome, such as a new mulching or weed control technique. Although it’s not usually on purpose, I frequently end up with a complex set of variables in a trial. There is almost never a clear outcome to a trial.

In any given planting trial, I am happy if 50% of what I plant grows into something interesting. In the end the idea is to figure out what works best for me, then do expanded plantings and seed saving from these crops. What doesn’t do well is just discarded.

Since seed saving often means protecting plants from cross pollinating, it’s often easier to either plant many varieties in a trial or plant one variety for seed saving, but not both in the same year.

When dealing with heirloom vegetables, you are always dealing with huge numbers of varieties. For example there are thought to be 4000 different kinds of tomatoes! That’s 100 tomatoes a year for 40 years without ever planting the same one twice. It’s the same with almost all types of heirloom fruits and vegetables. There is no point wasting your time with anything that doesn’t work well for you, but at the same time half the fun is continuing to try different varieties or retrying varieties that you think deserve a second chance. When you find the right variety, you can then work on improving it by roguing out undesirable traits and not saving seeds from those plants.

So, what’s coming next for this year? In progress I have a garlic and related plant trial, and I plan to expand this with even more varieties. I have several kinds of peas, beans, carrots, beets, chard, corn (maize) and other things either planned or already planted. I’ll post pictures of whatever does well.