Aggie Horticulture goes to Guatemala

Day 3: March 12, 2017  Who needs an alarm clock when you have roasters? Breakfast was pineapple pancakes with strawberry jam, papaya, and cantaloupe. The only thing missing was more plantains! Today we got our hands dirty by following the coffee process from harvest to cup. I cannot describe how exhilarating it was to stand in the middle of Gabriel’s coffee field; we were surrounded by beautiful plants hiding little red treasures. Coffee cherries are deceptive little things… Each cherry must be picked when ruby red and not half yellow. However, only half the cherry can be seen before harvesting from the stem. By the end of the two hours, our fingers were covered in volcanic ash and our baskets were barely a third full of red cherries speckled with tiny touches of green and yellow. Gabriel carried our collective sack of cherries down the hill strapped to his forehead! A group our size usually collects around ten pounds of coffee cherries; we collected an impressive ninety pounds of c

Today is my last day in Guatemala. I will be going home early for the Aggie Rodeo. We spent the morning in Guatemala City. First, we visited Anacafe. There we learned about some of the coffee projects going on throughout the country. There is an American interest in solving issues that coffee farmers face, such as coffee leaf rust. We also toured their labs and testing facilities, and I was very impressed! I had no idea that so much equipment was used to test coffee flavor and consistency. For an engineering nerd like me, it was a blast! We visited a museum afterwards. There was quite a bit of documentation on the Mayan culture. The sophistication in their architecture still shocks me. I wonder what kinds of technology they used to construct their buildings and pinpoint their locations. The afternoon consisted of finca tours. We toured two fincas. There was a huge area set aside for the drying of coffee beans at the first finca. We were able to see the rest of the setup, and it se