Aggie Horticulture goes to Guatemala

This blogs contains a few of the impressions that the first "Service Learning Coffee Origins" Study Abroad course left on the student participants. The course took place in San Miguel Escobar and was conducted in partnership with De La Gente . Scroll down to read more about this incredible experience. The Group at Cerro de la Cruz, overlooking the city of Antigua, Guatemala.

I only have happy thoughts when I reflect upon my time in Guatemala.  Each day was filled with some kind of new experience and it opened my eyes to a whole new world, sort of like Aladdin. I went into the trip only having only book knowledge of Guatemala. I knew very little about the people I would be coming into contact with while in their country. Most of the people I met were hard working, kind-hearted people.  The De La Gente employees were hospitable in every way and made us feel right at home immediately.  We arrived and all transportation, housing, food and translators were supplied to us.  DLG offered us a well planned, stress free trip that I would recommend to anyone looking to go into the coffee industry.   The trip taught me that my original ideas of how the coffee industry worked were very flawed and that the industry needs restructured to improve the overall quality of the growers. I have developed a compassion and mad respect for the workers...

Day 4       Our breakfast today consisted of eggs, beans, tortillas and fruit. We opened some of the fruits we got at the market last night. It was our first time trying cacao beans. We only sucked on the juicy stuff around the cacao beans. We also tried mango but it was oddly stringy. The passionfruit was everyone’s favorite but it we weren’t expecting it to be so grey. After breakfast, we went to a farmer’s house. We picked up some parchment coffee and walked it over to the mill. We got to put the beans through the machine that removes the parchment, the one that cleans them off more, and the machine that sorts them by size. After that we went back to his house and further sorted out the defective coffee beans. Some were in a shape they call “caracol” with means snail, referring to the shape of a snail’s shell. Others were tiny, too dark, misshapen, holes, or other noticeable blemishes. These beans are not thrown away. They can be used for fertilizer or they most lik...

Woke up at 0600 to go to Mass at 0630.   The church was very full.   I liked seeing that there were people of all ages there.   It seems like religion is still very important here.   After Mass I went back to the house, changed, and had breakfast.   A farmer, Gabriel, met us and took us to his house where we picked up baskets and then hiked to the coffee plots in the direction of Volcan de Agua.   We didn’t get to go as far as originally planned, which was kind of a bummer for me because I was enjoying the climb.   Gabriel told us the whole process of growing from seed to harvest.   A coffee plant reaches full production around five years, and has to be periodically pruned after that.   We harvested for about an hour and a half, then went back to Gabriel’s house for lunch.   After lunch we processed the coffee cherries, and Gabriel told us how the seeds would be rinsed and left in bucket to ferment for several hours, then spread o...

Today was one of the coolest days of my life. We woke up and walked to Farmer Gabriel’s house to pick up baskets and hiked to the finca on the mountainside. There we received a brief history of his time in the coffee farming business and then spent about 2 hours picking coffee cherries. It was so simple but it brought me such joy to get the ripe ones from the top of the trees because the short native Guatemalans can’t reach. I did this, of course, while overlooking the town of San Miguel Escobar with the mountains and volcanoes in the distance while talking to my new friends about almost everything. All together, we picked 93 pounds of cherries, and Gabriel and our British translator, Joe, put the strap of the bag around their foreheads with the bag on their back and walked it down the mountain; very impressive. When we finally made it back to Gabriel’s house, we went through each of the steps in coffee preparation; from tree to cup. Finally, we were able to enjoy una taza de café . Af...

What an incredible day it was… Possibly going to be the winner for the best day of the trip! We had the amazing opportunity to go up to the coffee field with Gabriel, one of the coffee farmers, and learn about the overall process of how coffee is made, beginning with harvesting and ending with tasting freshly made coffee. I felt completely content today in the coffee fields with the amazing scenery sounding us, it was pretty surreal. Gabriel talked about the process of growing the coffee seedlings for a year down in the houses and then transporting them to the fields in June. It then takes the coffee plants 4-5 years before they produce a full harvest. Every 15-20 years they prune the plants to the stump to generate new growth. All of this was really interesting to me and I really enjoyed focusing on learning about coffee production. We went back to Gabriel’s house for lunch and then continued discussing coffee over a classic Guatemalan meal. After lunch we actually got to ...