DRYING COFFEE BEANS
IN THE STREET
Last Monday when I visited Pueblo Nuevo to issue
the Newsletter I visited a "frutarķa," or fruit store, to buy a few pounds of
bananas and other things. You can see what was on the street before the frutarķa in the
picture below:
Those are coffee beans drying in the open air.
In and around Pueblo Nuevo I see coffee shrubs next to people's homes but really this
is not coffee-growing country. It's too high and chilly here for growing coffee
commercially. The frutarķa owner had bought these beans from somewhere warmer downslope,
now is drying them himself, and later will grind them, roast them and sell packages of
freshly ground coffee in his store.
One reason I like this particular frutarķa -- the blue and red one at the right in the
picture -- is that the owner can just look at a bag of bananas and tell you how many
bananas need to be added or subtracted in order to have the 1.5 kilo or whatever quantity
you're buying. He's never wrong and can do the same thing with carrots, potatoes and chili
peppers. |