The most fresh cuppa coffee in my life

In Salento the "Plantation House" hostal owners Christina and Tim also own a small coffee "Finca" and Tim gives every morning a fun two hour tour. The tour ends with the most fresh cup of coffee you can ever wish for. The photo above is at the end of the tour when the process of the last steps of the coffee production are explained. Walking down from the hostal, the FINCA is found:

The scenery is beautiful and the FINCA has all sort of eco-experiments going on. The path to the farm shows you many different plants and fruits, among them the pineapples (below some plants and one of them with a fruit - did you know they grow that way...?):

The coffee plants grow best in the shade, so lots of other trees (such as banana trees) can offer such shade. They need good fertile (mostly vulcano) soil at a certain altitude (best between 1200 and 2000 meters if I remember well from Tim's explanations). The main harvest is in October-November, but there are several other smaller harvest moments, also one in March-April. Coming closer to the farm I took a photo on which you can see on the right a small guest room Tim has built there as well as the retractable roof for the drying of the coffee beans. Below that photo a few photos of the guest room & its very nice view, as well as a more detailed photo of the moveable roof:

Tim is in the process of making a rain water collection system with a solar powered pump to always have fresh and clean water. Here is his design and a few photos of the system:

Tim explained the growing, harvesting and production process with this photo collection, and you will just have to do the tour yourself to hear all the details. All I can say is that he does a great job and is a very entertaining story-teller.

The nursery grows the small plants to a certain size before planting them for production. The larger cofee plants are all over the terrain. In the demonstration kitchen the staff then shows the process of peeling the coffee beans of several of its layers before the roasting and grinding can take place

The freshly roasted and grinded cup of coffee was certainly a special treat at the end of the tour!

Now as a true coffee-addict/affectionado I better know how the coffee is produced... :-)