Summary

Details

This is a brand new in 2023 wet mill set up in Gedeb Yirgacheffe on 32 acres where future plans include a modern processing facility. This wet mill collects cherries from local small-holder farmers in the region.

As of this writing, the station was set up on a temporary basis with the basic necessitates to process exceptional coffee, but this infrastructure will be taken down once permitting and licensing is complete for the official buildings. 

Coffees in Ethiopia are typically grown on very small plots of land by farmers who also grow other crops. The majority of smallholder farmers will deliver their coffee in cherry form to a nearby washing station or central processing unit, where their coffee will be sorted, weighed, and paid. Coffee is then processed, usually washed or natural methods, by the washing station and dried on raised beds.

The washing stations serve as many as several hundred to sometimes a thousand or more producers, who deliver cherry throughout the harvest season: The blending of these cherries into day lots makes it virtually impossible under normal circumstances to know precisely whose coffee winds up in which bags on what day, making traceability to the producer difficult. Many of the farmers in this lot own less than 1/2 hectare of land, and as little as 1/8 hectare on average.

While this is not "naturally grown", farmers in this region don't have access to and therefore do not utilize fertilizers or pesticides in the production of coffee. 

Natural Process

Natural coffees are typically delivered the day they are harvested, and are first sorted for ripeness and quality before being rinsed clean of dirt. Then they are spread on raised drying beds or tables, where they will be rotated constantly throughout the course of drying. Drying can take an average of 8–25 days, depending on the weather.

Yirgacheffe Region

Yirgacheffe has become famous for coffees that tastes like blueberries. This region is plentiful. The thick vegetation is a product of the warm tropical climate with moderate wet and dry seasons. Most coffee is shade-grown by small producers using organic practices. Coffees are cultivated from 1,600 to 2,400 masl in these highlands. The multitude of micro-regions creates complex profiles depending on the washing station a particular coffee is from.

Ethiopia

Among coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia holds near-legendary status not only because it’s the “birthplace” of Arabica coffee, but also because it is simply unlike every other place in the coffee world. Unlike the vast majority of coffee-growing countries, the plant was not introduced as a cash crop through colonization. Instead, growing, processing, and drinking coffee is part of the everyday way of life, and has been for centuries since the trees were discovered growing wild in forests and eventually cultivated for household use and commercial sale.

The majority of Ethiopia’s farmers are smallholders and sustenance farmers, with less than 1 hectare of land apiece across all crops they grow. In many cases, it is almost more accurate to describe these farms as “coffee gardens” as the trees do sometimes grow in more of a garden or forest environment than what we imagine fields of farmland to look like. There are some large privately owned estates, as well as co-operative societies comprising a mix of small and more mid-size farms, but the average producer here grows relatively very little for commercial sale.