ADIOS MONSOON, HOLA WINTER!

Work is in full steam as the monsoon has finally given way to winter. The first month will be restricted to post-monsoon maintenance work which is a must in these parts – repairs and de-weeding the roads, retailing the damaged roofs, correcting the moisture damage to walls, equipment and furniture etc.

On the farm front, we are excited to partner with Clea Chandmal to try out the forest floor way for coffee. We are starting with three experimental blocks capturing different zones in the estate to make sure we have a robust solution.

The highlight of the month was Coffee Santhe, an annual event that brings together the coffee community – planters, roasters, baristas, cuppers etc. For us, it was eye-opening to witness the depth of the coffee industry. The surprise, however, was the feedback we got for our robusta coffee, with some Q-graders referring to it as ‘A beauty’ and our coffee scoring between 83 and 86.5 (rare for a coffee in general and almost unheard of for robusta). We are now looking forward to streamlining our practices to give traceability across the zone and some interesting post-harvest practices to enhance the taste and scores even further.