Me wipe out a chocolate cherry
I read the stake and view that the farmer , a piece by the name of Gary Strawn , had called me out on a few of my presumptuousness about coffee ontogeny … so I decided to write him and see if he ’d be biz to spill about growing coffee .
I ’m very happy I did .
I ’ve talked to Gary a few times now and am very impressed with his practical thinking , his knowledge and his entrepreneurship . The guy is a total pro – and he cognise his coffee .
Gary Strawn in his umber drying star sign
Since I had an expert usable and since I ’ve been told many prison term to initiate a podcast , I decided to make my interview with Gary into the very first instalment ofThe Survival Gardener Podcast .
Me eating a coffee cherry
So , without further delay , here ’s how to grow coffee with Gary Strawn :
I necessitate Gary to provide a little backcloth on himself for my reader and he was genial enough to spell up some thoughts for me as well .
Gary Strawn’s Background
Hello , my name is Gary Strawn and I ’m a Kona coffee Fannie Merritt Farmer . I was n’t always a farmer , I used to be a electronic computer game programmer . One day I found myself staring out the windowpane at work and follow a building crew pouring concrete . I decided that I would rather be out there with them , all dirty , sweaty and tired , instead of sit in my cube , staring at my computing machine screen . So I take the air over to HR and tell I quit . They said they needed it in written material so I grabbed a post - it note and wrote “ I quit ” .
One thing led to another and finally I found myself on a farm in Hawaii , growing coffee for a life . grow deep brown is my only line of work , it ’s how I keep my family line feed , pay my mortgage and , hopefully , send out my kids to college . As a full - time farmer , I am focalise on give rise a commercial level harvest . Our farm has a enceinte garden , fruit tree , chickens , etc . but our elementary focal point is produce java . That have in mind we might do thing other than than someone with only a few Tree in their backyard .
Our kids have grown up on the farm but now they ’re moving out of the house and start their own life . This has prompted our decision to sell the farm and move on to our next adventure , whatever that might be . The understanding I mention this is because we have a “ Farm For Sale ” WWW pageboy with great pictures and a abbreviated overview of the farm . It ’s a great manner to learn what our farm is like , even for those with no interest in owning their own farm . Here ’s the direct link :
Gary Strawn in his coffee drying house
In increase to that overview , our website has a ton of web log posts . They show our life on the farm , from the sidereal day we bug out all the way to the most late post about some Survival Gardener guy trying to grow his own coffee .
When asked about growing coffee bean as a hobby , my answer is “ Go for it ! Just do n’t require to grow enough to replace Starbucks . ” Why ? Because it ’s not just the growing that ’s unmanageable , it ’s all the processing . Here ’s an example :
That ’s a “ medicine video ” I made with time - lapse footage of the drying operation . It show the drying process that happen after the beans are mill . The coffee demand to be raked constantly as it dry out . This video show one day out of many , many days of raking during the harvest time of year . This is also just one measure of the summons , it does not include any of the study require with growing , picking , pulp , hulling , ridicule packaging or selling the coffee .
The television show about 700 pounds of coffee being dry . That sounds like a whole batch of coffee tree , and for an individual it would be , but it ’s still count a smaller amount . A lot of the coffee shown in the video belong to to neighboring farm . While still professional farm , many of them do n’t have the proper milling equipment and facilities to process their own coffee . Instead they lend it to someone like me who processes their coffee for them then hands it back to them for a modest fee .
Someone growing trees in their backyard could , in theory , do all this piece of work without the fancy equipment . If everything run short well , and the umber tree diagram produced a cracking crop , then expecting one hammer of roasted coffee berry per tree is about ripe . Just do n’t count your chicken before they think up .
I looked through my sure-enough blog post but realized there ’s actually very small there about how to grow coffee . I feel like that ’s all I ever talk about , I ’ve just never really explained any of it in a how - to style . On the hopeful side , that means you’re able to be the first !
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Finally , Gary make high - end coffeewhich you could find here . I ’ve bought some myself and will let you bang how awesome it is once it arrives .
As for the new podcast , I ’m quite well-chosen with the way this interview turned out . I ’ve share a turn on coffee berry before but now I have a good clasp on how to develop coffee commercially , including how much work it takes . I ’ll be immortalize raw episodes with other expert in the future , along with some off - the - cuff conversations with gardener and homesteaders doing cool thing you ’ll see interesting .
