As we prepare to plant coffee Amie and I yesterday completed washing 14,000 beans, give or take, from the most recent harvest of coffee from this land where we live. As big as that number sounds, it is just a few pounds of green beans, picked from several trees that have held on over the years.
In previous years this would provide a month’s drinkable coffee, but this year we will germinate the beans instead. We selected the fully formed, unbroken beans like those above, separating out the small percentage of broken or misshapen beans like those to the right. After germination, by August we expect to have between 3,000 and 4,000 viable seedlings we will keep in a nursery. One year from now those will be saplings ready to plant in the ground. We are approaching this task traditionally, by hand, sight of eye, and a few simple analog tools.
This morning we will dig holes for the first of the shade trees going onto that land where the coffee will be planted. But first, the news. The best I could find, for motivation, involves a man temporarily in New York City, working in a museum. His work, and the exhibition he is tending to, provides me context for the countryside as it still is for many coffee farmers here, and the technology transforming the countryside for future generations. Already plenty of coffee farmers are using technology as advanced as that of the tomato man in the story below. Without romanticizing the hard labor of traditional coffee farming, the work we are doing makes me more appreciative of the coffee farmers we source from. Thanks to Elizabeth A. Harris for this story:
The Museum Is Closed, but Its Tomato Man Soldiers On
Although the Guggenheim’s “Countryside” show was shuttered by the pandemic, its crop of cherry tomatoes is still growing, and feeding New Yorkers.
Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
The halls of the Guggenheim Museum are pretty quiet these days, with mostly just its ghosts and some security guards as company for the art.
Oh, and there’s the guy who takes care of the tomatoes.
David Litvin, an indoor crop specialist, tends the plants in a temporarily shuttered exhibition, “Countryside, The Future.” He moved to New York from Tel Aviv in February, along with his wife, Stefanie, and their Dutch shepherd, Ester, with a plan to stay six months harvesting the Guggenheim tomatoes. He was going to see the city, too.
“I went out once to a comedy bar, but that’s it,” he said.
The museum has been closed since March 13, but Mr. Litvin still walks across Central Park every day around noon from his rental on the Upper West Side to tend to his flock. “When you grow tomatoes on Fifth Avenue, you want to have the perfect tomatoes, there’s no room to mess up,” he said. “If I have ugly plants, I’ll hear it from the neighbors.” Continue reading
During those months–the shops fully opened in late November and until early March were nonstop full of guests–I had hundreds of conversations with travelers.
This team’s dream is spread across multiple geographies and results will be shared later. I will share what I know from Costa Rica. A few months ago, in a world that now seems far, far away Amie and I visited the farm where the cacao is grown for the farm-to-bar chocolate we offer in our shops. 
More on the cacao-growing and the chocolate-making later. Plus, this is where I first saw 
When Amie and I visited 
I bought beets and broccoli and various greens from the stall above a few days ago with no other shopper in close proximity. Good start. And plenty of other distancing measures in place, plus an abundance of soap and sinks and disinfectant sprays at every place where you can enter or exit the feria. Also good. But we remain convinced that a new social enterprise might help these farmers, and shoppers, more. And for that, our kitchen has been a laboratory for generating ideas, with various reading materials to assist. The Blue Zones Kitchen has been especially helpful.
While everyone must come to their own conclusion, for me the slow brew draws out that taste as well as any hot brew method. We have more blends, an espresso roast, and three single estates yet to be tested with the slow brew method, and I enjoy variation so I look forward to testing. But once the Reserve stood out as the best of the first three, it got me thinking about how to use the remaining portions of the first two slow brew blends. And I took a path that will horrify purists, but I am happy to report on the result.
The recipe for this will follow soon, because I have been varying it slightly each of the last few days, but as you can see there is a head on it, and there is a golden hue.
I have been drinking hot coffee every morning for four decades, plus 
I have been wondering in recent months whether there is something we can do to further reduce the carbon footprint of the coffee we sell? Is there a way to do that and simultaneously improve the taste of 
Instead of cold brew, a better name is slow brew, bypassing the carbon footprint of refrigeration. It is as simple as this: grind a pound of coffee at medium and place it in a stainless steel pot. Add two cups of room temperature water (I run tap water through a Britta filter) and gently stir the grounds.
Add eight more cups of water and cover, letting the coffee brew for at least 12 hours. Strain through a medium sieve–1/16 mesh is perfect for coffee ground at medium–into another stainless steel pot, letting it drip until the grounds look dry as in the picture to the right. Next use a fine sieve to strain the brew again. You will have about eight cups of coffee that is much stronger than I normally enjoy, but it is worth tasting for the intensity and complexity. After experimenting I found that combining one portion of slow brew with an equal portion of water created the perfect flavor profile.
Amie and I are following local rules in place over the Semana Santa holiday week, which ends today. Starting tomorrow there will be more freedom of movement. Most of our friends in Costa Rica feel confident in their country’s leadership during this time, and we have respected the rules and appreciated the clarity of their communication.
We are at home, and I took the photo at the top yesterday with a book we keep next to the binoculars. We have been seeing two different species of bird coming to that window, and I did my best to capture the more colorful pair. I was hoping to get the male and female at the same time on the rail, with their entry in the book clearly in view in the lower right of the frame. I took what I could get. The entry for this pair is on a page with the header Plate 47: Larger Red or Yellow Tanagers which then specifies:
Positive id. During the setup for that shot, looking out our family room window Amie noticed that one of our coffee trees still has blossoms on it. The white flowers to the right, slightly droopy, signal the beginning of the fruit production cycle that will culminate in December with the ripe red cherries we have been harvesting for 20 years now. Just a few days ago the beans from the most recent harvest were ready, and I placed them in a sack after they had been sundried and the husks removed. We call them beans but they are really seeds, and unlike the previous 20 years when this coffee has been roasted and consumed, this year I will germinate them to 
Organikos 