15 pickers, two types of cherries, two different picking prices...........happy chaos.  We picked the farm almost clean. 
Just took a bit longer than usual to pay everyone.

Each guy or girl came up to the bucket to get their volume measured in Maduro (red cherries) and Verde (green cherries).  We record name, type of cherry, latas and then get signatures. 

Not familiar with this crew.  They came from a near by larger farm on their Sunday off.   The pickers are starting to leave to go back to the Comarca/Ngobe reservation, so the crews we used earlier in the season have already left.   I start to wonder if all is present and correct when we have a whole family of Maduro and Verde surnames on the list.  Start again.  

Then for the maths.  Up until now we only picked red cherries and paid $3 per lata - given quantities of latas picked in a day has never in my experience on this farm exceeded 12 per picker, most of us know our 3x tables and can do the sums in our heads.

Yesterday, much more challenging.   We paid $2.25 per lata of green cherries; $3.25 per lata of red mature cherries.  We pay more as the picking is harder, less to get.  We were cleaning the farm of all fruit, some was ripe some was not.  

The manager, the supervisor and me all reached our mental math ceilings on the first picker.   I retreated back to the Casa for my calculating machine.

Finally, ATMs don't work for paying coffee pickers.  All fifteen made somewhere between $10 and $20 dollars.  Lots of ones, fives and change needed.   LOTS.   Think 30 five pound notes, 20 or so singles and around $10 of quarters and dimes.  My purse feels lighter than it has in a long time.

Coffee culture here is varied and interesting.   There really is no limit to the range of possibilities in coffee experiences out there.   From the cupping rooms of the top coffee estates to little road side operations.


Today, on my morning walk up the mountain, I found a lady doing her own thing with coffee on the side of the road.  I stopped to chat.  She was delighted to show me her process.  

She dries the coffee for 3 days, then peels roughly by hand.  Then it goes through the hand turned maize grinder before being sorted and roasted in a thick bottomed pan on the fire.

While we were pushing coffee through the maize grinder she picked up her phone and started to make some calls.  Surprised but not so much anymore, I thought she was trying to sell me black soil at $15 per meter for my farm; but some 20 mins later,  I realized she was trying to sell me her farm.  

Anyway, she could not have been more generous with her time and gave me some of her coffee which has a rather nice fruity chocolate in there somewhere.  Thank you!  And anyone interested in a coffee farm in Palmira  for $15 a square meter, I'll happily  put you in touch with the vendor.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we pick the last of the coffee in the hot strong sunshine and refreshing summer breezes.  

The coffee trees are looking tired, it is time to relieve them of the fruit they are struggling to mature and let them grow new branches.  Some trees are starting to flower and we want to channel their energy in a controlled way into growth that will yield our coffee and to do that we need to prune.

We will take the red, the green and the defective dried berries..... we will take every last fruit off the farm.  This is the end of the harvest.  Time to prune, get rid of diseased branches and re-generate for next year.

The red will be sold at a reasonable price, the rest will barely  cover costs and will end up in the National market.  It will however, allow us to clean our farm of every last cherry and get on with a long list of jobs we need to accomplish before planting time.

We are nearing the end of the harvest here in Boquete.  I was interested in finding out what our coffee pickers are looking for in terms of good working conditions.   Getting good coffee pickers is increasingly one of the keys to success.

This is what I found:   Apart from lots of coffee and sunny days to pick it............Panama is not keeping pace with Costa Rican incentives.  Here in Chiriqui  province, we are very close to the border with Costa Rica.   Over the border, they are offering the Indigenous coffee pickers from Panama a much sweeter deal.

Fortunately, most of the harvest in Costa Rica finishes before ours really starts but it is a big problem in the first half of the season.

In Costa Rica the government subsidizes coffee farming activities, so the coffee farmers have larger margins to play with.  Here are some of the things they are doing:

• The big farms in Costa Rica arrange all the transport from the Comarca over the border to the farms and pay for the travel.  This is an enormous benefit. 

• They offer bigger rooms with televisions, gas stoves and electric lights.   The owners of the farms give gifts for fiestas and Christmas and help with food and medicine.   

• They also pay $3.50 per lata.  We are paying this year $3 and this is the highest for many years.  Still for the Indigenous even coffee picking in Panama is good money.
  

So what is the worst thing about coffee picking I asked:   "When it rains and we can not pick".  

Translated from Ngobe to Spanish to English.  Ngobe itself is probably not the original language and was put into our alphabet by the Spanish missionaries.

We speak  Natore the language of the Ngobe.  Some of us speak a little Spanish, very very few can write in Spanish.

We have songs, Jegui, mostly for fiestas.  There are seven or so dances: Snakes, Frogs, Shells, Butterflies and some more.   Not everyone knows how to dance them all.

Please call us Ngobe.  Indigenous is OK.  We don't like to be called Indio.   

Our dress is the Nagua.  It was designed by the Spaniards.  They  did not want us to dress or look the same as they did.   There are lots of colors and patterns and on special days there are versions in blue and white.

Some of us celebrate marriage, others don't bother with a ceremony.  Marriage is called Ya Cobaira.  We ask permission of our parents but it is our choice and there is no dowry or payments involved.

Men make the decisions, like where we will go to pick coffee but we share responsibility to educate our children and when the women are very busy with children the men have to cook.

We eat mainly vegetables.   We have a special onion type vegetable that only grows in the Comarca and is very special.  We like drinks made of maize and yucca.  There is no milk in our diet and very few eggs.

Plants on the right are the good ones.  We have put them in rows to get air between them and with the morning sun.

Plants to the left are trash.  We sorted through them today....they will need to be returned to the vivero from which they came - not worth the 40 cents a piece they cost.

Frantically looking for about five thousand baby coffee plants to put into the farm in May/June when it starts to rain.   That will give me about 5.5K to plant out.

Only about 500 out of the 1000 in the picture will be worth taking care of, the rest are trash.  No point putting in less than a perfect plant as the real cost is in caring for it. 

Ideally seeds should have been sown in December for planting six months later.  So, I am too late this year to do my own and was not geared up to do it anyway.  I need to buy from the viveros around town.  Unfortunately, this is fraught with problems.   People do a better job when it is for themselves or their own farm, and that is just a fact of life here.

Planting coffee seeds should not be so hard but apparently it is.  Often the bags are not stuffed with soil so the roots do not grow all the way down but stop half way.  Sometimes, the beans were planted the wrong way up so the root is crooked.   Sometimes, they are just not cared for right and get rust and other fungal diseases.   They also need to be fertilized often to get a good start.   

Looking for a mixture of varietals.   Interestingly all we have found in the nurseries around town is Catuai and Geisha.   

Geisha although much heralded is not perfect for my farm.   The full taste will not come out at my altitude and I am left with an odd sized bean to try to roast with the rest.    Judging by the quantities of Geisha now being produced it looks like Boquete will be half Geisha in 10 yrs time.   I am not sure that is a good thing.

Most of the farm is already Catuai.  It is a very nice coffee but susceptible to red rust and other fungal problems.   This is a big issue right now and almost every year at this time on my farm and others around town.    

I think we will have to start our own vivero to start growing coffee beans in black sacks.  I want to plant some Caturra and more Typica.   I like the idea of Caturra as it is disease resistant and frankly a better looking bush to put closer to the house.   They tend to be shorter bushier plants and easy to pick. 

Lovely weather, lovely flowers........not so much coffee.  

It is a hard life as a Ngobe woman.  I have 7 children, she has 9.   She lost two, I kept all mine but there were worrying times.   No help, I did it all by myself, the men were working.   

My grandfather told me about the Volcano, about fires and heat.  He said it would happen again.  He told us to do something before then to stop it.   I think he meant make a sacrifice or something like that, I am not sure.

Off up the mountain today to see my lovely friend and her family on the Rosas family strawberry farm.   Thank you Nino Rosas for the lovely fresh berries.  

I headed down the mountain with six pounds of sweet berries that were picked in the morning and had already been hulled.   It really does not get any better than that.

Back home my little house smells of strawberry.  The jam is cooked into a delicious ruby red jelly.  These are perfect strawberries for jamming, apart from the great flavor, they are heirloom size and hold shape and color very well.   I now have home made strawberry jam to for tea.  How perfect. 

You can find the Rosas family farm at the top of the El Salto road.  Samantha speaks Spanish and English and can help you make an appointment to get strawberries:      Tel:   6130 0809 

They said they have no books in the Ngobe language except the Bible, which has been translated.  They said they have no stories any more, their great grandparents used to tell them but they do not tell their children.  

They do not know their history, they are not taught Ngobe history in the schools on the reservations (the Comarca).  They seemed indifferent to the burial sites, the petroglyphs and the pottery artifacts, they have no special meaning or pride for them.  At least not for the group I was speaking with.

So, what about those red bandanas.  The red hats on the babies.  The red baseball caps?  I saw three of you wearing those a few weeks ago macheting long grass around the coffee on my farm.  I took some photographs.   The young Ngobe men wielding their machetes and sharpening the blades.  At the time, it had made me curious.

"Oh they are to remember our dead:  The Spaniards, they killed almost all of us.  Very few survived and we are descended from the small number of survivors.  We remember them." 

"Actually, there is one story, the story of Urraca.  He was a Ngobe chief who led us to battle against the Spaniards 500 years ago".

So what do you think of Gringos?  I asked with some trepidation. 

"We like you, you are kind.  You don't mind that our children are dirty, you hold and love our children and think they are pretty"