Day 3 - 20 JUN - Mountain THUNDER!

We started off the day strong! Anne-Marie rode the recumbent bike for an hour this morning and I went for an hour jog. After some breakfast, we headed up the mountain to a coffee farm by the name of Mountain Thunder THUNder THUNDER!!! This coffee farm, mill and roasting facility was featured on an episode of Dirty Jobs.

This fun little lion kitty greeted us. They had hot, fresh, pure Kona coffee available for everyone. I definitely got the tour started with a buzz.

This is the nice hut where they were showing the Dirty Jobs episode and some other interviews of the owner on his property.

This is the main facility where they sort the beans, dry them and roast them.

This is a cluster of growing coffee cherries. I think that they said it takes 9 months for a cherry to reach maturity.

The guide is showing us some ripe coffee cherries. Most cherries have 2 coffee seeds. Cherries with just one are called peaberries. Peaberries have a more concentrated flavor and are more prized than normal coffee beans.

Anne-Marie's Grandpa West grew hydrangias like these in his garden.

The husks are removed from the coffee cherries. We got to taste them. They didn't taste bad. They tasted kind of like cherry skins. Once the husks are removed, the beans are dried in the sun. They are brought to this hopper where they are carried to the top and then dropped down and sorted into different bags. My lovely model (and fiance) is demonstrating proper coffee bean sorting technique. Folks, she doesn't even have to practice to be this pretty!

This machine shakes the dried beans. The heavy beans move UP the ramp to the left. The "bad", lighter beans roll to the right and down. Coffee is graded by the number of "bad" beans in the mix per 100 (?).

This is where all the good beans go.

This is quite an amazing machine. It sorts the beans SUPER fast as they fly by a color detector. The screen shows the quality of the bean.

Then, we entered MY favourite part of the tour, the roasting room! Here the beans are cooked up to 447 F. They smelled AWESOME as they were spilled from the roaster. That probably led me to buy so much of this wonderful coffee after the tour.

Back out in the yard, this poor little kitty had a broken leg. I think that he was licking at it because it itched so much.

Here I am standing at the top of the road that leads down into the coffee fields. I wish that I could grow my own coffee. Sigh.

I thought that it was interesting that the gift shop was constructed from 2 shipping containers. Of course, inside is where the good stuff is. Yeah!

This is the entrance to the Mountain Thunder coffee farm and mill. Mountain Thunder is one of 48 organic coffee growers. They don't use herbicides like Round-Up to keep the weeds away from their coffee plants. They let the ducks do that. Pretty cool, eh? Seriously, they use ducks. That way I don't get coffee that tastes like Round-Up. This is always a good thing. Also, they use donkeys for moving the coffee around and also for fertilizer. They use the coffee husks and other natural coffee by-products for mulching. Apparently, the owner was a maverick because he was growing his coffee at too high of an altitude where it was too cold and he was going to do it organically which has a lower yield than using herbicides. His coffee has won 14 best coffee awards. Apparently, he ios doing something right! His coffee is wonderful. I think that I drank enough for everyone.