Today, I want to write a little bit about coffee production and about the mission at San Lucas. Both are fascinating to me!
The Mission at San Lucas has made such a HUGE impact on that community, it is hard to know where to start. In large part it is because of God using Father Greg, an american preist who came there 44 years ago. Father Greg has been the driving force behind helping the communitie's poor find a new way of life. He has established medical clinics, affordable housing, farming projects like the coffee coop, rabbit project, chicken/duck project, and the re-forrestation project. All of these projects inclusing the parochia have put local people to work improving the community and thus improving their lives. The Mission has sister church relationships with Catholic Churches in Minnesota and regularly has groups of Docs and others coming down for a week or two at a time to work. On our way out of town, we shared a ride with a college student who has come to San Lucas with his parents every year since he was a baby... and now is bringing his college fraternity brothers along!
The Coffee Co-op is a major part of this improvement that Father Greg has brought. The members are paid a fair price regardless of the market price which is usually lower than what they are paid. Coffee grows on a bush like plant on the hill sides... most of what we saw was shade grown coffee. It is picked when the green fruit turns red and then is processed at the Mission....it takes 500 lbs of fruit to get 60 lbs of roasted coffee!
Enjoy the pics! First you have coffee growing on a bush... then the place where the fruit is dried after de-pulping it, then the orange bags are this years unroasted harvest. The next machine takes the outer shell off the bean and the green beans are the product from that process. The barrel is one of two that holds about 150 lbs of coffee to be roasted over the coals in the roaster. They roast about 300 lbs a day at San Lucas.
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