Diary of our trip to Kenya
Last December we traveled again to Kenya in order to develop new and exclusive lots of coffee with producers through the knowledge and experience we have in this country.
The first part of the trip was focused on the coffee-growing region of Nyeri, a region located between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare mountain ranges, in this region we have resumed relations and partnerships with KCCEFor those of you who do not know this acronym, it stands for ‘.Kenya Cooperative Coffee Exporters’, a cooperative founded in 2009 and supported by the Government to meet the needs of Kenyan coffee farmers. to have more control over the marketing of its own production in order to obtain higher net yields and address various challenges faced by the coffee sector related to production, quality, marketing and value added to coffee.
At Mare Terra we are very happy to have taken up this new stage together with KCCE to have resumed this new stage together with KCCE, since we share the vision of empowering the producers and their dedication and their dedication has a great commitment.
For the first time in Nyeri together with KCCE, we have added new washing station cafes, these washing stations (known locally as “factories”) are organized within Cooperatives that are members of KCCE. E two factories we have developed our natural experiments with anaerobic fermentation and ‘sleeping bag’ drying technique repeating the process we had previously done in Murang’a and Kiambu.This is the first year in which we have carried out experimental processes in cooperatives in Kenya, until now we had only carried them out in small farms.
We couldn’t be happier with the results of the batches! They are stable and very clean lots and the farmers are very excited as this type of coffee creates a new market niche for them.
This time our trip in search of new coffees made us practically cross the country, and after Nyeri, we also visited the coffee growing regions of Kiambu, Machakos and Murang’a. We did not have time to visit Kericho and Nandi Hills, but coincidences do exist and we will explain why we say so later 😉
Near the town of Gitwe, in Kiambu, we have many producers who are old friends and neighbors, among them Paul Karani, producer of the lots Al Minar that are about to arrive in our warehouse. Paul is a neighbor of Moses Kamura, our Regulus producer from the Gifted Farm, James Kamuri from the Fram Estate and Manasse Kibochi from the Spikes Estate also live nearby, so we are fortunate to be able to visit them all, and get together to organize talks, review with our R&D partners about Mare Terra processes and techniques, share and continue learning together.
The results of the lots from this region never cease to amaze us year after year. They have very well defined profiles, balanced coffees among which you can find honey, violets, orange or red wine.
When we visited the region of Machakos our R&D team trained the team of George Muia, owner of the Oldonyo Sabuk farm led by manager Anthony Mutiso. The trainings with the team focused on creating natural and honeys lots since the region has ample potential to produce this type of process, due to its climate and altitude. DFrom Mare Terra, we are committed to this region, The Oldonyo farm is new and has advanced technology, irrigation and other advances.
In the Kiambu region, we work with the producers Edwin and Mary, who produce our Al Jabban AGAThis couple of producers are neighbors of the Ibutiti farm with which we already work, by chance visiting Mercy Murathe we met them and soon we were enthusiastic about their lots, in addition Edwin and Mary have a coffeeshop in Nairobi where they roast their own coffee!
Distance limited us and we were unable to visit the Kericho and Nandi Hills region, where the Rosebella producer, owner of the Chepsangor Estate, is located. Chepsangor Farm. Even so, the first test of experimental coffees with her was possible, once Rosebella visited Machakos and made an exchange of training and experiences with the Oldonyo Sabuk team. And as we said before, as fate would have it, we were finally able to meet her at the WOC in Milan last June, and see that behind those big lots, there is a strong, brave and very smiling woman, whom we will surely meet again.
Here ends our Kenya travel diary, soon we will start organizing the next destinations and we promise to share it all with you.
