Tag: All Things Coffee

  • My Coffee Journey

     

    Often I get asked “how did you get started in coffee?”  The answer lies beyond the buckets of Folgers that were brewed like a religious call to worship each morning as I grew up.  I guess the real start would have to lay next to the Mississippi river in the small university town of Winona, MN.  The best part of my college education, though I have only the highest respect and admiration for the art department (I don’t care what you say, Steve),  belongs to the boutique coffee roaster  Acoustic Cafe.  Many a late night I served over sized mugs of single origin coffee, long before it was the trendy marketing idea of third wave coffee houses.  The job did little for my already devastated varsity sleep patterns, but my barista skills, roasting knowledge and rudimentary cupping got their fledgling beginnings.  Really it was just a bunch of newly baptized coffee geeks experimenting, one batch and one poorly pulled shot at a time.  But it was a start.

    12 years later I find myself a bit more involved in the whole bean process, cupping and grading enough coffee to understand the difference between a wet processed and a dry processed Ethiopian and drinking enough espresso that someone can make my day by making it properly.

    The reality is that I am not the answer to all things coffee.  If a table was set for a dinner inviting the most knowledgeable coffee geeks in the world, I’d be the guy in a hair net washing dishes or pealing the potatoes.  But I’d be loving it.  Forever labeling me the optimist, Camera Girl chirps, “Why do you always think ANYTHING is possible?”  And that is why Burundi is such a tasty location for me.  It’s my way of sinking my teeth into the juicy ripe fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Coffee.  I’ve tasted the fruit and I can’t stop now.

    Along the way I hope that this is not all for me.  It’s my ever optimistic attempt to combine my love of coffee with my love of relationships and the value of the individual.  Can I be Coffee Guy and impact a nation?  Will my wife thrive and succeed as a photographer and mom in Burundi?  Will Boy Adventurer and Mr. Biter excel, or will they become two strange Third Culture Kids?  That’s what this Long Miles Coffee Project is about to find out.

    Coffee Guy

  • Why Burundi, Pt. 2

    In my last post I told you that as a family, we needed some change. But of all the places in the whole of the world, why Burundi?

    Well, because we needed to face our fears and do it anyway!  Because it would be easy to stay in Durban, grow old in Durban doing the same thing the rest of our lives (we’re good at it and it is oh, so comfortable for us here!).  We knew that if we did that we would never experience the best life out there waiting for our family. The kind of life where you put your foot forward in the morning and don’t know what’s about to happen.

    Burundi fit that description for us and when we came face to face with the needs of the coffee farmers, we knew we had the skills to help… if we could just risk normality. We never would have chosen Burundi if we had been given a choice of a random three countries (it’s the 2nd poorest country in the world, fresh out of civil war and rebel conflict and still in shock over decades of genocide and ethnic conflict). When I first told Kristy that Burundi might be the right place for us, she replied with, “Is that a city?”

    But Burundi did have exactly what we needed.  Coffee, people and potential.  I live for potential.  It’s one of my driving motivators.  This place has more potential then any other african country to produce the best quality coffee on the continent.  It’s a country that derives 96% of its foreign income through coffee. It’s population has the lowest GDP of any country in the world and my eyes were opened to an amazing opportunity.  Long Miles Coffee Project is not just about me being a coffee guy, but its a chance to help an entire country through cupping coffee and showing it to the world.  For our whole family to step out together into adventure, risk, faith, and turn our world view on it’s head.  It’s revealing hidden treasure and rewarding the farmers who precariously grew this treasure never knowing if they would live to see the fruits of their labor.  It’s about transforming whole communities.   We are starting with their coffee but our hope is to change their lives holistically.

    I want to see these farmers live a better life.  Get a fair price for their coffee.  Give them a hope that trying harder will pay dividends. Walk with them as communities as they become self sufficient, caring, grace filled places of hope.  Connect farmers to agronomists whom I have invested in and mentored to share a greater hope then just more money and better crops.  To show my boys that they can do anything they set their mind to.  To live facing our fears.  To be adventurers.  Never hold back, especially when you want to.  Stop living a life of “I should.”

    Long Miles Coffee Project is my way to change our lives while attempting to change a nation.  It has the potential to be “too hard”, to break us, to burn us out…. but I think it will do just the opposite.

    Coffee Guy

     

  • The Stress-O-Meter

    Warning: These images have nothing to do with this blog post, except that looking at early morning moments with my boys makes me less stressed. You? Hmmm… doesn’t have the same effect on you? That’s weird.

    Once I took a crazy spring break trip with four cars worth of college students on their way to Florida for some sun. When you live in Minnesota, where winter barely ever ends, a trip to sunny Florida is the stuff dreams are made of. On the 24 hour drive we had walkie-talkies between the cars, and we traveled in a pack. Traveling was tricky with so many people who all have bladders, bladders that can only hold so much. Our four cars equaled over 20 bladders with very individual needs.

    That’s when my friend Amy, always ingenious, devised the Bladder Ladder. One being “We barely gotta go”, five being “Stop if the place doesn’t look too scuzzy”, and ten being “Oh boy, pull over before someone explodes”. Conversations between the cars went something like this, “Breaker-breaker-one-niner we’ve got an eight on the Bladder Ladder here. Over.” “Rodger that Green Monster and ten-four, that sounds BAD. We’ll find a ditch. Over.” To which a trucker, usually listening in, would reply, “You damn kids should get off this radio, what are you talkin’ about?”

    I now use the Bladder Ladder with my four year old hooligan Myles and it works like a charm, except that his answer is always a “one”. Always. I have also introduced a new gauge to our family life, the Stress-O-Meter. At one you’re sittin’ pretty, at five you feel like you can hang on to all things sane without banging your hands in repetition against the sides of your head, at eight your heart is palpitating wildly and your pupils are dilated and you are sweating bullets, and at ten it’s over. At ten you’ve crunched up into a tiny weeping ball on the floor. No tens… yet. I have visions that this lovely little “o-meter” of mine will be an excellent gauge for the health of our family. Ok, probably not, but it will hopefully take the edge off… of someone.

    Did you know that in just over a week Ben is hoping to drive our household goods through the heart of Africa to Burundi with our crazy neighbor Adrien as his side-kick? Did you know we still don’t have all the money we need for the vehicle they are supposed to “drive forth” in? Did you know I have no clue what to pack into that vehicle? Did you know that I worry that they will get hijacked or worse if they make this trip? Did you know that this week a cockroach crawled up my arm? It did! I flicked it off while screaming and running and doing a wacky string bean dance across the house. Then I laughed until I cried, along with everyone who witnessed it. Ben might not ever let me live that down. Ever. Did you know I sweat buckets when I’m stressed? Buckets. And I pace, I’m a pacer, I admit it. At least I don’t fart when I’m stressed. I’d never tell you that’s what my brother Brett does. Never ever.

    I’m sitting at about a 5 right now on the fancy dancy brand spankin’ new Stress-O-Meter. No a 6, yeah… definitely a 6.

    Wish me luck,

    Kristy

  • Why Burundi?

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    Twice in the last 24 hours I have had friends ask me “why Burundi?”  It wasn’t the sort of “why?” that we get from scared relatives or rural-Africa-phobic types.  It’s a deep question rooted in an intrinsic desire to understand this whole Long Miles Coffee Project thing.  This post is my way of facing fears of mine about our move, my job, our complete change of life, and our relational upheaval.  So in a sense, by answering the question “Why Burundi?” I’m going to try to understand this Long Miles Coffee Project myself.

    Four years ago we knew a change was needed.  The result was a journey of discovery of who we are as individuals.  Kristy discovered “camera girl,” my discovery was coffee.  Duh.  I knew this, Kristy knew this, friends knew this, but there was way too much risk to say it out loud.  Then one day we took the risk.  We faced our fears and said “what if…”  What if we leave our safe Durban job, change our way of life, and just jump into coffee (figuratively, though it would be interesting) and Kristy into photography?  We said yes to a new way of life and had no idea what that would mean.

    Kristy is meeting with a group of women every Friday to figure out how they can “feel the fear and do it anyway,” they call themselves The Awesome Pants Club.  The goal? To stop dreaming of the life you want to live, but rather live the life of your dreams. Justifying doing what we love has been a way of life for us for years. “We would like too BUT… “it doesn’t fit our job description,” “it costs too much money,” “what if people don’t ‘get it’”… and then we stopped. We’ve struck that out. No more “I can’t” “I should” “I hope”. We’ve replaced those words with more empowering ones like, “I won’t” “I could” and “I know.” It makes a difference. Trust us! It has allowed us to make a leap and say, We could follow a big dream to help coffee farmers, and live in Burundi.” It’s our choice, and we’ve made it. When we stood up and said, “This is our choice, we’re going, no matter who’s on board or what the outcome is” a whole new world of possibility opened before us.

    Until the next chapter,

    Coffee Guy

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