Tag: the long miles coffee project

  • Dear Family,

    Hope is the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life.[1] It is the “feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best” or the act of “look[ing] forward to with desire and reasonable confidence” or “feel[ing] that something desired may happen”. [2] Other definitions are “to cherish a desire with anticipation”; “to desire with expectation of obtainment”; or “to expect with confidence”.[3]


     

    I believe in us. I believe beyond all hopelessness, and even though this transition is hard I “expect with confidence” that God is with us during every step.

     

     

    My coffee guy. Even though your brand new (to you) roaster is broken, even though you have spent over 6 hours in the last two days at Burundi Home Affairs wading through bribe after bribe in order for us to get a visa that will only allow us to stay here for another 28 days, even though you are bearing a burden heavier than I’ve ever seen you bear… I have hope. I believe in a God that can carry us if we let Him. I believe in you. You are the only man on the planet who could do this with such grace. Your capacity to keep smiling is insanely irritating, and I love you for it.

     

     

    My big little. You threw a rock through the window tonight. I know you are struggling. It makes your mommy wet her keyboard to think of it. To watch you battle with life overwhelms me. I want to protect you, to shelter you from some of the things that are a part of adjusting to this new life, but I can’t. I will be here, right by your side, protecting you from evil, but letting you experience this life with your.whole.being. You are a fighter and I see you testing your strength everyday. I wrote this for you the other day while you were playing with some kids:

    6 speak French

    1 English, and that one with a confidence lost

    1 parent watches

    wishing it could be different

    wishing his tongue could fly over the words

    just fly

    It’s true, all of it, except one thing. I don’t wish it to be so, I already SEE it. I see you talking in French faster than your mom and dad ever will. I see you playing with friends, shouting to them in French, not letting me in on what you are saying. I see it all. I see an amazing man, facing the world with confidence, love, and with abilities far beyond those who surround you. Abilities that living here have given you. Kids who grow up outside their parent’s home culture are just plain awesome. You are just plain awesome. I see it all, I believe it all.

    My littlest little. Oh, my baby, you have my heart. You make us all laugh every day and we NEED that. You tire us out too, with all your getting.into.everything.ness But then I remember as I discover the entire contents of the medical supply cupboard all over the floor… you are healthy, ingenious and beautiful. As you climb into the sideboard with all the plates, and break one while you are at it… you are healthy, ingenious and beautiful. When you sit on top of the dining room table proud as a peacock for climbing there… you are healthy, ingenious and beautiful. You are already soaring in Burundi, your family is all you ever needed. Thank you for reminding me of that truth.

    Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

     

  • What’s in your cup?

    Whats in your cup?

    My parents blast through freshly ground coffee in their Bunn Automatic.  12 cups in just over a minute.  While some snobbier coffee specialists may scoff at such heresy, I find myself every second year or so happily slurping down my second cup before registering that I’m fully awake and in the strange land of Wisconsin.

    That said, I can’t rightly remember the last “drip” coffee I’ve had.  I’m more your slow brewed Chemex, or double macchiato kinda guy.  Forever  the zealous apostle of the French Press for all home coffee drinkers.  Ideally speaking, we’d all have a home ceramic burr grinder and a La Marzocco or Clover.  The reality, however, is the before mentioned freshly ground espresso or pour-over devices are, well, maybe not in the budget or interest of most.  So most people will probably stick to the good ol’ Bunn or God forgive you if you do, instant coffee.

    Regardless of method, I wonder how many people know what they are drinking?  Coffee.  Yes, uh huh.  Any idea of the washing station? From what country?  What continent even?

    Now I know we aren’t all coffee zealots.  But the worth of the cup is in the people.

    A stretch you say?

    I think not.  The reason we’re in Burundi is a complex yet simple one.  We love coffee, individuals, God, family, and potential (not always in that order… in fact in no particular order, or if that offends, you could assume your favorite was written first) I think they are all combined, linked and fully integrated.  That is why we are here.  That is why it matters that you know what is in your cup.

    Perhaps if you knew that you were drinking a cup of fully washed AA Burundi Musema washing station coffee and that it  supplied 800 families with their only means of income.  Or that by drinking that coffee you not only made their life livable, but sustainable.  Don’t stop there.  Because of they premium they received for selling their coffee as specialty they are now interacting and learning from  key individuals that are influencing their whole way of thinking, crop growing, child raising and exposure to the Gospel… yeah that’s right, to Jesus. Because that’s important to us. Would that make the cup taste better?  Motivate you to drink more?  Or perhaps inspire you to dream of the important things in your life and dare you to face your fears and journey toward them?

    It took us a while.  We’re still working on them.  OK, we’ll probably never really get there.  Wherever “there” is.

    Integrating these passions.  Loving each.  Frustrated by them all.  Attempting to live them authentically in Burundi.

    Thats why we’re here and why I care whats in your cup.

    Coffee Guy

     

     

  • In The Burundi Coffee Hills

    Let me begin by saying…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    I have been feeling as if I owe you, big time. I feel like I owe you lots of images like this one. Images that allow you to see for yourself what the families who grow coffee in Burundi look like.

    Here’s your coffee, freshly picked and still in the cherry. This coffee is honey processed, which means it is picked, left unwashed to preserve every bit of flavor, and then sun dried on these tables.

    Here specialty coffee is being hand sorted. Which means it is being picked through to remove any defects. This coffee will be hand sorted five times. When picked, before being washed, after being fermented, after drying, and after dry milling (which removes the parchment).

    This scale is where a farmer’s lot is determined. Their ripe red cherries are weighed and a price is determined. The price for red cherries? About $.50 a kilo, or $.50 for 2.2 pounds. How can we get the farmers more money? If Ben finds during cupping that the quality of a certian lot is superior enough to be sold as speciality coffee, the farmer who grew it will get a bonus at the end of the season of double or triple per kilo and the coffee will be sold to the likes of Stumptown and Bean There.

    What if Ben wasn’t cupping to find these lots? More and more of the coffee would be sold as commodity lots to big coffee exporters who would turn around and sell it to the likes of Folgers and Maxwell House. They would then mix it with other commodity coffees and the people who drink it would never even know that they were drinking a Burundi coffee, or that the farmer only got $.50 a kilo.

    Of course, the kids are the heart breaking part. Without education, electricity, running water and proper nutrition what hope of a better life than their parent’s can they have?

    If their parents get more for their crop that is a good start to a better life, if the extra funds are managed correctly. But, as we all know, money does not solve everything.

    All that said, I have to tell you… the coffee hills are not a hopeless place. In fact, they are just the opposite. They seem filled with hope. The hope of the harvest and the strength that community living can bring.

    Being in the hills is an amazing experience. As an mzungu (white person) it is not easy to blend and we do become the village entertainment, but I suppose it’s the least we can do!

    I love this moment, this little kiddo in the oversized t-shirt was so scared of the white people and of our cameras, but once our good friend Wesley from Cooked In Africa Films showed him his picture he was all smiles. I do love film, but God bless digital!

    The hills reminded my why we made this leap and what it is all for…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    That’s all for now,
    Kristy

  • You moved your family where?

    We have a great big hope. But this week it seems like a great big stinky bog is attempting to snatch away our hope and our joy along with it.

    Burundi can swoop in and make you question things.

    Things like your sanity at bringing your family… To where?
    Or, will our vision for holistic change take root amongst these coffee farmers?

    Or on a more base level will the combination of: wild boys, construction at our new home, people EVERYWHERE, tripping-surging electricity, internet that promised the world and gave us dile-up, non stop cupping by me, cameras, one car (ie one camera girl stuck in constructionvill), and no French drive us over the edge?

    My optimism has threatened to give way to “frustration,” or other words could be used. A friend and local videographer said “so the honeymoon is over.” I don’t think we took that package.

    Kristy calls this rose-colored optimism (especially with time) “unrealistic.” I like to think “why not?” “Why couldn’t we do that?” I love possibility. We are living on potential and faith doing exactly what we asked for.

    That’s how I ended up in coffee. That’s why I see so much hope in individuals.

    Plus, I’m here to hunt for the best coffee in the country, in all of Africa! And to authenticly and naturally make a holistic difference in people’s lives. How? I really don’t know to be honest. Its a process. Its more being willing to follow God, and less “out of my way I’m a big deal.” What I do know is the last lot of Bwayi I cupped yesterday was near tear producing sweetness. High grown, farmer loved, hand picked, 100% arabica goodness.

    So are we in a bog? No, says Mr. Optimism, we’re just finding our way in the worlds second poorest country. Still, I give myself the permission to ask “I moved my family where?”

    Welcome to Burundi Carlson family.

    Coffee guy

  • the road to burundi

    The road to Burundi is probably not paved with cheese, just like it wasn’t in an American Tail. All the mice sang about it, about a place where the streets were paved with cheese, where there were no cats. A threat-less path made of food sounds pretty good to me right now too!

    I can’t sleep. I really want too, but I can’t. There are so many details flying around in my head… so many things stressing me out. The truth is, I don’t think we are great with big huge detail oriented things… like moves. Yesterday Ben told me that he thinks he should leave for Burundi with the vehicle on Monday. It’s Wednesday. Do we have a vehicle? No. Can we afford to buy one? No. Does he have visas to get through the borders he’s going to cross? No. Have I packed what will go in the vehicle? I’ve started, but really… No.

    Then, if I turn my head two inches in the other direction I start to think about how today I signed my house away. I signed it away, just like that. The place I brought my babies home to. Our first home. A home in a city that I love… a city that loves me. When we bought this house we wanted it to be a home that was always welcoming. A place people could journey to and feel safe, as if they had arrived at their home away from home and were immediately a part of the family. It has been that for so many, including ourselves.

    On Saturday we sold off most of our household belongings. It was like our house had vomited on the lawn. Ten years of life in a place laid out bare, for everybody to pick through. Watching people look at my things and decide if they wanted it and then haggle on the price was a bit too much for me. So, I hung out away from the sale and had good talks with great friends and pretended none of it was happening. Friends volunteered to take money and run the whole thing, and even make everybody coffee. My dad is here all the way from America, along with my little brother Scott, and he watched the kids all day while we sold. And sold. And sold. I feel such gratitude for people like these, it was a labor of love.

    I will say that it is kind of freeing to be sort of possession-less. It feels good to know that our things will be of good use to others and we can move on with just the essentials. The essentials, at this point, include a whole lot of dark chocolate.

    Luv,

    me

  • These Old Coffee Trees

    I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest.  I’m not going to let you get it!  If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee.  That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.

    I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still.  So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks.  Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks.  The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.

    It was another week in the heart of Central Africa.  I got another taste of what I’m diving into.  I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many.  Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.

    Coffee Guy

  • Riding Burundi Roads at My Peril

    With internet spotty at best up in the highlands of Burundi this post will undoubtably be short.  I just can’t help but share in what is taking place though.  By far the most productive trip yet to Burundi I’m in a celebratory mood.  Except that my sore back, hurting bum and broken ribs (long story about why you shouldn’t play rugby in Burundi with American Marines could be inserted here!) will let my celebrations be limited to a beverage of choice and early to bed.

    The Beauty of Burundi is that I can sit in a “hotel’s” restaurant high in the hills of Burundi and listen to a Jordin Sparks (ya, I didn’t know until I googled her either) song on repeat being beat into my head.  So if I type “just one step at a time….” it’s not my fault.

    The past four days have been filled with incredible scenes of vibrant rolling hills, lush coffee trees pregnant with ripe cherries and aromas ranging from fresh sweet coffee smells to burnt roasting goat.

    I want to tempt your senses to try and imagine fresh(ish) goat being roasted on an open fire with green bananas that taste like potatoes to accompany.  How about hundreds of pounds of freshly harvested coffee cherries piled up ready to be washed clean of their pulp.  Or my favorite aroma of sweaty stinking people piled on top of each other and me as we wind our way up the mountains in a mini bus.

    Where do you drink coffee?  Intelligentsia? Counter Culture?  Stumptown?  Dunn Brothers? Bean There? I’m visiting the very farmers that are producing their best coffee.  It’s a good day in Burundi.  It would be great if Kristy and my adventurer boys were here too.  Just four weeks until we are all here!

    I may never feel or smell the same again.  But my discovery of this black gold is seductive and the hands that are processing it are the poorest and knurliest I have ever laid eyes on.  The adventure has begun.

  • supper time

    supper time

    Every night around the supper table we ask each other about the day. The goal being that the meal becomes more than just a battle to get the kids fed, it becomes instead our time to connect and “debrief”.  Our time to teach our kids about what it means to take an interest in one other, care for each another, and look out for each other.

    It’s our way of changing the focus of the meal from “getting the kids fed” and “shovelling it in” to appreciating the beauty of good food and a shared meal. We try to slow down and make eye contact, and not focus on our kid’s plates and our plates and the glasses being tipped over… with a four year old and a one year old this is a work in progress, but that’s ok, because the message of the meal will be the same for years to come.

    I always smile when four year old Myles straightens his back, looks around and pronounces in a grown up voice, “Mommy how was your day today?” Today I spent most of my day in worry and anxiety, and I couldn’t help but wish for a “do over.” A chance to go back and fully embrace the words below. To live them. To understand the beauty of trust. A chance to have a different answer at the supper table.

    Don’t fret or worry.

    Instead of worrying, pray.

    Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.

    Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down.

    It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

    Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things

    true,

    noble,

    reputable,

    authentic,

    compelling,

    gracious—

    the best, not the worst;

    the beautiful, not the ugly;

    things to praise, not things to curse.

    Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized.

    Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

    ~Philippians 4:6-9 (The Message)

    The thing about a harmony is, it involves trusting others, and it involves more than just one voice. Here’s to letting go of fear and anxiety, and embracing one excellent harmony.

    Kristy

  • The Beginning

    Ben began his journey in to help the farmers of Burundi produce better coffee this week. He’s also on the hunt for the best beans Burundi has to offer, so that he can get them into the hands of coffee shops who want to buy directly from farmers.

    Ben’s trip to Burundi this week did not yield a house, but the beginnings of his work with the farmers was a great success.

    What do you think of those roads? Egh? Pretty intense!

    Long Miles Coffee Project from longmilescoffee on Vimeo.

    .

scroll to top
error: