Every coffee that is picked and processed needs a home, which is why coffee production takes different roads within our company.
Raised drying beds at Bukeye Washing Station in Burundi
The first road, modeled in Burundi, includes washing station ownership. In Burundi, we work with 5,500 smallholding farmers- who each grow less than a bag of coffee per annum- to produce and bring to market the coffee they grow. To accomplish this, we own three washing stations and work with farmers on eleven unique hills. Another crucial part of this model is farming. We own coffee farms that stand alongside our smallholding farmers. These farms act as model farms for the surrounding communities as well as give us a chance to experiment with and control some of the variables in growing coffee.
Haron Wachira and Ben Carlson hand-sorting coffee at Thunguri Washing Station in Kenya
The second road coffee production takes within our company is partnership. In Kenya for example, we are partnering with Haron Wachira to rehabilitate and refurbish the Wachira family’s dormant coffee factory and farm located on Mount Kenya, in Kirinyaga County. In our first season, we worked directly with thirty coffee farming families who live in the community. While the Wachira Group is not solely focused on coffee, we share the same vision of working with small-scale coffee farmers to improve their production, access to markets, and the price paid for their coffee.
Raised drying beds at Heza Washing Station in Burundi
We can’t control how much coffee is produced in a season, which is why the third road that coffee production takes at Long Miles issourcing from partnering coffee producers. Our intention is always to produce our own coffee, but some years we will also share coffees from local partnering coffee producers that have stood out to us on the cupping table. Partnering with these coffees enables us to continue year-round projects and programs that have become essential to who we are, whether that is our team of Long Miles Coffee Scouts, our Trees For Kibira reforestation project, or running Farmer Field Schools– to name a few.
No matter which of these roads we take, our end goal is the same: producing excellent coffees, uplifting the smallholding farmers who grow them, and meeting you, our roasting partners, where you’re at.You might already know this or be familiar with these names, but these are the coffees that our company produces:
Long Miles Micro-lots
To us, micro-lots are coffees that have been carefully curated based on two primary factors: traceable down to a distinct geographical locale where the coffee was grown, and a cup score of 86+ designated by our team. Each delivery of coffee cherry that we receive from our partner farmers at one of our washing stations is sorted and processed differently, depending on the country of origin.
Kibira Micro-lots
Kibira micro-lots are coffees that have been processed by coffee producers surrounding our Long Miles Washing Stations. Our cupping lab and quality control team cups through many dozens of lots in order to find the best coffees to partner with. We source these 86+ scoring coffees knowing that at every step of the way they have been processed according to the Long Miles Coffee standard. Partnering with these coffees enables us to continue programs that have become essential to who we are, namely the Long Miles Coffee Scouts and Trees For Kibira.
Kibira
Kibira lots represent coffees that have been sourced from partnering coffee producers. These coffees, ranging in quality and price, are tailored to your needs based on pre-harvest conversations and are typically contracted in larger quantities.
Hills
Our priority is to produce coffee that is of micro-lot quality, yet some of the coffees that we process fall slightly below the 86 mark designated by our team. Coffees that score between 84-85 points, are blended together and are traceable by washing station and called “Hills.”
If you have any questions about our coffee, please get in touch!
October 24, 2020 is a day that will go down in the history books of Long Miles Coffee. The date marks our official launch of Long Miles Kenya, and our first day of coffee harvest in Kirinyaga County. Not long after that, our first fully washed micro-lots of the season hit the drying tables.
Thunguri Washing Station in Kirinyaga County, Kenya
How did Long Miles Kenya start?
In partnership with Haron Wachira from Akili Holdings Ltd., we have refurbished Thunguri Coffee Factory in Kirinyaga County, Mount Kenya (just east of Nyeri County). In the past, the coffee factory existed to serve the Wachira family and a few of their neighbors who grow coffee in the region. While the Akili Group is not solely focused on coffee, we share the same vision of working with small-scale farmers to improve their coffee production, access to markets, and the price paid for the coffee they produce. Long Miles Kenya will be a long-term partnership with the Wachira family, and the communities of coffee growers in the Mount Kenya region.
During a year [2020] in which travel was seemingly impossible, our founders, head of quality control, managing director, and story team were able to visit and connect with a community of coffee growers in Kirinyaga County who are committed to producing high quality Kenyan coffee. Check out the highlights from our team’s visit here. We’ve sown the seeds for our Coffee Scout program, and will soon start building a team of young agronomists whose mission will be to work alongside our partner coffee growers, empowering them with best farming practices and any support that they might need to produce quality coffee.
How did the harvest season go?
In our inaugural coffee season, (a low harvest year for coffee growers around the country), we collected and processed a small volume of cherry from twenty partner coffee farmers living around Thunguri Coffee Factory, modelling how we produce micro-lots in Burundi. While our inaugural harvest season in Kenya may seem low, building trust within a new community takes time. We’re still listening to, learning from, and getting to know the communities of coffee farming families in the region.
Our team also visited and worked on quality control measures with other farmer-owned coffee washing stations as well as private estates in the region, and cupped through the coffees that they produced this season. Our intention is always to produce our own coffee, but in these early days of establishing Long Miles Kenya we will also be sharing the coffees produced by other coffee washing stations that we enjoyed tasting on the cupping table.
Haron Wachira of Akili Holdings Ltd., and Ben Carlson, co-founder of Long Miles Coffee, at Thunguri Washing Station
We’ve also been thinking about the possibility of starting a Long Miles Coffee Farm in Western Kenya for a while. After looking for over a year, we’ve found a piece of land at 2200masl, close to the edges of a national forest park in Western Kenya. Follow the updates that Ben shared during his recent trip to Kenya here. We’ll soon be planting our first SL-28 coffee trees on this piece of land, pursuing regenerative farming practices. We’ll also continue the works of our reforestation project, Trees For Kibira, in this region, planting out green belts of trees, and encouraging the practice of shade-grown coffee.
Where can I find Long Miles Kenya coffee?
We’ll keep you updated on where you’ll soon be able to find a bag of roasted Long Miles Kenya coffee. In the meantime, we’re receiving pre-shipment sample materials of our Kenyan coffees over the next couple of weeks. If you’re interested in receiving samples, please let us know!
We’re often asked the question, “What does a ‘typical day’ in the life of Long Miles Coffee look like?”
The truth? It depends on when you ask. Although coffee harvest only happens once a year in Burundi and usually lasts around three months (sometimes more), growing and producing coffee is a year-round effort. On any given day of the week, the Long Miles team could be spread out between the country’s capital, or upcountry at our washing stations where coffee is grown. For the thousands of smallholder coffee farmers that we work with, a “typical day” is completely different from our own. The time that coffee farmers in Burundi spend on farming activities is divided between a multitude of crops, not just focused on coffee.
Here’s a glimpse at what an “average” year in the life of Long Miles Coffee in Burundi looks like:
JANUARY-FEBRUARY
It’s the beginning of the year. The country is experiencing “impeshi”, which translated from Kirundi (the local language spoken in Burundi) means “small dry season”. Depending on the area and soil structure, farmers are planting a variety of crops in this season, especially beans, potatoes, and peas. If coffee farmers have access to insecticides, they will be spraying them on their coffee trees as well as weeding their coffee farms. Some will even start pruning their coffee trees.
January is usually the time that our head of Production and Quality Control, Seth Nduwayo, leads our annual Coffee Quality and Production Training. It’s also the time when we start preparing the annual calendar for our social and environmental impact projects: PIP (Integrated Farm Plan), Farmer Field School, Trees For Kibira, and Womxn and Youth Empowerment Programs.
Joy Mavugo from the Story team connecting with a partner coffee farmer.
The Story team, lead by Joy Mavugo, is out in the coffee hills, connecting with coffee farmers to hear their thoughts in the weeks that prelude coffee harvest. Most importantly, this is when we start applying for our annual production license- something that coffee producers in Burundi must do at the start of each year. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to open our washing stations for cherry collection or begin processing the first coffees of the season.
Every week, the Long Miles Coffee Scouts are visiting each of the hills that we collect coffee from, checking on the health of our own coffee farms, meeting with Farmer Field School team members and teaching best agricultural practices, making note of the visible effects of climate change in the coffee hills, keeping a record of the number of antestia caught, distributing and planting seedlings from our Trees For Kibira nurseries. To diversify our coffee farms, our team at Heza Washing Station is maintaining the handbuilt cowsheds and laying down new fodder for our two mama cows and their calves.
Together with our washing station managers and production teams, the Coffee Scout leaders are also holding meetings with community development officers and partner coffee farmers, hearing from them if there were any challenges or issues during the previous coffee harvest and discussing ways to resolve this before the upcoming coffee harvest.
MARCH-JUNE
The country is experiencing its biggest rainy season of the year. The coffee cherries are red, ripening, and ready to be picked. The antestiabug (the insect thought to be linked to the Potato Taste Defect) thrives during this time because the cherries are soft and sweet, making it easier for the bug to bore holes into the cherry skins. Farmers are scouting for these bugs in their coffee trees and if they find them, are removing them by hand.
The end of March usually marks the opening of coffee harvest in Burundi, and coffee farmers will spend most of their days hand-picking cherries then walking to deliver them to the nearest washing station or collection point. Generally, other crops aren’t planted in this season because coffee is on everyone’s mind.
April and May roll around, and coffee harvest is in full swing. It’s one of the busiest times of year for our team. The Coffee Scouts spend their days between guiding coffee farmers through selective cherry picking on their farms and at the washing stations or collection points, assisting with farmer reception and cherry quality control. Our team also works alongside our partner coffee farmers, harvesting cherries from the Long Miles Coffee Farms. Each delivery of cherry is processed, either as a fully washed, natural, or honey-processed coffees, and left to dry on raised drying tables.
The Story team spends these weeks following our team’s activities, connecting with coffee farmers on their farms, and documenting their harvest, or at the washing stations following the production of coffee.
This is usually the time that we get to welcome our roasting partners in Burundi to experience a slice of coffee harvest, see coffee in production, connect with our team and partner coffee farmers, and join us around the cupping table to taste a selection of fresh crop coffees.
JULY-AUGUST
The start of July usually signals that coffee harvest is coming to a close in Burundi. Most of the parchment coffee is either off the tables or about to come off. Our washing stations no longer receive coffee cherries, and our team’s focus shifts to the dry mill.
Our Production and Quality team at the dry mill is focused on constructing micro-lots and preparing coffees for export. They are regularly sending samples to our Long Miles Coffee lab, where hundreds of cups of coffee are cupped, analysed, and scored by our team before being sent as samples to our roasting partners the world over. This work starts in July and continues until the end of the year.
The country-wide coffee pruning campaign officially opens, and the Coffee Scouts are helping coffee farmers to identify which coffee trees should be pruned or stumped. All around farm maintenance is happening at the same time: weeding, applying organic fertilizers, and mulching the ground to keep it moist during the upcoming dry season.
At the helm of our Social and Environmental Impact Leader, Epa Ndikumana, the Coffee Scouts are also collecting samples of soil for testing, and analysing the benefits of intercropping banana trees with coffee on our coffee farms. Our Story team is there to capture it all: the dry mill, the post-harvest activities, and most importantly, farmer payments.
Farmer Payday is the one day of the year when all of the coffee farming communities that we work with receive payment for the coffee cherries that they delivered to us during harvest season. The money that most farmers earn from growing coffee is spent on their children’s school tuition and supplies, home repairs, and investing in other income-earning projects. In the weeks leading up to payday, our team works hard behind the scenes, counting money and preparing each farmer’s payment. Hill by hill, each farmer that we work with is paid for every kilogram of coffee cherry that they delivered to a Long Miles Washing Station or collection point.
SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER
The country is experiencing “agatas”, which translated from Kirundi means “small rainy season”. These are the months that are considered the main planting season in Burundi. Whatever farmers choose to grow is planted at this time.
The mature coffee trees start to flower- depending on the amount of rainfall in the country- and the coffee cherries are in the early stages of developing. This is the time for coffee farmers to be maintaining their coffee nurseries, planting new coffee trees, and weeding their plantations. Those who have access to lime and fertilizer will start applying it on their coffee farms.
The coffees at the dry mill continue to be milled, bagged, and processed before being loaded onto trucks and headed to our roasting partners across the world.
Meanwhile, the Coffee Scouts are evaluating the growth and survival rate of the Trees For Kibira seedlings in the nurseries. As the year comes to a close, a bonus payment is made to the coffee farmers who delivered high quality cherries throughout the season.
There’s no short way of answering the question, “What does a ‘typical day’ look like for you?” No matter the year, there’s no small amount of words to share with you what producing coffee in Burundi looks like for our team. As we write this, the coffee cherries have already started to ripen, rain has fallen, and our team has started preparing for the upcoming harvest season. We can’t wait to share what this year holds with you!
Lately, the thought of sitting down to reflect on the past year has felt like an overwhelming task. What really happened to 2020? It goes without saying that last year was unlike any other. For us, 2020 held challenges that were unique to the season and challenges that aren’t all that ‘unprecedented’ when it comes to producing coffee.
The year started off much like any other. Our team worked alongside our neighboring coffee farming communities, preparing coffee farms for the opening of the coffee season and expectant for a harvest better than the previous one. Everything seemed to be on track until the Burundian national coffee board announced a sudden change in regulations.
In order to qualify for an annual production licence, coffee producers were required to have 75% of their forecasted crop in the bank [to be held in trust to pay farmers]. Coming off the backend of a harvest where 25% of the country’s normal export was produced, having these funds in advance was unreasonable for most producers- ourselves included. If any coffee producers were unable to comply with the new regulations, they would lose their washing station(s) along with the permission to produce coffee ever again.
Scrambling to comply in time while the threat of a derailed harvest hung in the air made for a hard couple of months, but thankfully we were able to find a way. Then came the news of how rapidly the virus was spreading across the globe. Neighboring East African countries quickly plunged into strict lockdowns and the Burundi airport shut down. It was the first time in a long time that we had to ask visitors not to travel to Burundi for coffee harvest.
All things considered, there was still a lot of beauty and joy found in harvest. The coffee trees continued to fruit and ripen. With hand-washing stations and social distancing in place, we were able to keep the washing stations open for cherry delivery. We celebrated from both near and far with members of our team as they welcomed babies into the world, got married, and as their families grew. We were able to pay coffee farmers on time for their hard work this season! Coffee was exported from Burundi faster than ever before. We continued with the build of Ninga, our third Long Miles Washing Station. Long Miles Kenya was launched, and we saw our first inaugural coffee harvest season in Kirinyaga County, Mount Kenya take place. The seed has been planted and preparations are now underway for the formal launch of Long Miles Uganda.
The year was certainly marked by hardship, loss and a specific set of words constantly strung together. “Unprecedented.” “Uncertainty.” “New normal.” It was also a year marked by bravery and courage; community and connection. Thank you for standing alongside us; for continuing to support Long Miles Coffee.
What lies ahead for us.
In 2017, Ben was sitting with a group of people at The Pulley Collective and an esteemed presenter proclaimed, “There is no sustainable coffee in the world.” Ben was speaking right after him about the hope we see in Burundi coffee, but he approached the stage with the wind out of his sails thinking, “Is it really possible to create a sustainable coffee company?” Ever since that day our company has been combating the harsh realities of coffee’s future with visions of hope. And in 2020, not only was the future of coffee challenged, but the human race’s future as well. It’s been a tough time to keep hoping, but also an impossible time not to grip onto the ship of hope with everything we’ve got.
Here’s how we plan to keep hope alive in 2021:
A coffee farm in Kenya. We hope to start one. And that’s it for now.
This year we started a pilot project in Kenya and we have loved the results. We hope to continue this project and expand it in 2021.
We hope to build a community washing station and a model coffee farm in Uganda.
We hope to fully open our Ninga Washing Station in Burundi. It has taken three years for us to get government approval for this washing station. Farmers who currently spend hours walking to the Bukeye Washing Station will have their livelihoods vastly improved by the presence of the Ninga Washing Station. With a keen focus on coffee quality, we will be using newly designed sealable fermentation silos, one of the newest approaches to coffee fermentation.
We have plans for the expansion of Trees For Kibira, our reforestation and environmental impact program, within both Burundi and Kenya.
An additional founder’s hope is that we live out of a place of thriving, and support our team to do the same. We are not speaking about a place of great excess, but we have often lived in a place of survival only, cutting all expenses and depending on unreliable pre-financing methods to pay farmers and scrape by. While this can be an efficient way to produce coffee, the instability and stress of it doesn’t always honour the people on our team who work so hard to grow, produce, export and sell this product that we all love so much. We hold a deep belief that the only way to make coffee truly sustainable is to honour the value chain and everyone in it.
How do you plan to keep hope alive in 2021? We’d love to hear from you.
