Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Step two: Harvesting the cherries

Once a coffee plant is planted, it takes about three to four years before it starts to bear its fruit: the coffee cherries. In order to know that a coffee cherry is ripe, make sure that it's a bright, deep red. Then it's ready to be harvested!
In most countries, the coffee cherries are picked by hand. Since that's a very intense labor job, some countries like Brazil have started to use machines to pick off the coffee cherries. There are two different methods of attaining ripe coffee cherries for harvesting: strip pick or selectively pick. Strip picked harvesting is the least amount of labor for picking coffee cherries. The entire crop is harvested at one time, which lets many farmers use machines instead of spending days at a time picking them all. Selectively picked harvesting is the most work. Pickers go around the crops and pick only the ripe coffee cherries. This method is more commonly used for finer coffee beans; it's more work to be done as well as more expensive!

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