This is great content. Excellent insight to coffee around the area. There is an anxiety inducing, overwhelming, endless amount of work to be done on that farm. And the amount of time and money they'll need to invest to produce any quantity of beans... ugh. At least the view and location is nice!
Thanks for sharing. I've started helping on my mum n dad's coffee farm in Aleisa Samoa, and for me personally, I am only just learning about the coffee growing process. Dave sounds like he has alot of experience growing coffee. Appreciate his knowledge.
This has to be overwhelming. What number of additional trees to plant? What species of coffee? Do you go with washed or sun dried? If all or most of the equipment needs to be replaced. The expense must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How often can you harvest? If all the acreage of land has trees. Do you plant to harvest at different times throughout the year? Can a tree be harvested multiple times in a year? In other words if this is the sole income. How do you farm to bring income coming throughout the year? Or is that not possible? If I bought the property I would be amazed and overwhelmed at the same time. If they have three years to start harvesting the existing trees. I would have a detailed plan. Including what equipment to fix, purchase. When to plant and how to bring it all together into a working farm. I would visually break up the land in sections. Decide how to bring each section online over a period of years. The first thing I would do is visit a few working farms to learn the process.
Hey Ben and Claire, what a beautiful property! i have a coffee export operation in East Timor and have some familiarity with the coffee industry (still much to learn however). Don't get discouraged by the apparent complexity - processing coffee to a high standard is all pretty simple. It is however plenty of work.You can keep it really simple - that little pulper will be plenty to start with. You can ferment in a few rubbish bins/ plastic tanks - not hard. or even just dry the whole cherry (natural process). I hear that there is a shortage of mechanical coffee harvesters on the NSW North Coast and your well south of most of the Byron bay / Nimbin cluster of coffee farms so that adds to mobilisation cost. However, at your scale you could selectively hand harvest (or find some backpackers). You might only do 50 kg of cherry a day. (possibly more). From that you will however only get say 7.5kg of green bean - which once roasted will only be 6 kg. At say $240 (@$40/ kg roast) is going to be tough to do much more than cover harvesting wages at say $200/day I wouldn't invest in any new gear. Instead you can get the coffee dry milled on contract and then get roasting done on contract too in Coff's. Then kick it out to local consumers/ coffee shops / farm gate. You're going to love drinking your own coffee - and with some attention to detail, it will also taste fantastic. If you were to replant, Southern Cross Uni is doing some coffee variety trials which should show some far improved varieties than the K7 plants you would currently have. The K7 don't have a great flavour and they are over-vigorous needing a lot of maintenance. Your trees all look pretty hungry and neglected. Yes, they do need stumping but then you will have to wait 2 years (not 3 if you look after them) for a crop. you might want to instead give them some TLC so you at least have a bit of cherry to play with - and at the same time plant some new ones (if oyu look after them it will be two years from planting to a first small crop- say 1 kg cherry / tree). year 3 crop might be 3 kg and Year 4 - say 5 kg. All depends on how well you after them. if you ever want a sounding board / pointers feel free to reach out. Peter (www.timormountain.com)
Hey Pedro Boy.....Appreciate your encouraging comments above. Am investigating coffee growing in Highlands of PNG. Would appreciate a chat and advice from your experiences up there. Regards JH
Thank you for sharing. My best wishes for success goes out to the new owners of this coffee plantation.
This is great content. Excellent insight to coffee around the area. There is an anxiety inducing, overwhelming, endless amount of work to be done on that farm. And the amount of time and money they'll need to invest to produce any quantity of beans... ugh. At least the view and location is nice!
They are excited about the long term outcomes. And the view is amazing!
Thanks for sharing. I've started helping on my mum n dad's coffee farm in Aleisa Samoa, and for me personally, I am only just learning about the coffee growing process. Dave sounds like he has alot of experience growing coffee. Appreciate his knowledge.
Yes, so glad he is willing to share his knowledge! 🙏🏻
This has to be overwhelming. What number of additional trees to plant? What species of coffee? Do you go with washed or sun dried? If all or most of the equipment needs to be replaced. The expense must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
How often can you harvest? If all the acreage of land has trees. Do you plant to harvest at different times throughout the year? Can a tree be harvested multiple times in a year? In other words if this is the sole income. How do you farm to bring income coming throughout the year? Or is that not possible?
If I bought the property I would be amazed and overwhelmed at the same time. If they have three years to start harvesting the existing trees. I would have a detailed plan. Including what equipment to fix, purchase. When to plant and how to bring it all together into a working farm. I would visually break up the land in sections. Decide how to bring each section online over a period of years.
The first thing I would do is visit a few working farms to learn the process.
Yes, there is a lot to do, they are looking at this as a hobby, so no direct pressure to get an income.
hahaha. I am from Vietnam, I grow coffee (Arabica and Robusta)
So nice content ☺️ thank you for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it! we look forward to following them over the years
Am a Ugandan born Australian and planning on planting 50 acres of coffee back in Uganda so watching this is good for me
Hey Ben and Claire, what a beautiful property! i have a coffee export operation in East Timor and have some familiarity with the coffee industry (still much to learn however).
Don't get discouraged by the apparent complexity - processing coffee to a high standard is all pretty simple. It is however plenty of work.You can keep it really simple - that little pulper will be plenty to start with. You can ferment in a few rubbish bins/ plastic tanks - not hard. or even just dry the whole cherry (natural process).
I hear that there is a shortage of mechanical coffee harvesters on the NSW North Coast and your well south of most of the Byron bay / Nimbin cluster of coffee farms so that adds to mobilisation cost. However, at your scale you could selectively hand harvest (or find some backpackers). You might only do 50 kg of cherry a day. (possibly more). From that you will however only get say 7.5kg of green bean - which once roasted will only be 6 kg. At say $240 (@$40/ kg roast) is going to be tough to do much more than cover harvesting wages at say $200/day
I wouldn't invest in any new gear. Instead you can get the coffee dry milled on contract and then get roasting done on contract too in Coff's. Then kick it out to local consumers/ coffee shops / farm gate. You're going to love drinking your own coffee - and with some attention to detail, it will also taste fantastic.
If you were to replant, Southern Cross Uni is doing some coffee variety trials which should show some far improved varieties than the K7 plants you would currently have. The K7 don't have a great flavour and they are over-vigorous needing a lot of maintenance.
Your trees all look pretty hungry and neglected. Yes, they do need stumping but then you will have to wait 2 years (not 3 if you look after them) for a crop. you might want to instead give them some TLC so you at least have a bit of cherry to play with - and at the same time plant some new ones (if oyu look after them it will be two years from planting to a first small crop- say 1 kg cherry / tree). year 3 crop might be 3 kg and Year 4 - say 5 kg. All depends on how well you after them.
if you ever want a sounding board / pointers feel free to reach out.
Peter (www.timormountain.com)
Hey Pedro Boy.....Appreciate your encouraging comments above.
Am investigating coffee growing in Highlands of PNG. Would appreciate a chat and advice from your experiences up there.
Regards
JH
This is a great video. It's always great to help local businesses!
Absolutely! its great to have the coffee community grow in our area!