Another Day

Another Day was Originally Posted on November 13, 2004 by lavarock

Thursday, I had the pickers come back. The the morning, the girls did more playing than picking. The son appeared to be the best worker, picking on his own. When the Father came down to where the girls were, they started picking a lot faster. A few times they sang songs in their own language and were often laughing and carrying on.

They picked and I walked the property with the leaf blower, clearing off the old leaves from the fallen nuts. If the orchard had been kept up, the area under the trees would have been leveled and cleared and all grass and weeds removed. However, the renter here before me had no ability to do that and the owner never contracted with anyone.

They picked 95 of the 5 gallon buckets of nuts and these look to be better quality that the last batch.

When the girls asked to use the downstairs bathroom, they looked all around the storage area. They wanted to see the rooms and so on. I know that they are new to the island and are living in a development here not known for having very expensive housing. Still the houses are not too bad, just far from the lights of the “city”. This house may be quite larger than they have. They get a ride in their in-laws van which appears quite nice and new.

The Father said they could not pick over the weekend becasue he had to fly to Honolulu. One daughter has heart problems and they will be looking or operating. She is not yet a teenager.

Because of the mac nut picking, I did not get to town often for the Coffee Festival. I was hoping to have placed my website or coffee label in the judging contest, but never got to it. Today I am scheduled to go help for a while and I’ll go there early and get a haircut first. Gotta look my best

Another thing I missed was the seminar on how to roast coffee. Some coffee farmers perform their own roasting but many are like me, we have someone else do it. Still, we want to know how it is done and can sound somewhat knowledgeable when asked about our roasts.

The technical side of roasting is interesting. As the green coffee beans begin their roast, they start to expand, the sugars begin to caramalize and there are complex changes in taste and structure of the bean. At two distinct points, the beans pop (almost like popcorn) where you can actually hear the beans fracture and crinkle. The longer the beans roast, the more oils come out and the darker the bean gets. The tatse changes and the caffeine is roasted out! Darker roasts have less caffeine!

I found a problem with my website when a customer called me yesterday. He was unable to use a coupon for his purchase. After many hours looking and testing I found that if a procust has “attributes” the coupons stop working. I had just added attributes to the coffee when I came up with the second roast. When I gave customers the option of a medium or full-city roast, I ended up breaking the coupon part. Software coders are investigating. I may be able to patch the code myself in the shopping cart, but for now, I removed the roast option and may just create new products for each roast until the bug is fixed.

I have been enjoying the few oranges my tree has produced. Even though they are not fully ripe, they have been sweet enough, and seedless!

The other day a friend told me there was an Ebay sale for some server parts I needed. The price was right and so was the shipping! I waited to put in my bid and got involved in the picking. Then it was too late! Oh well

Well, I have to get ready for my trip to town. ALoha!