Baraka Blog
Discovering Coffee Trees on Our Land — and Learning to Roast
Unexpected finding
Three years on, that accidental discovery has grown into something we are genuinely proud of. We have sold more than a thousand plants, mostly at the farmers market, where we also found wholesale buyers. The coffee nursery motivated us to get a proper nursery license, which opened another door — our plants are now represented at Agromaçanita, a local shop we are happy to be part of. Every year we go through phytosanitary testing to confirm the health of our plants, because if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it properly. It’s funny how one unexpected find on a piece of land can quietly set so many things in motion.
When we bought our land in the Azores, we knew we were getting trees. What we didn’t expect was to find coffee among them. Hidden in the shade were five unusual-looking plants — tall and tree-like, not the familiar low bushes most people picture. That’s what happens when nobody prunes a coffee plant for a decade. It just keeps growing.
Finding ripe coffee berries on our own land was one of those moments that reminded us why we started this project. The dark red fruits were full and ready, and it turned out that squeezing the beans out by hand is surprisingly satisfying. Of course, we couldn’t resist trying to roast our first harvest. The first attempt, done dry in a pan, produced very black, slightly smoky beans that tasted… experimental. So we tried the Vietnamese method — roasting with coconut oil — which smelled absolutely wonderful and gave the beans a beautiful caramel color. The result? Genuinely good coffee, from our own land, roasted in our own kitchen.
But we didn’t stop at harvesting. Kneeling on the ground, we started spotting tiny seedlings that had naturally sprouted beneath the trees. What began as a small discovery quickly turned into something much bigger — we ended up collecting around 400 seedlings in total. We call it our plant banking. In a few years, when they mature, we’ll have a proper coffee nursery to be proud of. Someone sells these little plants online for two euros each — we’re keeping ours.
Finding ripe coffee berries on our own land was one of those moments that reminded us why we started this project. The dark red fruits were full and ready, and it turned out that squeezing the beans out by hand is surprisingly satisfying. Of course, we couldn’t resist trying to roast our first harvest. The first attempt, done dry in a pan, produced very black, slightly smoky beans that tasted… experimental. So we tried the Vietnamese method — roasting with coconut oil — which smelled absolutely wonderful and gave the beans a beautiful caramel color. The result? Genuinely good coffee, from our own land, roasted in our own kitchen.
But we didn’t stop at harvesting. Kneeling on the ground, we started spotting tiny seedlings that had naturally sprouted beneath the trees. What began as a small discovery quickly turned into something much bigger — we ended up collecting around 400 seedlings in total. We call it our plant banking. In a few years, when they mature, we’ll have a proper coffee nursery to be proud of. Someone sells these little plants online for two euros each — we’re keeping ours.
