Yesterday I spent a day in the field here in Colombia as part of the baseline study for our Borderlands Coffee Project. The first farm we visited provided a very pleasant surprise — a rustic sugar cane press.
I fondly recall first chewing on sugar cane more than 15 years ago as a volunteer in a coffee community in Nicaragua. Since then, I have seen lots sugar cane in and around the coffeelands, and I have seen both industrialized and artisanal trapiches. But I had never seen a sugar cane press one quite like this one, and I had never actually operated one before.
[slidepress gallery=’coffeelands-blog-trapiche’]