Blue Mind Coffee – Ethiopia Fikere Majo

From our importer that works directly with producer Fikire Majo:

For over seven years now, Fikire Majo has been cultivating coffee in the Chire district of Sidama, Ethiopia, where he is known as a diligent coffee grower who is always seeking ways to improve his coffee practices and quality. To this end, Fikire is intentional in selecting and planting improved coffee cultivars released by local coffee research stations, with a goal of enhancing coffee flavor, yield, and disease resistance.

Fikire and his wife, Mrs. Netsanet Yohannes work together to produce quality coffee. Of their nine children, two are directly involved in the overall activities of their family’s coffee production such as planting new coffee seedlings, picking, sorting, drying, and sorting of ripe cherries as well as transporting when needed. Despite their help, once harvest time arrives, Fikire has more work than he and his family can handle on their own. So he hires seasonal and daily laborers to help hand-pick the ripe red cherries. This process is very labor intensive as he doesn’t strip all cherries off the branch regardless of ripeness (a practice that significantly lowers the quality of the final product ). Instead, he and his pickers return to the same tree three or four times over the harvest season to ensure that only ripe cherries are selected. These carefully harvested cherries are then loaded into bags or baskets and taken to the drying beds where they are spread out in thin layers to dry under the intense and golden Ethiopian sun.

Fikire and Netsanet’s five-hectare property has 3.5 hectares currently planted to coffee. With each passing year, Fikire works hard to expand his coffee farm business in ways that can help him potentially produce award-winning coffee and is always looking to bring innovation and improvement to his operation. He works closely with knowledgeable individuals, companies, and coffee buyers, seeking sustainable growth for his farm, family and community.

We have been enjoying this smooth cup of coffee with notes of blueberry jam, hibiscus and black cherry cola. Its been awhile since we have had a coffee from the Sidama region and we have been really pleased with this coffee. We hope you enjoy!