Yellow Diamond AA
$18.00
Origin: Western Rift Valley, Kenya
What we taste: Crème Brûlée, Sour Cherry, Tangerine
Habil Olakes moved his family out to Western Kenya to get away from the city, and back to his roots. They started farming corn and chickens, flowers and honey. They kept the latter two, but turned their focus to producing coffee after hearing the enthusiasm of a friend and neighbor of theirs—Stephen Nendela of Muinami Estate. The shift to coffee provided the family a chance to address problems posed by their other crops—theft through all stages of production, and soil fertility issues. Together they started learning about coffee, hiring top agronomists and improving their processing. Expansion of their coffee production has created job opportunities and provided income for local residents employed at the estate. The farm uses an integrated approach, incorporating practices like beekeeping to support pollination and the use of composted coffee husk and chicken manure to enrich and amend the soil. The farm provides a place to train the local community in coffee production in an effort to expand their impact on the community. Yellow Diamond is a reference to something that is rare and valuable—to Habil, that is family, land, and what the two can produce together. Cherries are selectively picked by trained women from the local community then graded to sort and separate under ripe and over ripe cherries. Cherries are collected and stored in water where floaters are removed, and cherries are kept cool until pulping after which parchment is placed immediately on raised beds where they are hand-picked, rotated, and covered during the hottest part of the day over a 10-18 day drying period.
