Come Be Part Of The Saturday Market

Ometepe Coffee Gulf Islands has existed as a volunteer organization for  28 years. And as happens with any organization things morph and change. Recently a number of key, long time volunteers have retired.  Ometepe Coffee is now actively welcoming new volunteers into the fold.  It's an opportunity to contribute both to the local community and the global community. We buy certified organic, shade grown coffee beans from a coop on Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua for better than fair trade prices. We then roast and sell the beans locally and serve coffee at Salt Spring's famous Saturday market and other events. The profits from these sales then return to Nicaragua and Guatemala to support projects such as potable water, Onile wood burning stoves, loans to Ometepe Island women who are starting businesses, education funds, and primary medical care.  So think of Ometepe as double fair trade! All monies are returned to projects in Central America.

This weekend will mark the second week of Ometepe's market presence where we serve appreciative coffee lovers their favourite drink. There are lots of reasons to become part of Ometepe Coffee. It is a lot of fun to be part of the market. If you love to chat and people watch, it couldn't be a more perfect venue. People from around the world (and island :) stop by for a cup of our beautiful brew. Market vendors are always in need of a little refreshment.  It makes for a lovely morning or afternoon to volunteer at one of the two market shifts of the day. It's an incredibly positive and stimulating social experience whether you spend the rest of your time working in a solitary environment or just love social interaction. Simply arrive, brew and sell coffee. It couldn't be easier. Set up and take down are handled by someone else.  You can enjoy the treats and wears of the market while you are there and know you are supporting a global initiative while you do that.

Please chat with someone at our market booth or contact us via our facebook page if you'd like to join our volunteer team or are curious about learning more.

It's Market Time!

It's market time again! While the market has been going since April these hot days somehow seem quintessentially market time! There is a holiday feel in the air as people wander the market stands finding tasty bites of this and that to go with their coffee or pop in their shopping bags to take home for later.  There are the French pastries from The Rendezvous Patisserie, bread and treats from Salt Spring Bread, just to name a few.  A summer bounty of zucchini, peas, lettuce, cherries and raspberries beckon from the farm market tables like Hope Hill Farms. And the many crafts of island artisans tempt visitors.  Malas from Purely Om and upcycled bags from Salt Spring Tweeds, beautiful woven shawls and scarves by Christine Johnston of Jaya Weaving and jewelry from Bohemian Arts.

Lots of visitors and locals alike stop by for a cup of Ometepe coffee as they wander and shop.  The hot weather doesn't seem to deter the interest in coffee. The lovely brew, dark  hot and delicious, perhaps with a little cream or milk and a bit of organic cane sugar if you need sweetening :)

It's always fun to chat with the people who stop by: the women from China who don't understand what decaf is.  How do you explain that?  The fellow from Sidney who roasts his own green Ometepe beans in a small drum roaster on his bbq. The visitors from North Carolina and Nevada and the friendly local faces of vendors who need their morning cup of joe to start the market day.

It's a fun way to watch the morning (or afternoon) fly by.  If you love coffee and would like to be part of the good cause of supporting coffee farmers in Nicaragua and other good works there, come join this lovely group of volunteers.

The Journey To Your Cup

How does your Ometepe coffee get into your cup?  Yes, you pour it in, all bleary eyed in the morning and then emerge your cheerful self after a few sips, but before that I mean?  How does that delicious Ometepe java make it's way from the coffee bushes on Ometepe Island to you?  When you think about it there's a lot of hands helping you get that aromatic brew into your cup.

Ometepe coffee is grown on the side of  an extinct volcanic mountain in rich, volcanic soil. The Arabica beans begin as small red "cherries" that ripen intermittently.   Because the coffee fruit does not ripen all at once it must be picked several times during the season, which lasts from November to mid January.  The cherries are hand picked and carried down the mountain side to the processing plant.  The outer pulp is fermented off  and the inner beans spread on concrete slabs in the sun to dry.  The pulp is composted and returned as fertilizer to help next season's harvest.

The beans  are then carefully picked over by hand, graded for size and uniformity and bagged in 70 kilo units.  Ometepe beans and those for BOSIA (Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association) are gathered together and picked up by a shipping company and put into a container. The container makes its way to a port  and is shipped to either Seattle or Vancouver.  There the bags are inspected by customs and  moved to a coffee warehouse in Richmond where they are put on pallets (10 bags to a pallet) shrink wrapped and shipped to our roaster/storage facilities at Serious Coffee in Duncan.  They remain there until we order a roast.  To create the coffee that you have come to know and love we have carefully chosen our roasting temperature - usually 475 deg F for dark roast, and 455 for medium.  Seventy-six  pounds are roasted at a time, taking about 12 - 15 minutes.

Because the beans have been so carefully picked over and sized they contain no debris and don't require cleaning.  The result is a  very uniform  and predictable roasting. Volunteers from the Salt Spring Ometepe Group do the rest.  They pick up the coffee from the roaster, bag it, deliver it to the stores that carry it, and sell both brewed and bagged coffee at the Saturday market.  And so next time you look at your bag of beans or take a sip of that fragrant brew you can imagine the journey that your coffee has taken to get to your cup.


(with thanks to Brian Finnemore for the details!)