been drinking coffee since i was a kid.
we used to have a coffee farm. i used to go there to help my tatay and nanay (grandpa and grandma in Tagalog) to harvest coffee beans in baskets. i used to wear long pants, bandana, long sleeves and tsinelas to protect my skin against sunlight and massive number of ants and itchyworms. lolo and lola would climb ladders because some coffee trees are high to reach. then kids like us would pick the beans that fell on the ground. it was just like a play for us. like normal kids in our community all does the same. the smell of coffee flowers are inviting too.
nothing is much better than morning coffee. the aroma of the boiled granules on kettle much different from the instant ones. sometimes we eat coffee with rice or bread drenched in coffee. we take coffee in any time of the day.
every morning we would help our folks dry the coffee beans on nets laid on the ground. just like rice, it should be dried on the sun until the shell turns brown and the beans dry. one has to shake it to test if its already dry. then we will take numerous sacks of dried coffee to the mill and sell it. the sound of the mill machinery is really irritating to the ear.
my cousins and i will always play 'kambalan'. a game where we need to gather most numbers of 'twin coffee beans' red ones has better points than the green and brown ones. a primitive game different from kids of today.
it is just sad that most of coffee plantations in Cavite are now altered by pineapple farms, subdivisions, hotels and restaurants. most of the citizens now would go abroad or in the mainland to look for work. unlike before wherein people in the neighborhood were all busy with their coffee harvest each day of their lives. our original way of living.
today, the mill has closed down. no more coffee dealers in town. our coffee farm was transformed into a villa. and no one else does coffee business anymore. my tatay already passed away and my nanay is already ninety five years old.
no more freshly brewed coffee in the morning. just a cup of 3 in 1. or when i am at the office, a tall macchiato.
maybe the reason why i love coffee most is because it makes me go back to my roots, to who i am, my childhood memories and how our folks worked hard for us to reach this status.
how ironic that we have to buy kapeng barako today when we used to sell them before. there's still one small coffee mill sa bayan, and they sell ground coffee at around P260/kg.
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