Taking up old customs of our ancestors: Roasting coffee with my children.
Today I introduce you to Higuerote, this community is located in the cocoa area of Barlovento towards the Mirandina coast, here sprouts the best cocoa in the world, but not only that, but it has the best beaches and beautiful people who will serve you wonderfully when you come to sightsee. So if you dare to come one day, you can count on having a great time in this city.
In this area we have been fortunate to have this beautiful little house for a few years; we escape to this secluded place whenever we can; it is in a rural area 10 minutes away from the beach. It is like a field and here I grow a little bit of everything.
This Saturday we came here to get out of the routine for a while, taking advantage of the fact that it was flexible week and my kids were crazy to leave the apartment for a while and visit the beaches.
So we stopped very early and we all worked together to prepare all the things and go out.
Higuerote is 45 minutes away from my house in Guatire and when we arrived it was about 9:00 a.m. I took the opportunity to clean a little bit and look at my plants that I hadn't taken care of for a while. I also took the opportunity to clean the bathrooms and cook. At about 2:00 in the afternoon my brother-in-law came to visit me and we sat down to eat a delicious pasta with chicken, too bad we didn't remember to take a picture.
When I go there I don't get a chance to rest, I want to do everything, the only thing I don't like is the heat, the sun is very strong and to do things outside in the garden we have to wait until the temperature drops a little to avoid being burned by the sun.
Getting back to my roots:
At about 6:00 in the afternoon I started to roast 4 kilos of coffee that I had bought in the month of December, this made me remember my childhood, since I was in my parents' house it was customary to roast the coffee that was produced in my farm. I had them saved to roast them when we went down to Higuerote, but with all this pandemic look at the date that I come to do it.
I also wanted to show my children this process, I wanted to show them how this product is made in an artisanal way; I am aware that my children have been raised in the city and know nothing of country life, it is good that they know a little of where I come from, what were the things I did as a child.
Little by little I was shaking the coffee, that is a process that goes little by little, because if you put too much fire in the coffee, it will get burnt and then the coffee will not taste good.
The process took almost 3 hours, luckily we had prepared enough firewood because it was already dark, otherwise the process would have been half done.
The parrots that came to visit me
Later, when we were already installed in the fire pit, some parrots came to visit me and settled in the mango bush, I don't know if you can see them in the picture, they are on top of each one of the buds of the bush. I would love for you to have heard the immense noise they made, there were about 50 parrots in one tree. There they stayed with me for about 20 minutes, singing and eating a few mangoes.
José was very affectionate as always, he accompanied me and helped me to finish and in the meantime we talked about many things and remembered beautiful moments of our childhood when we did all these things that are traditions that have been lost.
Little by little they began to take on their color.
In the old days you could not get wet or anything after finishing this work, many times it was also up to us women to grind it in a machine, luckily in my mother's house there were more men than women so many times we were saved from this.
What I did then was to put it away and we went to bed to get up the next day to grind it.
The environment is so nice to see, clean and pure. It's also good for the kids learn new things.