Challenge One - Picking:
After a night in the seasonal workers’ quarters, the baristas were awakened at 4:30 in the morning to eat breakfast with the other farm laborers.  On the menu were beans, rice, tortillas, and “something that tasted like badly brewed tea” (coffee, actually, but all the best beans get shipped out).  The last of the baristas had arrived by van from Managua at midnight the night before.  Hopefully they were able to sleep through the bellowing of howler monkeys in the surrounding jungle all night.  

After breakfast, they received the details of their first challenge: picking the most, and best, coffee cherries possible in two hours.  As rain poured through the forest canopy of the shade-grown coffee plots, they raced to select and harvest the finest organic coffee cherries—at least, those they hoped were best, because the Spanish-speaking baristas didn’t always remember to translate the farm workers’ instructions for their English-speaking teammates.  At the end of the hour, the picked cherries were weighed and graded by experienced farm workers.  Team One was declared the winner by volume, although quality suffered.  It seems the baristas aren’t quite ready to be hired as pickers, unless twig-and-green-cherry coffee becomes a hit.

After the coffee was weighed, it was pulped and placed in fermentation tanks.  Now it’s up to the baristas to judge when to take it out.       

Challenge Two - Seedling Selection:
Twenty minutes to pick, move, and place the most coffee seedlings from the outdoor nursery to the road above, ready to be planted in the days ahead.  Unfortunately for the baristas, the steep trail from nursery to road had been transformed into a morass by torrential rains.  By the time they were finished, both teams looked like they had just received an expensive skin (and clothing) mud treatment.  Not to worry, though—they have a cold bucket of washing water to return to at the seasonal laborer’s quarters.  The winners?  Team One again, by seedlings moved, care taken, and utter filthiness. 

Only three more days of challenges to go!