Day 6 and 7: Lake Tawar Ache

Lake Tawar Ache- Home of our Coffee

This morning I got up and got on a plane and flew over the mountains in Northern Sumatra to the province of Ache. If you remember the tsunami from a few years ago, this is the area that was hardest hit. Over 100,000 people in Ache were killed from the tidal wave sparked by the massive earthquake in the ocean. While flying over the coast city where we landed I could see old foundations of houses that once lined the beach area.

The flight was only an hour but if we had driven it would have taken 7 hours. From the airport we proceeded to drive 5 hours into the highlands of Ache to a town called Takengon. This remote city is on the end of Lake Tawar. There are an estimated 70,000 hectors of coffee in this area. That is about 150,000 acres of coffee-planted land. This area is very mountainous and the lake is breath taking. Lake Tawar is one of the deepest fresh water lakes in the world.

Upon our arrival we were taken to our hotel where we unpacked. We then drove to a mountaintop looking down at the town of Takengon and Lake Tawar. After driving for 5 hours I was hoping to have a beer but this province is a Muslim area and is run under Islamic law so alcohol is allowed, or at least not sold. Because we arrived late we only had time for a short trip to the Ecom Office here and were pleasantly surprised with a snack of coffee and deep fried banana.

The people here are very friendly and excited to see visitors. The town of Takengon has a population of about 30,000. Being Saturday night we went out to dinner at a new restaurant in town and had some local food. Our hotel is right on the lake and is a bit run-down. I was told it was abandoned during the unrest and is now being renovated. There were mosquitoes in the room so I slept in my mosquito net tent that wraps around the bed. I think we are the only guests in the hotel- it is very quiet here.


Day Two in the Lake Tawar Area

We visited the area of where we currently buy our Sumatran coffee. The first stop was to the mill where all the organic coffee for Ecom’s operation is milled. The mill isn’t very big because what happens here is mostly a second drying and hulling process.

Once the mill tour was over we headed to the coffee growing area. This entire area is Shade grown with mostly short shade trees that are leguminous to help enrich the soil with nitrogen. I learned an important lesson when entering the organic coffee. You can be certain the coffee is organic when there are tons of bugs and huge spiders everywhere in it. This spider I saw was about 3 inches long and had about a million friends next door. I hit a huge web going through the coffee trying to take some pictures and it really freaked me out (editors note: We thought Mark was being a wimp until we saw the photo below, yikes!).

This area is again small farmers that sign up with an exporter and sell their wet parchment. They pick about a bag of coffee a day during the harvest and rely on family members to help with all the chores. They don’t hire any extra labor; the people in this area (and most of Sumatra) are all family farms. You can see the market has been good for a while. Many small farmers are buying things like scooters and building on to their houses. Everyone is trying to sell their coffee with some sort of certification like organic or Fair Trade.

This area is extremely healthy with a very lush countryside. The coffee is unusually thick and compact. The trees are so close that it makes it difficult to move through the trees. The people of Takengon like to keep the trees in a sort of an umbrella shape; I am not sure why other than I think it keeps the grass from growing underneath to compete for water. This area has a major CBB ( Coffee Berry Borer) problem. A bug penetrates the coffee cherry and lays an egg inside, killing the berry or infecting the coffee with a fungus that turns the coffee bad. It effect about 10 percent of the coffee but if treated with traps can be reduced to 5%.

The next blog will be the second half of this day, which includes the introduction of our new farm friendly direct program: helping an orphanage in this coffee area.