Just Coffee

JC is working with a diverse array of people here in Madison and Dane County to form a sister county relationship with the Municipality of Andres Eloy Blanco in the highlands of Venezuela.

Andres Eloy Blanco is the municipality that hosted the Feria Mundial del Cafe that I attended back in November. It is known as the "birthplace of the cooperative movement" of Venezuela and is the center of coffee production in the country as well.

If you would like to find out more and get involved, please come on down to the meeting. You can check out this link to keep updated.

Check out this great article by Susan Kepecs on La FEM's Jitzy Ruiz in this week's "Isthmus"-- Madison's weekly arts and news mag.

"Organic feminist coffee? Check."

Pretty cool, eh?

Below is a journal of La FEM's Jitzy Centeno Ruiz's time in Wisconsin with JC.

Please continue to check back to follow her adventures...

The Jitzy/Just Coffee Journals

Friday, May 2

Jitzy Centeno, a 22-year-old female coffee farmer for Jocote, Nicaragua, takes her first ride on a airplane to land in the cold, windy city of Minneapolis. Nora Bacher, daughter of Just Coffee's Susan Moon Bacher, greets Jitzy at the airport and accompanies her on her first train ride into the city for the SCAA Annual Convention.

Saturday, May 3

Check out this story by Nathan Greenhalgh in the Reedsburg Times Press on the farm tour that we helped organize with the visiting coffee farmers and Family Farm Defenders.

The farmers and farms activists met with dairy farmers, toured the Cedar Grove cheese factory, and spent time on an Amish farm as well. By al accounts it was a powerful experience for everyone involved.

Look for more on the tour from Colleen Coy in the near future. And know that it is not to late to sign up for one of our delegations heading to coffee country this summer. Please see the story above for more information.

The photo is also by Nathan Greenhalgh

We've had some good parties before. And yeah, we've thrown some clunkers. However, the festivities last night were an all time best for the Just Coffee Co-op crew.

Jitzy Centeno Ruiz, Policarpio Cruz, Elmer Pena, Carlos Reynosa, and Jose Vazquez-- growers from 5 different grower co-ops in Latin America-- graced us with their presence for the evening. Food was lovingly prepared by Underground Catering and other people from our excellent community. We had beer from Furthermore Brewery, salad from Gotham Bagels, iced coffee from Escape Java Joint, and sweets from Indigo Coffee and Tea and Java Cat.

The night was punctuated by stimulating conversation, incredible music by Madison's Son Mudanza! , and a very long and engaging talk from and with each of the growers present.

I want to express how incredibly lucky I feel to be in a community where people support us and the growers that we partner with. I have been to events to meet growers that are a little awkward and segregated, but this event was full of people getting over their shyness and openly engaging people that they do not normally hang out with.

Thanks 1000 times to Lori, Greg, Sarah, Lucas, Susan, and Jeff for putting so much time into setting up and making JC look less like a coffee roastery and more like a purty party palace.

Thank you Madison and Dane County (and our peeps from Milwaukee, Chicago, and elsewhere) for loving the JC and what we do. We owe you our existence and we would not be doing this-- or want to be doing this-- if it were not for y'all.

SALUD!!!

Click on the photo to see the whole album

The Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project and Fundasaun Hari'i Au Metan here in Timor-Leste would like to formally thank Family Farm Defenders and John Peck of Madison, Wisconsin for their consistent generosity and support! For each sponsored box of seeds that has been sent (see 'Adopt a Box Program') Family Farm Defenders has matched the donation by sending another box of seeds.

I recently met with two city administrators from the Ainaro side of the Madison Ainaro Sister City Alliance (MASA) here in Timor-Leste.

Tear gas. Damn that hurts!

The following is a transcription of my Haitian diary:

6Nov.

Disembarking the plane at Port-au-Prince I resist the urge--which I
always get exiting a plane down the stairs onto the tarmac--to wave
Jacki Onassis style. This airport is more like a greyhound bus
station with UN soldiers from Croatia, Brazil, Belize, and all over.
Next we race frantically through the traffic standing in the back of a
truck with all of the luggage. Racing, wind in my eyes, smells. The
electricity is out everywhere except where people have generators.
It's dark and we're going top speed, moving within a couple of inches
of the colourful bus on our right. There are no seats in the bus,
everyone stands, and pedal to the metal. Up dark roads the headlights
reveal canteens and snack shops open in the walls along this curving
street. Patrons standing around, but no electricity. No sidewalks
walls like a fortress line the streets, people, trucks swerve, honk.
This guest house is quite nice. They have a generator. And a pool.
And a gate. We honk about 30 times and someone finally opens up. They
have food. Beans and rice. They have two guards. The guards sit in
lawn chairs. They both have machine guns in their laps. Pointed
either direction. One of them has a clock radio, blinking 12:00,
trying to tune in a station. It is plugged into a 50' yellow extension
cord. Reminds me of Just Coffee before the fire marshal came by (the
extension cord, not the guns).