This Ethiopian coffee comes to us from a single farmer named Desta Gola living in the Dodora neighborhood of Wonago, a district within the Gedeo Zone. Desta Gola is forty-nine years old and has a four-hectare farm with a little over 20,000 trees which have been in production since 2013. Desta Gola is a member of the Adame Gorbota cooperative which lies to the south of Yirgacheffe town.

The nation of Ethiopia is home to over 100 million people, and agriculture accounts for the vast majority of the country’s labor force. While large estates do exist, they are the minority. Most farmers in Ethiopia count their trees rather than their acreage, and most farms are truly gardens where food for the family is grown with perhaps a few cash crops interspersed to supplement income. Unlike many areas of the world, however, coffee is both native to Ethiopia and a part of daily life. Considered a cash crop elsewhere, it is consumed in Ethiopia in most homes, and an elaborate ceremony often accompanies its service. Ethiopia is the world’s only coffee producing country whose volume of consumption equals its export.