Ticos turn their hands to coffee picking

Driving past the recibo where coffee growers were lined up to turn in their day’s picking and have it weighed, I noticed my neighbor Alfredo getting ready to haul a heavy cart up the road to his house. Lacking a truck or tractor, or even a pair of oxen, he pulls the coffee-laden cart two kilometers downhill to the receiving depot. Going home, uphill, requires a lot of strength.

With the back of my ’78 Land Cruiser open, we hooked the handle of the cart around the rungs of the back seat. With Alfredo keeping a close watch, we second-geared our way up the mountain road. I was afraid the cart would come unhooked and roll back down to where we started, but we made it home with no damage to the car, the cart or us.

The coffee harvest extends from September to January, and during this season Alfredo and his whole family, including a son and daughter-in-law who have jobs in town, are out picking coffee. For them, the work means saving their farm as well as added income. But coffee picking isn’t such a bad job, and many Ticos are out right now to join the coffee harvest, mostly on nearby family farms where they know the owners and the hours are flexible. According to the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica (ICAFE), about 80,000 people are engaged in the coffee harvest, mostly as temporary workers, and that includes a lot of local help.