We apply our hands to every step of the process.

We receive jute bags, sewn, filled and closed by hand by hard-working people in developing countries who work  harder and earn less than most of us ever do. We heave, mark and organize these bags by hand, with care, tracking them by lot and treating them with respect. We meticulously weigh and load the raw coffee into noisy, hot, oven-like roasters, noting all the pertinent aspects of their roasting in our logs. We attend to the roasting product like a parent watching a child, listening for the telltale crackles, watching the beans darken and give up their skin, sniffing small stolen samples for the right moment to open the roasters and release the smoking, now-roasted beans into the cooling bin. We portion the coffee into buckets, which we line up, marked and ready, in our packaging area. We fill paper bags by hand with single-origins or carefully mixed blends, often while the coffee is still warm, rolling and taping them, stacking and recording, hefting, sorting and delivering, all with our hands. It's telling that the only automatic packaging machine ever in this shop was on its way somewhere else, having no place in our workflow.

These coffee beans are the seeds of plants, grown far away, harvested by hand and processed by people using heritage technology often cobbled together from old farm equipment, car parts, and imagination. What they started with their hands, we will finish with ours.