From Cafe Imports

Konga, Yirgacheffe

This coffee comes from our Sede Washing Station partner in Konga, which is in the kebele, or village, of Sede, in the Yirgacheffe district. Konga is about 4 kilometers south of the town of Yirgacheffe. We've always liked the Konga microregion of Yirgacheffe for both its strong citrus and supportive stone-fruit flavors of peach and apricot, and when this is combined with processing as a Natural, the result is dried cherry, cranberry, and lemonade-like acidity.

Coffees in Ethiopia are typically grown on very small plots of land by farmers who also grow other crops. The majority of smallholders will deliver their coffee in cherry to a nearby washing station or central processing unit, where their coffee will be sorted, weighed, and paid for or given a receipt. Coffee is then processed, usually washed or natural, by the washing station and dried on raised beds.

The washing stations serve as many as several hundred to sometimes a thousand or more producers, who deliver cherry throughout the harvest season: The blending of these cherries into day lots makes it virtually impossible under normal circumstances to know precisely whose coffee winds up in which bags on what day, making traceability to the producer difficult. We do, however, make every available effort to source coffee from the same washing stations every year, through our export partners and their connections with mills and washing stations.

Typically farmers in this region don't have access to and therefore do not utilize fertilizers or pesticides in the production of coffee

In most instances, cherries used to produce these lots are collected from a day lot (picked in one day). 

Natural coffees in Ethiopia are first sorted for ripeness and quality before being rinsed clean Then they are spread on raised drying beds or tables, where they will be rotated constantly throughout the course of drying. Drying can take an average of 8–25 days, depending on the weather.