Organic coffee

Trying to live as sustainably as possible I grow all my own veggies, eat meat raised organically and free range from Farmer Nick's LLC - a local farm - and try to buy organic and local for most of the rest of my purchases.  Local turns out to be very difficult for coffee.  And I like my one cup in the morning.  Very much.  And it's great to spread around organic coffee grounds in my organic veggie garden.

I decided I didn't want to buy the organic coffee from the grocery because it's expensive and usually not fair trade - plus I want to buy so that as little as possible goes to the middle store.  So I started looking around for a source, and not being able to help myself I went to Amazon - they have free shipping after all, and usually a great selection of stuff.  So we first tried Coffee Bean Direct.  As the reviews stated, it was dry and not very flavorful, probably due to little oils left in the beans.  That was too bad, apparently if you order direct from Coffee Bean Direct it's better, but I was ready to be on to the next thing.  This weekend we had Equal Exchange.  What a difference!  I knew it as soon as I was pouring the beans into the grinder - they had a rich color and their oils were apparent.  The taste is great, and I will order Equal Exchange coffee again.  But I'm still searching.

I've decided to try Pachamama Coop coffee next.  I read about this group in Hobby Farms Magazine (I don't know why they had so many things I lusted after this month) and you can find them here.  I haven't tried them yet, but will write about it when I do.

If you have tried their coffee I'd love to hear about it, and if anyone has a favorite source for organic, fair trade coffee that they love please let me know.  I am trying to create as small a footprint on this earth as possible, and I know that the shipping is a huge drain on natural resources, but I'm hoping to offset that with paying fair prices for the coffee bean farmers.  One day, I'm hoping others will want to pay me fair prices for whatever I'm producing, and what goes around comes around after all.