Sheferaw Gelegelu

Shiferaw Gelgele Tero grows coffee on his 3.8 hectare farm in the Chelbesa community, located in the south-eastern corner of the coveted Gedeo Zone - the narrow section of plateau dense with savvy farmers whose coffee is known as “Yirgacheffe”. This more remote corner of the Gedeo plateau centers its commerce around the trading city of Gedeb, a bustling outpost that links commerce between Gedeo and Guji zones, and, it must be mentioned, produces some of the most beautifully perfumed and candy-like natural coffees one can find in all of Ethiopia. The communities surrounding Gedeb reach some of the highest growing elevations for coffee in the world, and are a truly enchanting part of the long drive into Guji. In addition to coffee Shiferaw grows common subsistence and local market crops like beans, cabbage, and enset, a fruit-less relative of the banana tree whose inner pulp is packed into cakes and fermented underground, and eaten as a staple starch year round.

Coffee is Shiferaw’s main source of income that he uses to support his family. Ripe cherries for this natural processed coffee were carefully hand sorted and floated to remove less dense coffee beans before drying on raised beds for 15-21 days. Beds are carefully constructed to ensure proper air circulation and temperature control, for optimal drying. During processing, cherries are often covered during the afternoons—a very characteristic technique of southern Gedeo, where the midday sun is searingly intense. Once the cherries finished drying to the necessary 11 percent moisture, they are transported to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to be milled and prepared for export through the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, the umbrella organization that oversees Shiferaw’s local Chelbesa cooperative.