STiR coffee and tea magazine

32 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2018 (October / November) crops have similar soil and water qual- ity requirements. Avocados also provide windbreaks "because the wind can be al- most as bad as the frost." Ruskey also keeps an eye on local "sundowner winds" that blow hot and dry from the north along the south coast of Santa Barbara County. The winds are no- torious for fanning devastating wildfires. "My worry is the dry winds that come down the hills," he says. "At sunset the temperatures will climb 20 to 30 degrees higher and we'll get winds and humid- ity will drop to single digits. That will go until midnight. When that happens, we crank the irrigation on, hold tight and keep our noses in the air." The Frinj Coffee collaborative Coffee cultivation is not limited to the Goleta farm. Thirty farms across northern San Diego County and southern Riverside County, long known for its avocado production, have joined the Frinj Coffee collaborative. Nearly 25 of those farms are contributing to the harvest. The others planted their first trees this year. In all, 15 varieties are grown and more trees are in production than ever before. At harvest, Frinj Coffee takes its mobile processing equipment to each farm instead of transporting them for hours by truck to Goleta. The crop is then sold to Blue Bottle Coffee. Frinj Coffee also looks for new systems and advanced science. The company is working with Denver-based Bext360's blockchain technology to get real-time analysis of its harvest from the field. The company also signed a five-year contract with Front Range Biosciences to ensure Frinj farmers get quality plants. "It ramps up to 5 million plantlets over the five years," Ruskey says of the Front Range agreement. "It creates a backup for my genetics. There is some genetic drifting that we see within the varieties. There is open pollinating and there's the ability for 10 to 15% cross-pollination with other varieties. If there are individual plants that are performing better than others, now we can take clones of that specific plant and we don't get that genetic drift." Because coffee is new to the region, there are no natural pests, Gaskell says. Medi- terranean fruit flies, a decades-old threat to California agriculture, have been trapped in San Diego County and coffee cherries are potential host plants. Normally, a fruit fly discovery would prevent cherries from being transported out of the county. But, Gaskell says, on-site coffee processing resolves the problem. The harvested pulp and any potential fruit fly eggs would remain in the area while the beans move on. "The eggs are staying with the pulp and are buried. It works out well." The future of California coffee Ruskey and Gaskell have proven high yields and high-quality specialty coffee can be produced in California. "Anywhere you grow avocados you can grow coffee," Gaskell says. "The mild effects of the ocean currents still influence that. You'd have to go to 2,200 meters in Central America to get these temperatures." And, the region's farmers are looking for alternatives. "There has been a reduction in small avocado growers in the past five years. Market changes, the cost of water, and water quality are making a lot of these smaller farmers go out of business or working marginal returns," Ruskey says. "My hope is that this can give them an opportunity to diversify or switch crops." Ruskey finds personal satisfaction in the birth of commercial coffee in California. He and Gaskell set out to find "the next new crop" and they succeeded. "We had no idea there would be any market for it when we started," he says. "It's fun that this could become an important crop for California." Agronomist Mark Gaskell The terroir appears forbidding but coffee thrives in California's coastal valleys Photos by Carla Shryock

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