This is the second feature in a series of stories where we highlight the great work of some pioneering coffee farmers in South Africa!
This week we chat to Bruce Milton of Citimba Estate in Limpopo. His coffee, called Levubu Soutpansberg is one of our SA grown coffees in this month's extremely limited edition Discover Great Coffee Club Box.
Bruce is a 3rd generation farmer from Limpopo, who's farm, Citimba Estates, lies at the southern foot of the Soutpansberg mountains, 30km east of Louis Trichardt. We caught up with Bruce to find out more about the coffee farming experience for him so far.
"My grandfather bought the original farm (called Citimba) in 1956. He was a doctor at Elim Hospital. His parents were Swiss missionaries that arrived at Elim in 1895. My father, Rob, spent 60 years on the farm developing it into a very successful banana and macadamia farm. We have since expanded. The farms are on the southern foot hills of the Soutpansberg mountains. We are 30 km east of Louis Trichardt towards Levubu. This is a very high rainfall area and a subtropical climate. Our average rainfall is 1300mm per annum. Most farms in this area produce avos, bananas and macadamias."
The Nursery
"My grandfather had a few coffee plants, but the market was not very well developed to buy up small amounts of coffee. We still have his original manual depulping machine. With the onset of covid and macadamia price collapse we decided that we needed to diversify. We tested the existing wild coffee and it came back with a grading of 82. With such good quality characteristics it seemed like a great option to investigate coffees feasibility for commercial production. With the help of information and figures from Dylan Cumming we decided to go ahead and develop commercial blocks on the farms."
"We think that the variety is SL34 Arabica. This coffee has been growing between the indigenous bush for years." says Bruce. "Only recently have we decided to go into coffee commercially. We have been harvesting the wild coffee until our cultivated ones come into production. There is about 1 hectare of this coffee that is organically growing in the subtropical riverine forests."
"We currently have about 60 hectares of gum tree plantations. The planning is to remove all of these trees and replace them with coffee orchards. We are currently testing coffee between bananas and have also planted some trees in full sun to determine which is going to do best. We have already planted 6 hectares of coffee and expect to end up with about 80 to 100 in total. If all of our assumptions and figures are correct we will be producing coffee for many years to come."
"I think that one is always definitely interested in feedback from readers. We want to gauge if we are going in the right direction, should we be doing something differently, trying a different process or maybe a new or other variety? Is organically grown coffee better, does it actually make a difference to the taste, will you get paid more for it? How do you rate the coffee? Medium roast or dark, what do most drinkers prefer? So many questions and areas to comment on! I'm sure we will all benefit from each other's opinions. This will hopefully lead to a better tasting cup of coffee"
