DON RUANO’S COFFEE ESTATE--COFFEE-MILLS AND COFFEE-POTS--WASTE OF
FRUITS--DON RUANO AND HIS MOTHER.
We rode to Don Francisco Ruano’s coffee estate, hoping to hire a few
hands from him to tide over the unexpected rush of work. The Don, with
his octogenarian mother, had lived many years on a small and neatly
managed _cafetal_, whose boundaries touched Desengaño. The Don never
ventured farther from home than the depot or nearest village; and the
aged _señora su madre_ had not been beyond the limits of her domain for
so long that she--like many others of advanced life in that voluptuous
land--had lost all desire to move. The avenue to the house was bordered
with straggling, rough-barked cocoa-palms, loaded at all seasons with
the valuable nuts that grew, ripened, and rotted in great bunches on
the trees year after year. A coffee estate is necessarily a fruit-farm
also. Coffee is a delicate plant, requiring heat tempered with shade,
and, as it grows in long rows of detached shrubs on the cleanly kept
ground, tall, broad-spreading avenues of fruit-trees shelter it from
the direct rays of the scorching sun.
A well-kept _cafetal_--and it has to be well kept, else it goes rapidly
to ruin--is like a beautiful, symmetrical garden, planted with utmost
precision.
The foliage is a light green; the leaves are small, and grow along
the straight, slender branches in clusters; while the broad-spreading
boughs of the towering trees, of a darker and richer green, cast their
refreshing shade over all. Coffee is of slow and delicate growth. The
plant is four to six years old before it begins to bear fruit. Once
matured, it continues to increase in value and capacity for, perhaps,
fifteen or twenty years before it deteriorates, and the necessity
of renewal is apparent. In the late spring the shrubs are thickly
sprinkled with a shower of white blossoms, somewhat resembling in form
and fragrance those of the orange. When the petals of these flowers
strew the ground, tiny green buds appear in great profusion the whole
length of the slender branches, turning red like holly-berries as they
increase rapidly in size, bending the boughs down with their weight.
These transformations take place during the rainy season, and through
that period a _cafetal_ is wonderfully beautiful and fragrant.
The first clear days in October, the berries, then the size of small
hazel-nuts, are carefully harvested in immense flat baskets and spread
upon a broad paved court to dry in the sun, protected from chance
showers during the day and drenching dews at night by being heaped
into piles under sheds or covered with heavy cloths. Any moisture
during the drying process rots and ruins the berry. At Don Ruano’s the
drying _patio_ was under his mother’s supervision, and the old lady
found occupation in watching the coffee, seeing that it was frequently
stirred so that each grain received its due proportion of sun and heat,
and that it was also protected from dampness.
All through the country coffee is sold in the hull, which contains two
grains laid face to face, covered with a brown, dry husk, from which it
is easily separated.
The door of every country-house, be it dwelling or _bodega_, is
ornamented by the unattractive but useful coffee-mortar with its clumsy
wooden pestle, and a sieve made of pita caruja hangs by its side, in
which the contents of the mortar are tossed in the wind and the light
husks blown away, leaving the firm, hard berry.
One of the sights that arrests the eye of a stranger in Cuba is the
multitude of bags hanging at the door of every little shop and for sale
at every step in the country as well as in the towns--bags of coarse
red flannel, fitted with a hoop around the top and terminating in a
point at the bottom; bags of every size, from those that would contain
only a pint to others with the capacity of many gallons. These are the
coffee-pots of Cuba, from which come the most delicious draughts of
that much-prized and much-disparaged beverage. Half filled with finely
pulverized coffee and suspended from a hook on the wall, cold water is
gently poured on from time to time till the whole mass is saturated.
The first drops which fall into the receiver placed beneath the bag are
thick and black. One spoonful in a cup of boiling milk yields a draught
of coffee that is deliciousness itself, such as is not to be found in
any other land. The red bag hangs day and night, and the process of
dripping coffee is ceaseless. All classes and ages offer and drink it
freely as we do water. The wealthiest banker in his gilded palace and
the poorest peasant in his scanty hut use the same red flannel bag
and drink the same coffee. It is quite as rich and delicious served
in coarse pottery in the _bodegas_ about the market-places, where the
workmen assemble in the early dawn, as in the dainty Sèvres at “El
Louvre” or “La Dominica,” where the _élite_ tarry the night away. So
universal is its use that the _mayorals_, _boyeros_, cartmen, and,
indeed, every class of white laborers on plantations, exact their cup
of coffee before they begin the work of the day.
After the harvest, the coffee-plants which were not disturbed during
the summer are carefully weeded, the decayed and decaying fruit
removed, and the ground kept cleanly _swept_. Mamey, marmocillo,
zapote, and aguacate trees are by reason of their splendid shade the
chosen growth of a _cafetal_. The fruit of all is rich, juicy, and
greatly prized in the cities, while in the country the abundance is
in many instances a nuisance and an expense. While Don Ruano had men
employed in carrying off baskets of fruit to be cast away and we had
barrow-loads of lemons wheeled from our garden, no way was provided by
which this superabundance could be transported to a market. The cities
received their supplies entirely through private enterprise, either by
trains of pack-horses or by small vessels from one port to another,
whose traffic, always hampered, was now almost suspended by military
espionage and exactions. Therefore tropical fruits were often more
expensive in Havana than in many interior cities of the United States.
With a railroad, connecting Havana with Matanzas and Union, passing
so near that the smoke of the engine could always be seen and the
rattle of the passing train often heard from his door-step, there were
no facilities for Don Ruano to ship his fruit. We occasionally made
the attempt to send Don Anastasio (our invalid merchant) a basket
of zapotes; but, no matter how well secured and sealed or carefully
dispatched, the basket invariably reached its destination with
diminished contents. As freight on small packages must be prepaid, and
no guarantee was given by the railroad company (then under military
control), of course there could be no reclamation. I presume that Don
Ruano never dreamed of patronizing the road at such risks.
The Don had a comfortable, simple country home. All the cots and
bed-room furnishings were sunning by the side of the house as we
entered. The old señora, in a low-neck, almost sleeveless muslin
garment, too infirm and obese to rise from her chair without great
effort, received us most cordially, and ordered _la mulata_, as she
called her chocolate attendant, to pass me the cigars and a taper.
Every morning it was her devoted son’s first duty to make, with his own
fingers, cigars for his mother’s use during the day. They were long
and thick, dark and strong, but limited in number to six. The señora
mentioned, as though it were an indication of praiseworthy self-denial,
that she never allowed herself to exceed that number. Don Ruano, with
his white linen shirt starched stiff as pasteboard and glistening with
polish, the skirt hanging in unyielding drapery over his pantaloons,
was as courtly and gracious as a dancing-master. A sugar-planter’s
harvest begins after that of a _cafetero_ ends, and from the latter
the planter recruits the extra workmen required. From this neighbor we
hired all the extra laborers we needed for our busy season, and in any
emergency he cheerfully increased the number for a limited time. With
Henry’s aid he was informed of our urgent need of any workmen he could
spare for a month, and we were assured, with hand on his immaculate
shirt-bosom and a thousand protestations of undying friendship, that we
not only could command all the laborers he had, but his house and all
its contents were also at our disposal!