We grew coffee in our backyard. And we liked it.

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Happy National Coffee Day!

A few years ago, our dear friends, Gene and Pam sent Eric two little 3 inch coffee plants for his birthday. They thought it would be fun for us to grow our own backyard coffee.

So we added the little plants to our kind-of-chaotic-we-just-like-how-they-look backyard garden. We watered them along with everyone else who lives out there and the little coffee plants grew.

And thrived.

And we began to notice.

"Have you seen the coffee plants lately? They're getting so big!"

Little coffee plants
We repotted them and kept them close together so they wouldn't be lonely.

And last year, they produced little white flowers. WUT? "We've got COFFEE BLOSSOMS, people!"

Coffee plants in bloom

Look at us! Growing coffee!

Growing coffee plants

And then....

The little red cherries appeared. WHAT DO WE DO NOW? (<--Can you read the panic in that question?)

We sent photos to our friends. "Remember those coffee plants you gave us a few years ago? Look at what's happening to them!"

Coffee beans

Apparently it was time to harvest. Who knew?

So, Eric set about the task of choosing the ripest red coffee cherries.

Eric Darby coffee beans

We had planned a weekend trip with our friends (the ones who originally gave us the plants) and decided it would be fun to bring some of the magic beans. Gene happens to be quite the coffee snob aficionado and has his own roasting device.

Eric and Gene with coffee
Coffee talk.

He took the beans home and after a few days sent us this:

Success!

We did some of our own harvesting, shucking, drying and roasting (If by roasting, you mean stirring the beans around in a small skillet until they're brown) when we got home.

Peeling beans

I personally hated the idea of pulling off those beautiful, bright RED (!) coffee beans from our plants, but that's not important right now.

So we somehow managed to scrape together two small (freakishly small!) cups of our own Backyard Brew.

Our own coffee

Also, those 2 cute little plants are so much taller than me now. I know. Shut up!

Me & my tall coffee

There were two things we decided after this experience with the Backyard Coffee:

  1. As much as we enjoyed the process, we will, from now on, leave the coffee making to The Pros.
  2. We have added a descriptive name to our Backyard Coffee. We're calling it, Mission Viejo Brown.