In the last few weeks our Toolshed has served as home-office workspace, print shop, coffee packaging/ shipping warehouse (the actual roasting happens outside), as well as hosting all our normal daily functions. You know: sleeping, eating, housing two cats and the dog, making applesauce, drying plums, etc.. Just the basics. I’ll be honest, there are times when it feels a bit cramped. While shuffling boxes to extract the one large pot to heat shower water (too much smoke to heat the solar shower lately), or putting all other operations on hold till the photo prints spread over all surfaces are dry, it can feel like there is not room for one more thing or operation in this space. By all logic, there probably is not. So why not order over 800 pounds of coffee to be delivered to our door?
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| When we first started roasting, one of these bags seemed large. |
Back in the Grove, we used to just pick up our Papua New
Guinea coffee ourselves from the small warehouse that Larry and Aarlie import
through near Seattle. Driving on veggie
oil, we’ve gotten up to three bags crammed into the backseat. We usually managed to combine those coffee
trips with some other meetings and errands in or near Seattle, so it worked out
pretty efficiently, getting a few bags at a time. We are by far the smallest customer at the
warehouse, so it was always fun to see our one or two bags brought out to the
loading dock. But now that we’re
hundreds of miles farther away, the direct veggie-oil fueled pickup isn’t so
feasible. Added to that is the fact that
this year’s crop is looking to be pretty low at the Madan farm, so we’ve had a
bit of worry about having a good supply over the next year. So, just to be secure, we decided to take the
new action of having some coffee shipped to us.
And if a truck is going to come to our house, even though the freight is
shared with many other things coming to Missoula from that region, we want to
maximize the efficiency of fuel. So, of
course, with nowhere really to put it, we ordered 8 bags of coffee.
It arrived yesterday, while I was working at home
(fortunately) and Noah was at the office.
The freighter truck couldn’t get up the driveway, but one of the
builders working on Anita’s house was happy to drive his pickup truck out to
the street to pick up the pallet of coffee for us. A
pallet of coffee. Eight bags, piled
up, strapped down, and marked with “Forest Voices” on a wire-and-paper
tag. A whole pallet of coffee is a bit
exciting, and a whole new scale for our operations.
I was tempted to start wrestling bags off the truck and into
our living space right away, but since I’m still supposed to be on lockdown for
any strenuous ankle activity (something I need to get better at obeying), I
called Noah home from the office, and we tackled it together with the wheeled
dolly that has proven to be one of our most valuable pieces of equipment. I thought for a while we might have to pile
these in one corner of our living space, reducing the access pathway to our bed
to a small corridor, but with enough shuffling, we managed to squeeze them into
a garage storage space between Anita’s furniture and boxes. We are still proceeding with pretty much all
activities even in this toolshed homestead, but I’m looking forward to the day
when there are more distinct zones for all these different business and
activities. Till then, we’ll just
continue this shuffle, doing our best to make that Toolshed Shuffle into some sort of dance.
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| The handcart purchased for the multiple moves proves invaluable for wheeling the coffee from the truck through the kitchen and toolshed for storage in the garage. (note that Noah is similarly versatile, transitioning easily from being a sustainable agriculture consultant on skype video calls, to coffee freight transfer without so much as changing clothes. We're bit on versatility here. |
