The Project Gaharo holds a meaningful place in the story of Long Miles Coffee. It’s more than just another hill it’s where everything started. The first washing station built by Long Miles was established at the base of Gaharo hill, on land that had seemingly been overlooked by others. Every part of it was cleared by local Gaharo farmers, who also crafted bricks from the clay found in the valley below. These same farmers who helped build Bukeye from the ground up are now the ones bringing their coffee cherries there. For the Long Miles team, the farmers of Gaharo have become not just collaborators, but neighbors and friends. They have grown and progressed as one community, “twese hamwe” together. What distinguishes this hill from others nearby is the presence of numerous blacksmiths, skillfully forging knives and farming tools by hand. Traditional Burundian process (fully washed):During the fully washed process, freshly harvested cherries are delivered by coffee farmers to the washing station, then floated and hand-sorted for ripeness upon arrival. The cherries are pulped and undergo a single fermentation process. Parchment spends around twelve hours dry fermenting. The parchment is sometimes ‘footed’ after fermentation. A team of twenty-five people will agitate and dance on the slippery coffee parchment by foot, helping to loosen any remaining mucilage clinging to it. It is then rinsed in fresh water, graded by density and left to soak for another four to six hours in the final rinse tank.