KHALDI AND HIS GOATS

The coffee tree is indigenous to only one small African country:  Ethiopia. So how did coffee become so popular around the world?

According to a popular legend, it all began with a young Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi (or Khaldi or Q’ahldi).  Many centuries ago, Kaldi found his goats bounding about the hillsides in a joyous frenzy. They were having a ball! Even the old and tired goats were prancing around and acting young again. They didn’t even sleep at night.

Kaldi felt confused. Tired and worn out from trying to manage the rambunctious goats, he watched them carefully to discover their secret. After finding them eating bright red fruit from a nearby tree, he tried some of the fruit himself. Suddenly, he felt invigorated.

Kaldi’s discovery might have remained his secret, but one day a monk from a nearby monastery came upon the herder and his goats and asked how they got all their energy. The monk ate from the plant and he, too, felt revitalized. He brought some coffee cherries back to the monastery to help the monks stay awake during long religious services. Soon all the monasteries used coffee as a part of their services.

During the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., Ethiopians invaded the part of the Arabian Peninsula now occupied by Yemen and brought some of their magical seeds.  Enraptured by the fruit’s invigorating and stimulating properties, the Arabs became the first people to cultivate coffee plants. In fact, the first recorded word for coffee is in Arabic. It is qahwah (KAH wah), meaning “Arab’s wine.”

The Arabs also were the first to trade in coffee. By the sixteenth century it was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. By the next century, coffee had made its way to Europe and was becoming popular across the continent. Less than 100 years after that, coffee had become a major trade crop. Today, it is the world’s most valuable commodity after oil.

Ethiopia still produces some of the world’s finest coffees. Many are organically grown and hand-processed according to centuries-old tradition. Our Cowboy Action Coffee…the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society…is a blend of Ethiopian and Indonesian in a medium-dark roast.  Just think, African coffee and Pacific coffee blended for the full bodied taste of the Old West.

Do you want FREE coffee?  The very first cowpoke who saunters up to the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s Cowboy Coffee Saloon at upcoming Western shows, and asks for it, will get a free, that’s FREE bag of CAFÉ PINON de Nuevo Mexico…our newest fusion coffee made with a proprietary blend of central American coffees and real New Mexico pinon nuts!

The purpose of this blog is to unite Kona coffee lovers and perhaps learn a little about coffee and all the benefits of coffee at the same time.  Join up, become a member, comment and have fun!  You can find the Kona Coffee Fiends group on Facebook and we’d appreciate it if Facebook users would “LIKE” the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company page at www.facebook.com/pages/Kona-Cowboy-Coffee-Company/222070817858553.  Just copy and paste to your browser.  You can also find us on Twitter at  http://twitter.com/#!/jackshuster.  And on the web at www.KonaCowboyCoffee.com to order your gourmet coffee and coffee products.

You know you’re a coffee fiend when your taste buds are so numb you could drink your lava lamp.  So enjoy your coffee, make it Kona, and remember, Kona is the home of the Hawaiian cowboy…and we had cowboys in Kona before there were cowboys in Texas!