In Colombia the hills are lush with coffee fincas (farms).

The Las Mingas Project is the collaborative effort of 71 farmers with small farms — less than 3 acres on average.

The Las Mingas Project brings roasters right to the source so they can meet the farmers, taste the coffee, and buy on the spot.

Gimme! CEO Kevin Cuddeback traveled to Colombia to visit the Las Mingas Project and start a trading relationship with the farmers there.

The farms sit on steep mountainsides, at a heady 6500 feet.

The group traveled the farms on foot and by horseback. "The men were fit as fiddles, acclimated to the high altitude and hiking steep footpaths uphill both ways twice a day."

A sharp drop-off runs beside the narrow path.

No clear-cutting here; the dark green coffee bushes grow beneath a shady canopy of natural-growth plantain, orange, and guamos trees.

Because coffee trees flower every time it rains, cherries in every stage of ripeness may all be on the trees at once.

One of the challenges for a quality-driven grower is to pick only ripe fruit. The pickers are expected to pick only the red cherries — no green — and they carry a separate sack for stripping the tree of over-ripes.

The coffee is processed with hand-crank depulpers.

After depulping, some parchment clings to the beans. Once they're dry to the touch, they're gathered into burlap sacks to finish drying.

Approaching Santa Barbera.

This spread is all local, gathered less than 100 miles from the table it sits on. "This fruit has a carbon footprint of zero," says Kevin. "Shapes I've never seen, tastes I've never tasted, and FRESH."

Maria Santos is a member of the Las Mingas Project. Her farm is about 20 minutes off the main road, up a single-track driveway that climbs nearly 700 feet in elevation.

The mountain taxi drivers aren't afraid of the steep, narrow roads — they just floor it and go. "For the first 15 minutes my role was to sob uncontrollably and shout, 'WE'RE GONNA DIE UP HERE!"

"These sweet ladies expressed guarded interest as I walked the muddy path through their neighborhood."

Five hours of meandering road leads from Popayán, where the farms are clustered, to Pasto, the state capital.

In Pasto, the younger generation learns the art of coffee cupping. By monitoring coffee quality in their villages, these students will help the local farming community earn better prices.

These deeply colored greens are cupped and carefully documented.