Less than one percent of coffee consumed in the U.S. comes from domestically grown beans. That very small American coffee market is grown almost exclusively in tropical locales like California, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The mountainous eastern seaboard isn’t a friendly landscape for Coffea plants—a small fruit tree that thrives in warm, humid, frost-free environments.
And yet, on a frigid winter morning, I scrape frost off my windshield before driving to Big Guns Coffee Farm in Spindale, North Carolina. The dash says its 24 degrees outside. I shed my layers as the car warms up—hat, gloves, scarf, parka, fleece. Then I pile them all back on again before heading into the warehouse at Isothermal Community College to meet the owners of the farm: T.Shane Johnson and his daughter Charli.
