From a single cup, to a farm.

Si Farm has a slightly unusual beginning.

We did not build a café afterwards, in order to serve coffee the farm had grown. In our case, the journey started at the place where a single cup is served.

In Vietnam, coffee has always sat close to daily life. On a street corner in the morning. In an alley lined with small stools. Beside a conversation with family or friends. Passing time while you wait for coffee to fall slowly through a filter is one of the things this country has cultivated for a long time.

Dương Nữ Thiên An grew up with that near her.

More than ten years ago she opened Si Café in Ho Chi Minh City. It began with choosing good coffee arriving from Vietnam's various growing regions, and delivering that flavour to people one cup at a time. She made a small shop in a quiet alley in District 1, arranged the seats, put in plants, watched the light come through the window, and shaped, little by little, a place where a cup of coffee could be enjoyed properly.

As the shop grew, her attention widened past the cup.

Even within Vietnamese coffee, the flavour changes when the land and the farm change. It changes with how the trees are grown, with the ripeness of the cherry, with the judgement of the person picking, with fermentation and drying.

What land did this flavour come from? And to make better coffee, what could we ourselves do?

Not only to find good coffee, select it and deliver it — but to be involved in the place where the flavour is born.

The deeper her understanding of coffee went, the more naturally her eyes turned towards the farm.

And in 2019, on land in Cư M'gar, Đắk Lắk, where red soil weathered from basalt spreads out, she began Si Farm. The first year went into the ground itself; the trees were planted in 2020.

From there, coffee changed for her — from something to be chosen, into something grown together with a place.

For someone who had spent more than twenty years running businesses in information technology, farming meant starting over and learning from the beginning.

But what she wanted to hold onto at the farm was clear.

Not to force nature into a different shape, but to understand the land first. To protect the soil so the trees can grow healthy, and use the limited water carefully. To think of the grass, the insects, the birds, the microbes, the coffee trees — and the people — as beings that make up the same farm.

Not only for this season's harvest, but so that good coffee can still be grown on this land in five years, in ten, and beyond. So that the next generation can live here, work here, and continue farming.

Si Farm thinks about the farm inside that kind of long time.

Around thirty staff work at the farm now, and the person at the centre of cultivation is Sơn, who grew up on this plateau and knows the land.

Changes in a leaf or a fruit, the way the soil dries, small differences after rain — these are things only someone who looks at the trees every day notices. The experience and observation of each person is knowledge that accumulates in Si Farm.

We think of growing, harvesting, sorting, fermenting, drying and cupping as one connected piece of work.

Look at the state of the tree. Decide the day to pick. Choose the ripe cherries. Read the change in fermentation, and judge when drying should end.

It is not one special technique that makes excellent coffee.

It is how carefully, and with how much attention, the same daily work can be repeated and built up.

Each of those, in the end, shows up as the quality of a cup.

Coffee made that way has come to be well regarded at competitions and quality evaluations.

要確認 ／ TO VERIFY — name the competitions, years, lots and scores before publishing this sentence.

But scores and awards are not the goal in themselves. Outside evaluation is one important measure for checking our own work and making the next harvest better.

What we are aiming at is to express the character of Cư M'gar as flavour, while leaving behind a farm where both nature and people can stay healthy, for the generation that follows.

To connect with producers who share the same intention, and to share knowledge, technique and experience. Raising quality together, and growing a better coffee region that also supports employment and life in the area, is part of Si Farm's work too.

Leaving good soil behind. Protecting clean water. Growing healthy trees. Taking care of the people who work here. And making coffee that could only come from this land.

All of it is connected.

Enriching nature enriches the farm. Enriching the farm makes a future for people. And that accumulation leads to a better cup.

Si Farm is not making coffee for one harvest alone.

We are growing the coffee of the future.