Step 1 of the Coffee Production Process: Picking the Coffee Cherries On our farm, Finca Paramitos, in Colombia, coffee cherries are picked by hand in a labor intensive and difficult process. The coffee cherry is actually a fruit and turns a bright, deep red when ripe and ready to be harvested. Our coffee pickers rotate among the trees every eight to 10 days, picking only the cherries which are at it's peak ripeness. A good picker averages about 100-200 pounds of coffee cherries a day. Each worke