Some coffees travel further than others.
Bumba comes from a remote hill in Burundi’s highlands, where reaching the community means crossing rivers and provincial borders. Here, 698 smallholder farmers grow Red Bourbon on plots averaging just 800 square metres, each carrying around 200 coffee trees alongside beans, bananas, maize and cassava.
This season, Bumba joins our Good Coffee Doing Good program. For every kilo sold, $4 will be donated to Trees for Kibira, Long Miles Coffee Project’s reforestation and environmental sustainability initiative in Burundi.
A Partnership That Keeps Growing
When Padre launched Good Coffee Doing Good in 2020, our first partnership was with Long Miles Coffee Project and Trees for Kibira. It marked the beginning of a program built around something we have always believed: great coffee can create a stronger connection between the people who grow it and the people who drink it.
We have now purchased coffee from Long Miles for more than five years, returning to the relationship season after season. Previous releases have focused on coffees from Gishubi Hill, while Bumba first made its Padre appearance as a delicious natural lot over summer.
Now, we are returning to Bumba with a fully washed Red Bourbon. It is a different expression of the same hill, shaped by careful processing at Ninga Washing Station and the work of the 698 farming families behind it.
Meet Long Miles Coffee Project
Long Miles Coffee Project began in 2011, when Ben and Kristy Carlson moved to Burundi with the aim of building a coffee program that placed producing families, rather than intermediaries, at its centre.
Their first washing station, Bukeye, opened in 2013 at the foot of Gaharo Hill. It quickly became clear that farmers were travelling extraordinary distances to deliver cherry, with some walking for more than three hours to reach accurate scales and receive a fair price.
Long Miles has spent the years since moving its infrastructure closer to coffee-growing communities.
Ninga Washing Station is the newest part of that approach. The land was purchased on Ninga Hill in 2017, around 15 kilometres from Bukeye, with construction beginning in 2022 after delays caused by changes within Burundi’s coffee industry. The station released its first microlots that season and has since added new drying infrastructure closer to Bumba itself.
For a community this remote, bringing processing closer matters. It helps protect cherry quality, reduces the distance farmers must travel and strengthens the connection between an individual hill and the coffee carrying its name.
Bumba: A Hill and a Community
Bumba sits in the Ninga Zone of Matongo Commune, in an area historically recognised as Kayanza Province and now within the enlarged province of Butanyerera.
The farms climb between 1,700 and 1,900 metres above sea level. Cool nights slow the maturation of the cherries, extending the time available for sugars to develop and helping produce dense, flavourful coffee seeds.
Plots here are small, averaging around the size of a generous backyard. Red Bourbon coffee grows alongside food crops and a diverse mix of vegetation, including avocado, grevillea, eucalyptus and polyscia.
The hill has no permanent water source and its shallow clay and silt soils are vulnerable to erosion. Farmers use mulching, contour planting and intercropping with nitrogen-fixing species to protect the land, while Long Miles provides agronomy training through farmer field schools and extension visits.
The organisation also pays a higher price for ripe cherry and distributes an annual premium. Its training, savings groups and leadership workshops are intended to create greater opportunities for women, who undertake much of the farm and harvest work while remaining underrepresented in local leadership.
Trees for Kibira
Trees for Kibira was created by Long Miles to support the landscapes that coffee-growing communities rely upon.
The project plants indigenous trees around Burundi’s coffee hills, creating green belts that help protect soils, reduce erosion and restore biodiversity. As the trees grow, they provide shade, return organic matter to the soil and contribute to healthier, more resilient growing environments.
The work is paired with education and ongoing involvement from the communities themselves. Through farmer field schools, agronomy support and the work of Long Miles’ Coffee Scouts, practical knowledge about soil health, tree care and sustainable farming can be shared from hill to hill.
For Bumba, where erosion is already visible and water must move across the hill as surface runoff, this kind of long-term environmental work is particularly relevant. Trees for Kibira is not simply about planting trees. It is about supporting the conditions that allow coffee farms and their surrounding communities to thrive into the future.
The Coffee
Bumba is a fully washed Red Bourbon.
Cherry is delivered to Ninga Washing Station on the day it is picked, then floated to remove low-density fruit and carefully hand sorted. After disc pulping, the coffee is fermented under water, graded through washing channels and soaked in clean water to remove the remaining mucilage.
The parchment is slowly dried on raised beds, with the coffee covered through the hottest parts of the day. Sorting continues throughout drying until the coffee reaches a stable moisture content.
In the cup, Bumba leads with ripe, yellow-fleshed nectarine. Lime shapes the acidity, bringing a bright and clean quality without becoming sharp. Malt sits through the middle with a biscuit-like sweetness, while chamomile arrives late and lingers gently on the finish.
The texture is crisp on entry and silky through the mid-palate. Unreasonably silky, if we are being honest.
How We’re Supporting
For every kilo of Burundi Bumba Washed sold, Padre will donate $4 to Trees for Kibira.
Bumba will be available in both espresso and filter roast, giving you two ways to enjoy this beautiful coffee while supporting Long Miles’ wider reforestation and environmental sustainability work in Burundi.
Good Coffee Doing Good is about making the connection between the coffee in your cup and the people, places and projects behind it a little clearer. Bumba does exactly that: a delicious coffee from a remote hill, supported by long-term relationships and thoughtful work on the ground.
Worth the trip.