After University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) horticulture student Nayla Charbonneau’s powerpoint presentation to her class about her latest project, students headed up to a coffee maker to get a cup.
Coffee in a university classroom, pretty normal.
But this is not your usual coffee, this is coffee that Charbonneau painstakingly harvested, prepared, dried, roasted, cooled, ground and then brewed.
All from beans grown right here in Chilliwack. The coffee Charbonneau brewed in class was likely some of the first ever grown in the Fraser Valley.
The coffee plants were grown in UFV’s high-tech greenhouses at the Chilliwack campus near the Vedder River.
“We can grow anything,” UFV associate professor of agriculture Tom Baumann says.
“Anything that is grown anywhere on the planet we can grow. We can control the environment completely. We can grow things cold. We can grow them hot. We can grow dry. We can grow humid.”