Coffee Recipes

A Cup That Sounds Like the Forest

There’s a moment in the morning, before the day fully arrives, when everything is still soft.

The kettle hums. Light moves through the trees. And when the coffee begins to pour, there’s a feeling, like something living is arriving with it.

Our Songbird Nicaraguan Coffee carries that feeling. This is our shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee, cultivated beneath forest canopy where songbirds still find habitat along their migratory paths.

Bird-friendly coffee is one of the most effective everyday ways to support migratory bird habitat.

And when you brew it, you are part of that living system.

Why Shade Grown Coffee Matters More Than Ever

The forests that sustain migratory birds are under pressure.

The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has spent decades studying and protecting bird migration across the Western Hemisphere. Their work helps make one thing clear: birds need healthy, connected habitat to survive.

Right now, that system is breaking down. Since 1970, bird populations in the U.S. and Canada have declined by 29%, or nearly 3 billion birds. Not only rare species, but common birds too. Backyard birds. Songbirds. The ones many of us grew up hearing.

Birds are indicators of ecological health. When they decline, it tells us something deeper is out of balance.

That is one reason this coffee matters.

For nearly three decades, we’ve partnered with the American Birding Association to help protect that habitat through coffee.

What began as a shared belief, that coffee could be grown in a way that supports bird life, has grown into one of our longest-standing relationships. Together, we’ve supported shade-grown practices that allow forests to remain intact, creating space for migratory birds to rest, feed, and continue their journeys.

This is what bird-friendly coffee makes possible.

What is Shade Grown Coffee?

Shade-grown coffee is coffee grown beneath a diverse canopy of trees instead of in cleared, sun-exposed fields.

This kind of farming helps create:

• habitat for migratory birds
• healthier soil and water systems
• natural biodiversity on the farm
• slower cherry development, which often leads to richer flavor

In simple terms: better habitat supports better coffee.

That has long been part of our understanding at Thanksgiving Coffee. Great coffee and healthy ecosystems belong together.

How do we grow coffee in a way that supports land, people, and ecosystems together?

A Legacy of Environmental Leadership

This work didn’t begin recently at Thanksgiving Coffee.

In the early years of specialty coffee, our team helped establish the first Environmental Committee within the Specialty Coffee Association of America - what today would be recognized as an early form of a sustainability committee in the coffee industry.

At the time, the language was different. But the intention was clear: to bring ecological responsibility into how coffee is grown, sourced, and shared.

Paul and Joan Katzeff worked across farmers, cooperatives, and industry leaders to help connect people around a shared understanding that coffee exists within a living system.

Today, many call this coffee sustainability leadership.

At its root, it was something simpler: whole systems thinking.

That:

• coffee quality is connected to farmer wellbeing
• farmer wellbeing is connected to ecosystem health
• ecosystem health is connected to how we all participate

This has never been separate from the coffee. It is the coffee.

Where Coffee Sustainability Began: A Whole Systems Approach

Meet the Coffee: Songbird Nicaraguan

Brewing Habitat: A Daily Ritual