By Don Crosby - Sun Times Correspondent

The Ashanti coffee bar in Thornbury, is the latest venture launched by a couple who roast and sell coffee grown on their own plantation halfway around the world in Africa.

A little more than a year ago Amy and David Wilding-Davies were driven from their 400 hectare holdings in the Chipinge District of Zimbabwe by security forces loyal to President Robert Mugable. For David, 40, a member if the Canadian equestrian team during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and Amy, 42, selling their home in Kimberley and buying the Ashanti coffee plantation in 200 was a dream come true. They had fallen in love with the country after having spent their honeymoon in Zimbabwe in 1996. The original 500-acre farm was in poor shape and needed replanting. They also rented another 500 acres in the area and at the peak of production they employed 250 people. In 2003 the couple was voted Zimbabwe Coffee Growers of the Year by their fellow coffee growers.

But the dream turned to a nightmare with Mugabe’s land distribution policies which saw farms owned by whites seized on the pretext of turning them over to black Africans. The scheme was really a way of punishing people in areas of the country that voted for the opposition party in the 2002 general election. “He started this campaign of taking over farms under the guise of the land reform but it really was a means of getting his supporters into these areas and getting people who voted against him out of those areas,” said David. Many of the seized properties were looted and left idle.

By 2004 unrest had reached the east African region where the Wilding-Davies farm is located. “We were harassed for such a long time but we had good support from people around us that we were able to hang in there,” David said. In August 2005 Amy returned home with the couple’s two children, Max 10, and Olivia 8. They now have a third child, one-year-old Kate.

“We had a great lifestyle, a super school just down the road and the farm was just a huge playground for the kids. The Africans love their children so they were great with our children,” Amy said. “We all really miss Africa although we are loving being here in this community. Our kids have adapted to being Canadian. They are skiing and playing hockey.”

Her husband stayed on in Zimbabwe but a month later armed thugs attacked David and tried to kill the farm manager, who was seriously wounded. “Violence increased and some of their workers were beat up and in the end they tried to murder our manager…..and I got shot at,” said David. Although David wasn’t seriously injured it signaled the need to return to Canada while leaving the day-to-day farming to the locals. Once the Mugabe regime is replaced by a democratic government the couple would love to go back to Zimbabwe with their family. “We thoroughly love farming,” said David, who has been going back to visit a couple of times a year to monitor the running of the remaining leased acreage.

Looking after the workers on the Ashanti estate is important to the Wilding-Davies’. The employees and their families who work the plantation are housed on estate with communal cooking facilities and running water. All employees are fed a hot meal each day at lunchtime. The owners remit a percentage of their sales back to the people living in rural districts. Ashanti donates 10 percent back to the local school as well as a percentage of the yearly sales.

Originally most of the Ashanti coffee crop was bought by brokers from Europe and Japan but seeing the increasing interest in premium African coffee and a demand for closer connection between consumer and producers the couple decided to be one of the first in North America to grow, import, roast and deliver their own coffee from farm to the cup without the involvement of middlemen. Ashanti Coffee Enterprises (ashanticoffee.com) was established in September 2006 in Collingwood to sell freshly roasted Arabica coffee directly to restaurants and grocery stores within a half-hour radius of Collingwood. The growing interest and demand for fresh roasted coffee led to the opening of the Thornbury coffee bar on September 1. “We found that so many people wanted to come and see the green coffee beans being roasted, they wanted to know how the coffee was grown so that’s why we moved to Thornbury,” said David. “We have our little shop front were people can come in, have a coffee, see the green coffee beans, see the roasting and find out how it’s grown.

“We are the only coffee shop where you can walk in and speak directly to the man who has grown the coffee.”

David and Amy are pleased with how well the Thornbury coffee bar has been received and they enjoy educating their customers about how coffee is grown. “On opening day people where lined up onto the sidewalk to get a taste of the freshly roasted coffee,” said David. Ashanti coffee is sold at the Thornbury coffee bar roasted to order and available in whole bean or ground into mild, medium, dark roast or espresso.

Coffee is available at more than a dozen retail stores including Foodland in Meaford, Markdale and Creemore and Donabies restaurant in Flesherton, as well as Greens IGA, the Dam Pub and Marion’s Hair Studio in Thornbury, and several places in Collingwood. For a complete list of their retail outlets, please Click Here.