They say, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  But, as I’m sure we’ve all wondered, how much is it worth if it’s in a K-Cup box?

We’re about to find out, thanks to Mike from New Hampshire, Green Mountain Coffee fan and avian enthusiast, who sent our Customer Care team a most surprising and heartwarming story of his rescue of baby birds fallen from their nest:

[I] have an Eastern Phoebe build a nest under my deck. Something last night turned it over and dumped the baby birds onto the ground.  In order to try to help, I put the babies back in the nest and put the nest in one of your K-cup boxes and now they have a new home.  I have been monitoring them with a remote camera and have video of Mama and babies using your box as a nest.

And here’s that very video:

Everyone together now, “Awwwwww!” Our heartfelt thanks to Mike for sharing this with us and for being so creative in his search to help out animals in need.  Keep up the caffeinated cause!

UPDATE: According to Mike, the birds have all successfully flown the “box” – yes!

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Good fortune for our parent company is good fortune for us here at Green Mountain Coffee.

It was just announced today that Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., has ranked #2 on Fortune’s list of the 100 Fastest -Growing Companies.  That’s up from #11 on the list last year. From a worker-bee perspective, it’s really rewarding to be recognized in this way.  Whether we’ve been at the Company for 29 years, or just came on board, we are all feeling the excitement of being part of the Company’s growth and success right now.  Of course, we’re not doing this alone.  Everyone along the supply chain – from coffee growers to consumers who buy our brands like Green Mountain Coffee - has been part of our exceptional growth.  We feel fortunate and grateful… and busy!

We raise a mug of coffee to our fellow Company employees – and to you, for helping us all get to this point. Thank you!

Here’s  a link to the Fortune article and a video that goes along with it.

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Welcome to Ask the Coffee Lab !  If this is your first time with us, welcome! Each month our crack Coffee Lab Team tackles your questions about coffee – from what makes a good coffee bean to why coffee tasters slurp – and help to bring you another step closer to being the coffee expert you know you are inside.  If you have questions to ask us, leave a comment here, on Twitter (Follow us: @Coffee_Lab ), or Facebook .

Without further ado, Susan asks via Green Mountain Coffee’s Twitter page :

What’s this story about goats and coffee beans?

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A few years back, Mark Pendergrast wrote a great book about the history of coffee called “Uncommon Grounds”. If you go to page 4 and 5, you can read a good account of the fable which has become kind of a discovery myth of coffee. An Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi spends his days with his goats out grazing . Then one day he notices the goats eating the waxy leaves and red cherries of what we now know of as a coffee tree. The story goes that the goats get a coffee buzz – I mean, why else would they dance about and be that frisky? So Kaldi decided to eats some leaves, too, and then HE gets a coffee buzz and decides that this coffee things may have something to it .  A couple of hundred years later, everyone is making jokes about how it’s hard to turn around without bumping into a coffee shop.

That’s the folk tale, at least.  Probably many people in Ethiopia discovered the unique properties of coffee at the same time. If you were hungry and roaming around and saw some red ripe berries, wouldn’t you want to try them? Honestly, they’re not bad when ripe , but they taste nothing like a fresh raspberry or strawberry, more like honey dew melon with some lemon mixed in. 

Dixie has never had coffee. But she'll be tickled to know her picture made our blog.

I own goats – 5 French Alpines named Brandie, Blacky, Rhu, Lulu Bell, and Dixie . Before owning them I had always been impressed with word of “dancing goats”. Then I became a goatherder myself and saw my own goats “dance”. They get up on their hind legs sometimes to reach up higher to get at tree branches and leaves. They LOVE to browse. When I am out in their pasture walking them around (yes, we go on hikes), they will dance around sometimes, in our case withOUT any caffeine. They dance about and act frisky as a general rule, so I’m a little skeptical about the dancing goats on a coffee buzz.  I’m not going to question the legend of Kaldi, the most famous goatherd, just adding some “perspective” from a very amateur fellow goatherd.

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Well, it’s been a few days since our River Cleanup Week wrapped up. Liz Dohrman, our Enterprise Volunteerism Specialist and Paul Comey, VP of Environmental Affairs spent all week on the river, 12 hours a day and are just starting to dry out.

This year’s River Cleanup saw the largest amount of employee turnout with 153 employees volunteering throughout the week and contributing over 700 CAFE-hours (CAFE is our company sponsored volunteer program – click here for more info).

The River is over 120 tires cleaner, less one stove, one recliner, one loveseat, one toilet, a couple car axels, and much much regular household trash. A big thank you to Umiak Outdoor Outfitters and specifically our guide John Wolfe for his exuberance and expertise on the Winooski River.
See the sampling of pictures below of the cleanup throughout the week.

GMCR Employees - Rain or Shine they're committed!

First you need a couch....

...And then to finish the room off you need a recliner!

An epic waterfall shoot while cleaning up Bolton Dam

Loading the afternoon's bounty into the truck

The aftermath of the cleanup

So Many Tires

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With all of the new Brew Over Ice Tea K-Cups rolling out, we interns thought it would be nice to take some time to remember two go-to favorites: Half and Half Perfect Iced Tea and Southern Sweet Perfect Iced Tea.  John, my product marketing intern-in-arms, and I, an exuberant, coffee-tasting Public Relations intern, took our cool tumblers to a favorite park in Waterbury and reminisced on exactly what makes these delicious brews so reliable (and refreshing) in the taste department.

Rain or shine, Gaby's set to wait out the Vermont weather with some Half & Half in her hand!

First, a little Half & Half.  Just like Vermont weather, I sometimes can’t seem to make up my mind! That’s why I often reach for Brew Over Ice Half and Half: half lemonade, half iced tea. Two great beverages in one, so I don’t even have to make a decision! Now, if only the weather had an easy way of deciding what it wants to do…

Nothing makes John swing from tired to refreshed more than Southern Sweet Tea!

John spent some of his growing years in Atlanta, Georgia, so when he feels nostalgic for his childhood, he jumps for a tumbler full of Southern Sweet Tea.  Swings, sunglasses, and a refreshingly familiar cup of sweet tea make for a very happy intern!

We at Green Mountain Coffee can’t get enough of these updated classics. What is your favorite summer standby?

Brew Over Ice need protection from the sun, too :-)

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Yesterday a big group of Green Mountain Coffee folks road-tripped down to Boston for the Revelation to Action celebration event. It was a great time – with all the finalists in attendance at Cyclorama (Boston Center for the Arts). The day included a keynote speech by Judy Wicks and a panel discussion with Willy Foote, Harry Gold, Lorne Adrian and Janet Wu. The evening concluded with the announcement of the competition winners. We were grateful to have all the finalists there, who are all Changemakers and helped to make this whole endeavor a success. Thank you!

And the winners are….

The three overall competition winners are as follows:

• Semester in Sustainable Design/Build, Warren, VT: Yestermorrow Design/Build School provides college students with the opportunity for a semester of study and hands-on experience in sustainable design principles and processes.

• Vermont Food Education Every Day (VT FEED), Shelburne, VT: VT FEED works with schools and communities to raise awareness about healthy food, the role of farms and farmers, and good nutrition, and is a catalyst for rebuilding healthy food systems and cultivating links between classrooms, cafeterias, local farms, and communities.

• Still Growing Senior Community Rooftop Garden, Bangor, ME: The Hammond Street Senior Center is transforming its rooftop into a downtown urban garden. Seniors who can no longer manage a garden on their own or have downsized into apartments or retirement communities can use this garden to grow vegetables, exercise, and make new friends.

The seven state winners are as follows:

• Free Primary Health Care for the Uninsured of Greater Hartford, Hartford, CT: Through the use of a mobile medical clinic, this program provides free, high quality primary health care services to an underserved population that has no other means of accessing the health care system.

• Red Tomato, Canton, MA: Red Tomato coordinates marketing, logistics, and sales to create market opportunities for a regional farm network. By offering supermarkets one-stop access to season-long, farm-identified local food, Red Tomato increases consumer access to local produce and solidifies farm sustainability by ensuring that small and mid-size farmers can compete in today’s wholesale market.

• Common Ground Country Fair, Unity, ME: The Common Ground Country Fair is a gathering, in the spirit of a harvest festival, which serves to encourage the revival of agriculturally-based rural communities.

• Recipe for Success Culinary Job Training Program, Manchester, NH: This program helps unemployed/underemployed people gain the skills and experience to seek employment in the food service industry, rescue quality food from entering the waste stream, and provide prepared meals to thousands of needy people in NH.

• Project Enterprise – Small Loans and Big Connections, New York, NY: This project creates a “Center of Entrepreneurship” where traditionally under-resourced entrepreneurs can receive small loans and a suite of other services that will assist them in building businesses and assets for themselves and their families.

• DoubleGreen™ Credit Builder Loan Program, The Capital Good Fund, Providence, RI: This program makes $200 loans to Rhode Islanders with no or poor credit history to purchase and install programmable thermostats that lower their energy costs by $180 annually. Borrowers build credit through repayments of the loan and reduce their energy consumption, thereby reducing carbon emissions.

• Jr. Iron Chef VT, Shelburne, VT: This statewide competition gives students an opportunity to gain hands-on experience preparing and cooking nutritious, farm-fresh foods. The program highlights local agriculture and encourages students to make healthy eating choices and understand more about nutrition and school food systems.

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If you haven’t heard already, The Perfect K-Cup Sweepstakes is an amazing opportunity for YOU to have the chance to win a new Keurig® Single-Cup Brewer along with a lifetime supply of K-Cup® portion packs!

That’s right, a lifetime supply.  We’re not kidding — Just ask our inagural winner, Bonnie G. of Muskegon, MI.  Bonnie was recently awarded a new Keurig Platinum Brewer along with her lifetime supply of coffee!

Bonnie is an avid sweepstakes player who loves finding prizes, both large and small.  She tells us, “Winning is all about persistence.”  Her brother is also a Keurig owner and raves about the product, so when Bonnie found out she won the sweepstakes, she was more than thrilled!  She prefers to enjoy a “regular” cup of Green Mountain Coffee, but on occasion will have a cup of hazelnut as one of her flavored favorites.  Congrats again, Bonnie!

So what does it take to be like Bonnie?  Simply visit The Perfect K-Cup Sweepstakes homepage, fill out the information – and you’re set!  There are daily prize giveaways with the chance at our Grand Prize which will be awarded in early 2011.  Enter early, enter often!  If you own a Brewer, this sweepstakes is just for YOU.

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