Remember that famous line from the first Walton’s movie? Here is a flower out of season which is still hot summer weather here. The tea plants usually bloom, in a multiflora pattern, in December but here is one blooming at the first of October. This is a plant from the Georgia Republic, next to Russia. A young Russian man came to visit me in 2007 and brought me this plant. He said he came to the southern part of USA to find my tea garden. He could not speak English and neither could his interpreter so I have no idea what he wanted to know or see. I assumed he smuggled the plant with him but as most of the other tea producers I knew at the time were getting them, he likely bought it from another tea farm. It has bloomed early every year. It has been in the flower pot for 20 years and does not grow any larger.
We are about done making tea for this year. There are a few rows with a nice stand of young growth that would make a good strong batch of black but I’m not sure if I will pick it or not. We usually make about 300 pounds of green and black every year but we maybe have only broken 200 pounds this year. During the summer when it was so hot I had several bouts of lazy which kept me on the couch. In June I hurt my knee and in August I sprung my back so we haven’t had a very good tea production year. If tea was my livelihood I guess I would be more motivated.
During the time I was laid up with a bad back, I was turning down tea tours every day. I don’t really miss those as to me it means just having to go to work. Yes, I do make money and sell tea, but we are going to sell out of tea this year whether I do tours or not. I do like meeting people and explaining our tea farm. Also, half of our tea is sold to drive up customers and I need not spend an hour explain how tea is grown and produced.
Another reason we are not doing so many tours is the Welcome Center in Fairhope is closed and being rebuilt. This is the only place you will find our rack cards advertising our tea farm tours. It is the only form of advertising we have ever done. Most of the tourist in Fairhope find us by seeing the rack cards in the Fairhope Welcome Center. I also managed this facility for years and upstairs was where I maintained the Fairhope Museum archives for 22 years. We had hundreds of thousands of artifacts and photographs all professionally conserved, cataloged and stored in climate controlled archival boxes. I have no idea what has happened to this collection. I found out soon after I retired as museum director eight years ago that your knowledge, experience, talents, perspectives and network resources are completely worthless.
I have been changing my signs and labels (and the rack cards) from Fairhope Tea Plantation to Fairhope Tea Farm. I resisted that for years because I thought plantation sounded more pleasant. But we regularly have folks from around the world come to visit thinking as they are in the South, they expect a Green Revival mansion with slave quarters in the back. We daily have guest to drive up and keep going because they don’t see a Gone With the Wind Tara plantation. We will change the name of this web site at the end of the year.
Come by for a visit. You will love our teas!
Donnie Barrett