Burrrr, its cold out side. To cold to work out in the fields. We are in the middle of pruning off all the old growth to get ready for the spring flush. Some tea people call this a "skiff" prune but I have heard this used on large farms (Kenya) to describe a light pruning [...]
We sell lots of tea for Christmas presents every year. Its not only that the tea is very good, its that the word "Fairhope" is across the package. Guests from all over like to give a special gift from Alabama where they are spending the season. These one half pound packages of loose leaf black [...]
Down on the tea farm we are having a supply and demand problem. Its green tea. Folks are convinced that drinking green tea will cure their cancer, brain disease, sickness and ailments of every kind, as well as a bad hair day, dog bite and the price of groceries. A biochemist tea distributor friend told [...]
The photo of me carrying a bag of tea with Halloween decor around is me making "dummy" batches of tea using dried leaves from pruning. This is called "tea waste." For the past five years I have been sending many pounds of tea field scrap to two colleges in Massachusetts. First it was the Mass. [...]
As we do every year, I put up the fall scarecrow to celebrate the end of a production year. We produced a bit less than last year which doesn't really matter as our whole tea project is just for fun. We made less tea because I would be lazy and lay on the couch. My [...]
I am amazed that I have a tea bush flowering in the August heat. They usually flower in mid winter, a bit before Christmas. It is refreshing to see these flowers come out as it reminds me of cooler weather. It is not cool now! What goes on in a mind of a tea bush, [...]
I guess global warming has taken a hold on the whole country. It is brutal picking tea in this heat. I start hydrating in the mid-morning, eat lots of food, spray Off on my legs to stop ticks and ants then put on long pants and shirts with sleeves. I put on a cooling neck [...]
We have been busy in the growing season working on tea every day. We make mostly green tea in the earlier part of the summer and mostly black tea in the later half of the season, but don't always stick to this. I tend to make the tea judging from the age of the growth [...]
Every year we have small memorial service where we ceremonially remove the scare crow from the tea field and retire him to be dissembled, only to be rebuilt in a slightly different form and returned next year. This years funeral looked more like a ride to the barn. I will usually put the scarecrow out [...]
I have actually written a tell-all book about how I learned to grow and make tea. I wrote on it seriously for three years. It records the many experiments and failures I had along the way and even covers where the original Lipton tea plants were found and how my family tolerated my unusual hobby [...]
