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 [...]
Spring comes fast to the tea farm. We are busy pruning off the large amount of growth from last year and cleaning up dead weeds and removing volunteer trees that are not needed. We clean up the tea rows this time of year because soon all of our efforts will be put into producing the [...]
I just realized that I did not post a photo of this years tea farm scare crow. We make one every year to keep the crows out of the tea field and take it down with the first flush. Its a fun tradition. We are in the clean up the tea field time of year. [...]
Here is a sketch of the detour to the tea farm. The county has closed the road within a mile of our farm and this is confusing our guest who visit the farm every day. Where you usually turn onto Co Rd 11, they do not have a sign there saying the road is closed [...]
Yesterday my wife and I celebrated the last picking of tea for the season. We called it "the last pull." It was about three bushels of leaf to make a batch of green tea. Late season green tea has a different flavor than earlier in the season green tea. We made more black tea than [...]
