We have had this web site for years and I can not believe how much traffic we have had - thousands of readers. I have included all sorts of tea growing advice and tea making information, but the most response ever has been to these few old pictures I have posted. I appreciate the jokes, [...]
Here is a picture of me when I first went to China to learn how to make tea. How do you like those Mark Spitz hot pants? I look like a mindless grengo from far away photoshopped into a hundred year old photograph. This was when getting a sun tan made you look healthy. I [...]
This years funeral for a scarecrow was a somber affair with a little sadness and ceremony. My wife, Lottie wanted to leave it up but the clothes were faded and field mice had kicked out most of the straw. So we brought him back to the barn and took him apart and maybe use some [...]
Here is another old photograph. This 1993 picture shows the first cold frame green house I built when moving my tea farm out south of Fairhope on Lyter Lane. A cold frame is used in the winter and the cuttings are placed in trays of vermiculite and placed on the ground. The heat of the [...]
This photo was taken in 2000, where I started planting the tea plants in 1979. I had left this site some ten years before and bought a farm twelve miles away to enlarge my operations. These bushes in the photo are the original plants and clones of the original tea plants I recovered from the [...]
Our tea plant sales are going rather briskly. I invite tea plant customers to come see us at the farm during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas as this is the best time to move evergreens. This gives the new seedings time to get established before facing the heat of summer. I have been scheduling [...]
Like the other camellias in our yard, the tea blooms in the winter time. I guess that touch of global warming has them blooming just a tad early this year as they usually peak around Christmas time. Its also the time I usually prune the tea bushes and I think it a shame to just [...]
It has gotten a bit cooler which is better than the 95 degree days we have had. Its also hurricane season. It was only two years ago when we lost 340 big trees, which are still laying out in the woods around us. We can relate to the devastation and sense of hopelessness we see [...]
Here is a photo of 10 pounds of very hot black tea. I had a batch to start to spontaneously combust. I took it out and dumped in the compost heap and the next day the compost heap was on fire! It took twice hoseing it down to put the fire out. I know exactly [...]
The end result of picking and pruning the tea bushes is to have the plants forced into this flat shape. Although my photos do not show well what I'm trying to show, this shape will throw up a crop of buds and two leaves every three weeks or so. This puts the perfect tea at [...]
