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 2025 crop.
We had a freeze last week that went down to 17 degrees. I have lived here for 35 years and have not seen such a hard freeze. It burned the tea leaves a little bit but not enough to cause any real damage. Others have said tea will freeze but being right near a large body of water, I did not think I would ever see that. Also it snowed here 7 1/2 inches and I have certainly never seen that before!
Here is a recent photo of the original tea plants we recovered from the Lipton tea experiment in the mid 1970’s. They have been here for 47 years. You can see the F1 seedlings down near my feet. All my 61,000 bushes I currently have came from here. Want some? I will pull them up bare rooted and sell them to you for a dollar each, but you’ll have to come get them.
We are still doing tea farm tours every day here. We only do one a day at 1:00 pm. You have to call for an appointment (251-928-0919) and try to plan a few days ahead. Tours are $20 per person, in cash, and bring another $10 for a bag of teabags. Tours are farm tours and not a tea party, its more the nuts and bolts of how tea is grown and made. We can not accommodate large tour groups. Folks are very complementary of our tours. Come see us!
Donnie Barrett