2023 December round up
Welcome to the December round-up newsletter. A monthly letter about everything that has happened inside and outside the tea nursery.
A December of events
December has been calm in the tea fields except for winter trimming, lots of trimming. Fileds are ready to be let to go through winter and prepare for the new season. Outside of fieldwork, December has been an active month regarding events. I have been in 3 tea events in close succession. First, the Japanese Black Tea Festival "Jikoucha" in Gifu. The day after the Wazuka Tea Party and last but not least, the Awabancha festival in Kamikatsu, Shikoku. I have a small article following the 3 events coming up. Been busy with my finals at uni, among other stuff, including going to these events!
Recent Activity
On December 31st, I published an article about Bunjin and Sencha. Why did you not see it? Well, it is only available through a special email I sent. I had to write an essay for a culture and society course at university, and I decided to share it. Until it gets graded and I make some corrections, it will only be accessible to the mailing list. Looking forward to making it public in mid-January, probably.
I have been writing an article about the events I participated in this last month so that one will get published sometime in January. You can read a small article about the Awabancha festival I wrote for the Global Japanese Tea Association in the meantime.
While writing the next cultivar article, I had to write a presentation about cultivars for work, so I got distracted and forgot about the one for the blog. Hopefully, everything I learned while making the presentation about cultivars will help me get those articles better. I promise I will continue with it soon!
What is next
Later this winter, we will harvest and process some Kyobancha at the farm. I want to write an article about it. Lately, I have been drinking last winter Kyobanchas' almost daily. Such a lovely cup of tea for the cold months.
From January, I will have no more university studies for a bit, which means more time for tea projects again! I have been thinking about a few more things I want to explore. Definitely more cultivar research, and I would like to make a tea-type note soon, too. I want to focus on my tea practice more before the spring harvest comes and completely blocks my time available. However, I am planning on some articles I could start preparing regarding the spring harvest and the entire lifecycle of tea production. Let me know any suggestions or topics you would like to see.
Books and other fun stuff
For books, I have been really going down the rabbit hole with "Enciclopedia of Tea", a thick, dense, but extremely useful book. I have been using it to prepare for my presentation about cultivars at work, and it has a great deal of information. Not only cultivar but a great deal of other topics as well. It is in Japanese, so don't expect it to be an easy read. Nonetheless, it has proved to be an essential book this past month in my learning.
Also, I have been enjoying a lot of great tea this past month, from the ones I could buy at the black tea festival to many brews of Awabancha and new teas from farmers I did not yet know about from Wazuka. Hope to find a better way to share those.
That is it for this month. As always, you can help the blog by sharing this newsletter or any of the blog posts and sharing it with a friend or family member who could enjoy it.