2024 July round up

Welcome to the July round-up newsletter. A monthly letter about everything that has happened inside and outside the tea nursery.

Summer harvest and black tea magic

This month we have been focusing solely on the summer harvest and in particular on black tea production. I had never processed black tea before, so it was a great experience. I helped out at the farm with some black tea lots and I will get a change to put in practice the lessons learned. If I can keep a good track of what I am doing while processing, I might share it in the blog.

Next month will be one with a bit more of downtime, although there is still a good amount of work to do, like trimming. The intense heat though will keep us mainly indoors or with some lighter construction/maintenance tasks around the factory buildings.

Recent Activity

After so many hours researching about Japanese tea cultivars, I have realised (again) how slow the process is. So I took a break from the next article and put together a page where you can locate the most common sources of information I use when writing those articles. It can ease you in into reading a bit heavier articles, like the ones I have been writing lately. The table at the end of the page is a great resource to check on the lineage of a cultivar or other information like the year of registration etc. There are two separate sections, one for resources in Japanese and one in English. If I have missed an interesting resource, please let me know. I will gladly check it out and add it to the list.

I have spent a few days home as well, which has given me the opportunity to realise just how much tea I have at home and how little I do actually drink tea at home except for the weekend. So this past few days I have been enjoying a good deal of tea from wonderful farmers around Japan. And some from elsewhere too. During these sessions, I have been considering how to write about these teas in an article form, like the morning brew series that got this blog started almost two years ago. I have come to realise that I do not enjoy writing so much about tea itself as a review. I find that there are other people doing a much better job at that than I could do. And to be honest, I have come to realise how much more fun it is for me to write about the nitty-gritty details of other things. This blog was born with the idea to spread the word about tea, its culture and the craftsmanship behind it, and it appears that the focus has shifted a bit. In September, it will be time to write about the second year of the website (which is crazy now that I think about it), and that is one of the topics I will have to have a look into to see what plans we have for the next season.

What is next

Aside from creating the Japanese tea cultivar page for the blog, I have been considering writing smaller, concise articles on the cultivars that are more easily read. While reading again the old articles, I have noticed that many of the reference links have stoped working, so I will be having a look into it. If you know of a good software or service for automatically checking broken links, I would greatly appreciate any suggestion. Moreover, it is interesting to see the first articles I wrote and how poorly explained some sections are, so I might spend a bit of time fixing some things here and there. Hopefully, that will bring me to a more concise structure for future posts.

There are still many cultivars that need to be added to the table in the new resource page, so I am doing some research and gathering information about them. I will be adding more before the end of the month.

I have been considering some fun stuff that I could add to the state of the nursery report in September. And on that note, I thought of a couple of ideas, but mainly I landed on two. Now that the blog and the newsletter have more people visiting and reading it contents (thank you so much to everyone that stops by to read this lines). I would like to prepare a small survey to see how the vibe is out there. The job here at the blog is mostly unidirectional, writing articles, clicking publish and launching them into the void of the internet. It would be great to see opinions besides mines and the few people I keep a constant back and forth after and article is published. This would be greatly beneficial to me as I can get a sense of what works or not, but mostly it's just nice to connect with you and share experiences around tea.

The other one… let's keep it on the back burner for now.

Books and other fun stuff

This month I have been eyeing out some books more than reading anything in particular. I have been consulting and reading a few books on fermentation, miso making and soy sauce making. I have also been delving a lot into rice cultivation (just for fun), as I see many rice farmers active this period of the year while I am at the tea fields. Not only that, but I have also been searching for books on Shojin cuisine, the traditional Buddhist temple food in Japan. So I am out for recommendation on the topic. Below you will find one of the more interesting books I have consulted this month. René Redzepi, et al. The Noma Guide to Fermentation. New York Artisan, 2018.

Furthermore, this month, the team behind Tealife Audio have released their last podcast. It is sad and catches me a bit off guard. I had many nice times listening to their podcasts about different aspects of tea culture. The old episodes are still up, so I encourage you to browse around, perhaps you would find some episode of your interest.

And last but no least, just a couple of days ago, Zach Mangan released a short but enjoyable post about tea and cuisine. This is a topic that I have been thinking a lot about lately and I definitely would like to explore further. Although his article does not go deep into the topic, to me, it read a bit more of an opinion and feelings about the topic than an in-depth exposure. It is a great brain starter. (if that is a word) to start musing around the idea and how to explore it. It was a short, enjoyable piece, and perhaps it might interest you as well.

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.