2024 November round up
Welcome to the November round-up newsletter. A monthly letter about everything that has happened inside and outside the tea nursery.
The 2024 Harvesting season is over.
November and part of October kept us busy at the farm. Autumn harvest was in full swing until just a few days ago. Now, it is over! All fields have been harvested, and we will now proceed to do trimming works, my favorite, to prepare for next year’s March season. The entire 2024 harvesting season comes to a close, my first full cycle of farming, too.
I have so many memories of spring, summer, and autumn, harvesting, making tea, trying things out, and working really hard. I don’t think I have ever worked so hard in my entire life. It is really humbling how much work a cup of tea consists of. It is an honor and a luxury to be able to experience it, from field to cup.
Recent Activity
With the downtime of farming activities, October and November are packed with festivals, tea evaluation competitions, awards ceremonies, etc. There is one that I have been eagerly awaiting to see for a few years now, the National Hand rolling Competition. Last year, I could not go as a spectator, which resulted in the Wazuka team winning first place in the competition!
Nevertheless, this year I had the unique opportunity to participate in the competition itself, representing Wazuka on one of its two teams together with two other farmers. It was a fantastic experience to see so many people gathered to handrail tea and get together. There were teams from all over the country, and there were some younger people as well, which is always great to see. I intend to do a separate article on my experience.
The opinion article about the current state of matcha was, and still is, surprisingly popular. It became the most-read article on the website by far, with more visits than the homepage itself. Tea Nursery is still a pretty small blog, but seeing such activity really surprised me. I would lie if I said that writing that article was difficult, as it is way more opinionated and heartfelt than probably anything else I have written. It has also offered great discussions with some people, on both sides of the argument. Thank you so much to everyone who reached out to pitch in.
What is next
With all the recent activity going on and a big cold I got, the Yutakamidori cultivar post has been delayed (of course). The plan is to release it this month after cutting down the article a bit more. Unregistered cultivars are quite difficult to find information on. Aside from this, there will be an article about the hand rolling competition and also about the coming Awabancha festival.
The Kamikatsu village will hold the Awabancha festival this year on the 14th of December. If you are in Japan and can go, the festival last year was relatively small, but the energy of the village is wonderful. I encourage you to visit it if you have time at another time. You can read about the experience in this article from last year.
Aside from the usual activities on the blog, December is a time for recovering a bit from so much activity on the farm and doing a bit of traveling. I will be going back to Europe for the holidays, and the long airplane times will be put to good use to write and think about next articles and other fun stuff I want to do for the blog. As always, I welcome any ideas and suggestions for content you would like to see in the blog. There is a contact page on the website, but you can also just reply to this email if you are getting the newsletter in your inbox!
Books and other fun stuff
After the hand rolling competition, I had the pleasure to finally, albeit briefly, meet Bret Mayer. He is a tea professional based in Shizuoka and the person behind the incredible resource that his website is. It is a massive resource for many areas of tea knowledge. Definitely, you want to keep that one at hand.
Lastly, a bit of self-promotion here. I have started a more personal project, a digital garden of sorts, I am an avid notetaker. Through the years, I have a cumulated many notes on disparate topics from farming to philosophy and some cooking recipes. If you would like to take a look at my scattered brain, you can visit the project here. It is quite minimal as of now, but I have several notes lined up ready to be planted and tended there.
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.