2025 February round up
Welcome to the February round-up newsletter. A monthly letter about everything that has happened inside and outside the tea nursery.
Something is in the air
February welcomed a lot of snow in Wazuka. Much more snow than the previous year. It was a beautiful scene to see the tea fields and slopes covered in a smooth white snow blanket. By the end of February, the temperatures have been rising for a few days, and now on the first days of March, we have experienced above 10ºC several days in a row.
Mist have been showing up more and more now that it’s not too cold or hot, and a few days ago I started to see the first flocks of birds coming back more and more. While the snowy scenery was a treat for the eyes and has provided plenty of extra water around the valleys that nestle Wazuka, it’s this change of temperatures that marks the end of our resting period. Something is in the air, and the energy in the village is different. February, as its coldest moment, is none other than spring harbinger.
Recent Activity
I delayed the newsletter a few days because I was waiting for the Kyoto prefecture Hand rolling competition to take place. This competition is the counterpart to the National hand rolling competition, which took place last November and I wrote about here. The prefectural competition focused on the Uji style of hand rolling, which is slightly different in some of its techniques, one of those differences is the use of an additional shaping board called Itazuri.
It was so exciting to meet farmers from around the prefecture, as well as be able to learn in a much more friendly competition from some of them. A Gyokuro farmer from Kyotanabe showed me some tips and tricks on using an Itazuri when I was taking rounds and meeting some people. This time around I was supporting one of the four Wazuka teams, and thus I was not rolling as much as you would otherwise. This gave me so much more time to help other Wazuka teams and focus on learning from them, as well as getting some tips and techniques from others. The team I was supporting took first place in the competition with the full 200-point mark awarded with other Wazuka teams taking 2nd, 3rd and 5th place as well!
What is next
Our next cultivar post is almost ready! This time I am writing about the Ryofu cultivar, one that is not so common for Sencha. You can expect it to be published sometime this March. I am looking for the next cultivar to write about, perhaps something more common, but we will see. While I do complain a lot about not finding much information on some cultivars, the process of discovery and scavenging for information on those rare-to-find cultivars is always rewarding. As always, if you have an itch for any particular cultivar you are more than welcome to send me your thoughts so I can write about it.
What is next? Well, spring is coming, and with that hopefully, I will spend most of my time outdoors after a winter mostly spent indoors both at work and at home. I have been drafting, as promised a short post about the Awabancha festival from December. After the Kioke wooden barrel summit, I have a better understanding of the construction of some of the tools used in Awabancha production. So I will be sprinkling a bit of that in there as well.
Other than that I will do my best to find good ways to share how the pre-harvest is going. With, work, harvest, university and other projects going that is gonna be a challenge but we will figure it out. I look forward to trying some new stuff and sharing how exciting the new season is from a farm perspective with you all.
Books and other fun stuff
It seems that from the last part of 2024, I have been reading fewer and fewer books, but in reflection, the amount of reading I have done has remained the same, just not in book format. I am really enjoying getting back to reading more and more newsletters and blogs from other people. There seems to be a resurgence of that in the last years and truly enjoying it.
My previous colleague Sarah from One Purple Magpie wrote a great piece titled, Understanding Tea: Cross-Cultural Consumption Explained. Which is a great exploration of our relationship with food and its intersection with cultural context. Following on with the food topic Nonoka, a Kyoto University student I met during the wooden barrel summit, has shared a translated version in English of her graduation thesis, on the dramatic changes or decline in their traditional dietary habits of Japan. A great example of how our relationship with food changes when new goods are introduced into a culture. In particular, Nonoka focused on the impact of those changes through Miso consumption and production. It also gives great insight into the Japanese GI system and how this is changing products from the inside of Japan itself. Some of the particularities of the GI system have also shaped tea production in Japan, like the case of the GI on Matcha production in Aichi some years ago. It is another example of the double-edged sword that this GI systems involve.
Lastly, just a couple days before I wrote the newsletter I read a wonderful post about Kancha by Kana from Tending Gardens, a wonderfully written story of the last Kancha maker around her area. Kana shares her daily life in Kamikatsu village in Tokushima. While I did not have the pleasure to know her before going to the Awabancha festival last year or in 2023, I will make sure to visit her next time I go to Kamikatsu village, hopefully, this summer, to help with the summer harvest and Awabancha processing.
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.