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Week 4

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The final week! I had a great time with my project this week. The beginning of the week consisted odf a lot of weeding and plot clean up in preparation for the tea open house that happened Saturday June 12. On Tuesday, I spent my time clearing tea plant debris from the mother plot. Kacie and Gavin decided to prune the entire top half of the whole tea field on this day so I was in charge of clearing away all of the trimmings from the tops of the plants and making sure they weren't blocking the tea plants from getting sun or anything else important. I also did a little weeding on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Ayla accompanied me to the farm and we spent the whole morning weeding a new plot that is much smaller. The thistles were so so overgrown that there was more weeds than actual tea plants! After weeding all morning and having lunch, we then spent the rest of the afternoon packaging the final product tea for the open house. We weighed the tea and put it into little bags and sealed them. ...
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Week 3

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This week, I continued to cut grass and weed for the entirety of my time at the tea farm. It was a little bit challenging because weeding and cutting grass by hand for whole days can get a little repetitive and tiring. Especially this week because it was so hot! I think most of my happy moments this week were at the end of the days when I had finished at the tea farm and was getting in the car to head home. It was super hot so turning on the air conditioner in my car riding home felt very good. Also, it felt good to have put in a hard days work and be able to relax afterwards in the cool car. Challenging moments from the week were cutting grass because my allergies were really not liking that activity. I don't think that I learned a lot of new things this week. I did learn a little more about tea processing and how it can be dried outside rather than inside. I think that my progress since week one is going well! I am really enjoying my time on the farm and next week I will have mor...
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Week 2

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A happy moment that I had during this week was while I was cutting down grass in the hanger plot (this is one of their two tea fields aka, plots at Minto). I was listening to music as I usually do while doing the farm work while cutting out and uprooting grass with a sharp whacking blade that they gave me. The sun was out and I was working up a sweat. Somehow, Spotify directed me to electronic dance music (edm). So, I spent an hour, angrily uprooting and whacking grass with a sharp tool whilst listening to edm and working up a sweat. It felt quite good. It made me happy in the moment and afterwards because it was a fun combination and was low-key therapeutic . So far, I have learned a lot about tea. I have learned the differences in the ways that green, white, and black tea are processed. White tea is the easiest and most simple tea to produce because after picking, you simply have to air dry it. Green tea is a little more difficult because you have to immediately dehydrate it in an ov...
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Week 1

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Week 1! For my senior project, I am working at a farm called 'Minto Island Growers'. There, I have been working in the tea section of there farm, doing various tasks for the upkeep of the tea plants. Such tasks mainly include harvesting tea for processing and planting tea seeds. I chose this particular project because I wanted to be active and outside. When I began my search for a senior project, I was just looking at farms in my local area. Somehow, I came upon Minto Island Growers and I noticed that they also had a tea farm which was unique to any of the other farms I was looking at. They are one of the only tea farms in the Pacific Northwest so even though it is a one hour drive, I wanted to work there as I found it to be a unique farm and opportunity. I also wanted to do this particular project because I love drinking tea. I thought it would be really cool to see how tea is grown and made to give me some context for the beverage that I drink almost every day. I would say th...
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