Hannah Ellis's Senior Project: Tea Farming!

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...

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...