Week 4

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.

On Thursday, I spent my morning clearing away more tea plants debris from the mother plot. Kacie and Gavin wanted it to look nice for the open house so I cut out lots of blackberry bushes there as well and raked away any tea plants debris that was in the aisles or encircling the plot. After lunch, I finally got to taste the tea!!! I tried three different kinds of white tea with Kacie and Gavin and then we tasted the black tea. It was really cool to taste the tea with them because they have a very specific way in which they taste coming down to exact water temperature, the exact weight of the tea to water ratio, and steeping time. The three white teas that we tasted had all been dried and oxidized a little differently and it was crazy to taste how different each of them tasted even though it was the same kind of tea! It really showed me the importance of consistency in the processing for tea making.

Finally, on Saturday I worked at the open house selling tea plants to customers and visitors of the farm. It was fun to share some of my knowledge regarding the tea even though there were many questions that I could not answer:) Also, my mom came out with one of her friends to buy some tea and tea plants and it was very fun to see her. Now I can grow tea at home hopefully!!

I would 100% recommend my senior project to anyone that enjoys being outdoors! I had an amazing time on the tea farm. While I felt physically stimulated because I got to be outdoors and moving most of the day, I also felt super mentally stimulated. I loved learning about tea because it is something that I was already passionate and eager to learn about! I learned so so much about tea plants, how they are grown, how tea is harvested and processed, and many different kinds of tea and conditions at which they can thrive. Honestly, I cannot say enough good things about this project I loved it! I would definitely recommend doing this project with one or two good friends because it was really nice to have Ayla out there! Farm work can feel super repetitive sometimes so it's good to have people to talk to. I went by myself for the first week and two days most of the other weeks which was also nice because I was able to make connections and chat with the people at the farm too. Another thing about this project that I really enjoyed was meeting new people that I found to be really interesting! I was able to practice my conversational skills a lot and work on being more friendly and extroverted.


Images:


From Tuesday:

First picture was the aisle with all of the tea debris and the second pic is after I cleared all of the debris.

From Wednesday:
This picture shows how overgrown the thistle was!

This was after I weeded lol there was so many weeds

Weighing the tea for packaging

Sealing the bags!

Me and Ayla in the processing room with our black tea that we shaped into a lady!

Thursday:

The white tea that we tasted! All of those are the same kind of tea steeped for the same amount of time coming from the same plant. The only differences were in the drying and oxidizing process.

They served the tea with these large spoons and we used really tiny tea cups to taste in










Comments

  1. Thanks for this fascinating post, Hannah! Your photos are really cool; I love seeing the different hues of the teas after different processing steps. It's great that you got to taste and find out what your labor has been making possible and that you got to do so with expert explanations of water temperature and such. Excellent timing that you got to participate in the open house towards the end of your project and could share off some of what you've learned with the visitors.

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  2. What a phenomenal project, Hannah! I am still amazed that tea can be grown in Oregon. I'm so sorry that I missed the open house, but I hope it was a smashing success. Thank you for sharing all the progress you made and all that you learned!

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