Konnichiwa! Jean here to tell more stories about Obubu Tea Farms. May was busy with the spring harvest. But June is time for the summer harvest. So exciting! We prepare the harvesting machine and tea bags to collect the tea and interns and I often ride at the back of the truck. Riding in the Japanese forest and tea fields this way feels really great and I missed a lot before coming back to Obubu. When working in the tea fields, we always have some cold brew tea for break time. Drinking tea in the tea fields is a whole experience and feels very good during farming days. We can show to leaves we just harvested what they’re going to become! To brew tea cold, I would recommend you use ice cubes and water instead of warm water and let it brew for at least 2 hours. The cold temperatures bring out most of the sweet taste of the tea and disregards the bitter components.
After harvesting fresh leaves, we place them in a cooling container to make green tea. The cooling container slows down the enzymes responsible for oxydation. But, this month we did a little experiment with our fresh leaves! We took out tea leaves from the container where cold air is blown and see what happened. As you can see on the picture below, the leaf we put outside of the container for a day is fully oxidized with its brown color. I witnessed the effectiveness of our cooling containers. For green teas, we want to keep the bright green color of the leaves. While for black teas, we aim for a fully oxidized brown tea leaf. That’s why, instead of storing the tea leaves in a cooling container, we let them to oxidize in the factory as you can see on the picture below.
Living on a farm means you got to help for many kinds of jobs. For example, cleaning, organizing and construct in our facilities can be part of the work. This month we painted the new rooms for the interns. Our team of painters was not composed of professional painters. I think we painted more than the walls and some of the white paint on my T-Shirt and will not go away, haha! But, in the end, I think we did a very good job. The room looks very bright compared to how it used to be.
Now is getting warmer and warmer in Wazuka. Since the weather is humid, it can get very intense. And, as you have seen on my previous blog posts, I love the seaside. So, interns and I went to the Sea of Japan together. We had a lot of cold brew tea and swam with starfish. Japanese black tea and Kukicha cold brew is a great choice of teas to bring with you on the beach. But don’t forget to bring Japanese sweets as well! We had some traditional dorayaki but also some salty-lemon flavored KitKats I like. Dorayaki are Japanese style fluffy pancakes. Between two pancakes lays a red bean jam. Sooooooo yummy! The day ended with a beautiful sunset and we had to go back home.
I really enjoyed swimming and hope we’ll have more days like this in the future. However, every good time must end, exactly like this blog post. But you don’t have to worry, because as you already know I’ll be back soon to share about July adventures! See you then! Matane! A plus tard!
