Spring is by far the busiest period of the year at the farm. It is high season for tourism, so we welcomed many guests for our 4-hour tours and our other experiences. For farming, the season started with a late winter harvest for Kyobancha. Then we started with early trimming, shading and many other preparations at the fields.
In March, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Obubu, the event took place on the newly renovated 2nd floor of our factory, and we welcomed many guests, previous interns and even some tea club members that came for the event. In March, we also said goodbye to our senpai assistant manager Jean, hi Jean! I am so grateful that I could learn so much from him during my initial 6 months at Obubu. This goodbye became the welcome time for our next batch of interns that would help us for spring, and also our two next assistant managers, Mac et Alix. The picture below is one of my favorites from that welcome and farewell party.
In April, we also got the chance to participate in the hand-picking part of the Wazuka hand rolling preservation society. Every spring, they gather for a day to handpick and hand roll a couple of batches of their highly coveted hand rolled sencha. It takes around 3 hours to handpick enough tea to produce slightly short of 2 kg of finished product. Then back at the event space, the farmers from town, together with Kenta-san, the president of the association, will spend around 6 hours producing a perfect needle shape tea. We are lucky to have Kenta-san come to Obubu to do an intensive workshop with him, a truly unique opportunity to learn from a farmer that has been awarded as the number 1 in Japan two times
During spring, we got the chance to harvest, shade, clip, process and do many more activities in the field and factory. As an assistant manager, you are also tasked with leading a team when harvesting at Aoimori and be the main supporter with Akky together with the other interns in the harvest team that day. While the harvest is ongoing, activity does not stop at the farm with tours, and events together with long nights processing at the factory.
The resulting scheduling is a big rotation of people switching between farm, factory, and tourism activities from Monday to Sunday. This was the most shocking part of my stay at Obubu. I knew that spring is the most busy season of all, but to do so while keeping up with all the other events going at the same time was truly remarkable. By the end of the day, I remember feeling rewarded with a sense of achievement, but it is also a highly physical and mental task to carry for such a long period of time. Specially at the end of the season, I could not understand how Akky pulled harvesting in the morning and processing until late at night. This would have been impossible without the extraordinary help of all of our interns. They all poured all they had to offer into this complex period of the year. Thank you all, we did it!
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