Read the first installment of this two-part series, featuring the tea growers of Alabama to Hawaii, here.
Since the new passion for growing tea became apparent in the U.S. about 10 years ago (and in some places well before that), more and more people have been joining the movement.
In Maryland, BLTeas has started growing at Heron’s Meadow Farm, but the bushes are still too young to be harvested. They will need another few years before Maryland’s first tea can be processed from the fresh leaves. Virginia First Tea Farm in Spotsylvania manufactures and sells household and cosmetic products made with green tea. The shampoos, soaps, moisturizers, and cleaning products were created by the Ramos family to capture the power of tea and its antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory properties. Since 2012, the family has been cultivating tea bushes, and, eventually, they plan to use their own home-grown green leaves, instead of imported green tea, in the processing of the range.
In 2003, William Luer planted his first bushes in his garden in New Orleans, Louisiana, among peanuts, squash, and cucumbers. He cold steeps his homemade tea in the refrigerator and drinks it every day.
Brookhaven in Lincoln County, Mississippi, is home to the 289-acre Great Mississippi Tea Company farm, planted out by Jason McDonald in 2013 after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his timber crop. In the TOTUS competitions in Hawaii in October 2015, the farm very deservedly won awards in the green, oolong, and black tea categories. The company aims to be ethically sustainable by “embracing practices that will reduce chemical and toxin levels in tea,” to use no pesticides or herbicides, and to become USDA Organic certified. Mechanized harvesting begins this year (2016) and the teas will be sold online and through the wholesale market. Additionally, the farm will become an agritourism venue where visitors will be able to see tea being cultivated, harvested, and processed. Also in Mississippi, Jeff Brown and Donald Van Werken are growing tea at their Pearl River Tea Estate in Poplarville where they also farm blueberries, blackberries, Asian pears, persimmons, pomegranates, and olives.
In Dallas, Texas, Australian born Josephie Dean Jackson planted her first tea saplings among the hills of the Great Piney Woods in 2008 and now makes a light, grassy white tea that looks like a Bai Mu Dan (“white peony”); a soft honeyed green that is reminiscent of orchard flowers and warm hay; a dark, heavily-oxidized oolong called Dancing Angel; and another heavily-oxidized “Husband Oolong” that is toasty with caramel notes and hints of chocolate. She is also now growing tea in in east Coeur d’Alene in Idaho. She says:
“It’s just a journey. Tea is always considered to be a journey; even the act of drinking it is a journey. We’re just wanting to start this adventure and see where it leads. It’s a matter of curiosity — scientific as well as cultural — to see what happens.”
In New York, Finger Lakes Tea Company has planted 55,000 tea plants (grown from seeds brought in from China) on a 30-acre farm in Junius, Seneca County. The families of Mark and Lily Lin come from Qingtian County in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province, where Mark’s grandfather and father grew tea, and the Lins’ dream is to serve their own Chinese-style homemade teas at the family’s restaurant and dim sum café in the beautiful Finger Lakes area.
In Traverse City, Michigan, Angela Macke has been cultivating and processing tea at her Light of Day Organic Farm and Tea Shop since the early part of the 21st century. She started with botanicals and added tea bushes, which she grows inside polytunnels.
Minto Island Growers produces small batches of organic-certified tea in the Willamette Valley in Salem, Western Oregon. The tea company was developed in 1988 by Rob Miller, an agriculturalist, with seeds and cuttings from Japan that tea consultant John Vendeland and Steven Smith, founder of Stash Tea, Tazo, and Steven Smith Teamaker, had failed to see thrive outside the Stash offices in Tigard. The sweet, aromatic teas are successfully growing in the Willamette Valley and are available on the company’s website and at local farm markets.
And in Washington State, the Sakuma Brothers have been growing tea at their berry farm in Skagit Valley since the early part of the 21st century. Despite major problems caused by the weather in the early years, the farm now has just over 2 hectares of tea and produces green, oolong, and white varieties.
With so many new growers nurturing their baby plants in so many different locations across the U.S., the idea developed in 2014 to form an association of American tea growers. And so the U.S. League of Tea Growers was established, with Nigel Melican (British cultivation consultant to tea growers all over the world) as one of its founding members. Many of the new growers have relied on Nigel’s expertise and advice and, as he has played an absolutely crucial role in this new movement, it is fitting that he is right there with the group. The aim of the U.S. League of Tea Growers is to connect growers and to share resources, information, expertise, and research, not to mention promoting U.S.-grown teas across the country and out into the wider world.
Guest contributor Jane Pettigrew is a tea historian, writer, consultant, specialist working in the UK and around the world explaining and offering insight into the world of tea. She’s written 15 books, hosts regular master classes and tea tastings, and is the director of studies for the new UK Tea Academy. You can find her at www.janepettigrew.com.
Additional blog images of Minto Island Growers via Shawn Linehan for Edible Portland.
Originally published at teforia.com on July 26, 2016.
