Sorry dear readers, we haven't updated our blog in awhile, as we now have two wonderful little tea urchins brightening our lives! As you may have guessed from our Man Zhuan and Lao Man E commemorative bings last year, the latest addition to our family is a little girl named Miranda Jamie. With Miles now a super intelligent 3 year old, clamoring for help with the latest iPad games, it's hard to find a peaceful moment to spend writing. I'm sure those of you who are parents are nodding your heads in sympathy!
That said, parenthood is a joy. Every small discovery & progress they make is a wondrous life-affirming moment. Right now, MJ is determined to skip crawling and go straight to walking, whilst Miles is already practicing gongfucha, though he hasn't quite mastered the gaiwan yet! We had great fun teaching him how to pick tea this Spring in Banna, the realization of a dream which started in 2011 when we stayed in Luo Shui Dong with Miles still in the womb. Miles got the hang of tea-picking really fast, especially after we turned it into a game of find the little green guys with a pointy head and two outstretched arms...
I found another guy with a pointy head!
Catching up with old friends and making tea together is always my favorite time of the year. After the impatient hustle and bustle of Shanghai, living a tea farmer's life in the mountains was a great respite for the soul. Picking tea becomes a meditative act. You quickly decompress and reconnect with the rhythms of nature. And the country side was full of eye openers for young Miles!
A new tea pet
This year, early spring provided good, dry conditions, but the gushu trees were late to flush and not yielding much.
We drank some great maocha from Manzhuan and Gao Shan Zhai. Then heavy downpours disrupted first flush picking around Yiwu &
Menghai, one particularly bad storm blew over trees and took down the electricity supply in Yiwu & Xiangming. We had to burn firewood to boil water in many villages we visited. Learning to wait again, is one of the great lessons of the tea road.
Of course, tea farming is not without its own stress! In XinBanZhang (see above video), tea farmers were struggling because too many trees
were flushing all at the same time. They couldn't find enough workers to pick them fast enough! On the plus
side, there were less speculative investors this year, and good yields means prices are generally lower this
year, with the exception of famous villages like Laobanzhang!
Maocha drying in Lao Ban Zhang
This year, we picked up some great raw maocha from across the Bulang mountain range, including HeKai, Banpen, LaoBanZhang, XinBanZhang, and LaoManE. We are selling this as a loose-leaf, Bulang maocha tasting set. We also pressed 200g cakes from Jingmai, Pasha, GeDeng, MangZhi, MaHei, GuaFengZhai and Lincang. Lastly we have acquired a quantity of aged, loose-leaf ripe pu'er, from which we've made special 357g cakes. Feel free to contact us to reserve yours!
If you're interested to see more photos & videos, please follow our Tea Urchin Facebook page, we'll be publishing there a lot more frequently! Until then, wishing you all a prosperous year of the sheep!
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