Green tea day! お茶 の 日

Our friend Natsuyo Orio, who we sometimes call "Oreo" invited us to spend the afternoon helping in her family's tea fields.  I had expressed some interest a few months back when I heard that it was her family business, and so we finally were able to go out to Ei Cho, about 30 minutes from home and help a little with the harvest this past Sunday.  It's nearing the end of the season, so her family has a couple more weeks of work to do before lots of yummy fresh tea drinking.

the main part of our task was to carefully un-clip the black netting from the top of the plants.  This had to be done carefully so that the nets wouldn't blow away when a gust of wind came up.  Then they had to be rolled up and piled up in a truck and taken away to storage.  Just after the nets are removed, the tea is cut (by machine) and taken to be processed.  The nets are to shade the plants from the sun, so they can get really green.

I wish I had taken some photos of us hard at work, but I didn't want to bring the camera.  

Here I am post tea work with Natsuyo and I think the guy on the right is her brother-in-law.

The blue net pants protected us from getting scratches while walking through the narrow paths in between each tea row~ !

Break time !

At the end our work (and snacking) we went inside the tea processing building and the process from beginning to end... It was so amazing to be inside a of working plant (and it was actually Natsuyo's first time inside... I think our enthusiasm for the tea helped her realize how cool it is to be able to see it all.)

Getting started with a wash and separating...

then a steaming...
then the leaves are cut up and rolled...

the factory was surrounded by fields on all sides...

I think this is tea that had flown out from the machinery into the air and on to the floor.  (The whole placed smelled so lovely as we breathed in the dust and steam from the fresh tea.)

One of the final stages where it's being dried...

And it's done!