International Women's Day

International Women's Day recognizes the strides made towards equality for woman. Although we are a male owned tea farm, we understand greatly the importance of equality. Some outstanding women have helped and continue to help us to this day.

As I sit back and think about the last 11 years at the tea farm, I reflect positively on the army of women who have supported us. 

Neha Lochan, taught me how to make make tea for the first time in India.

Rebecca Bates at the Mississippi State Extension Service helped connect us with people who would play a big role in helping us set up a tea farm. We walked into her office and said we want to grow tea and a friendship was born.

Helga Warzecha of TEACRAFT, LTD helped us grow tea.

Naomi Rosen and Angela McDonald who held together the US League of Tea Growers.

Amelia was our first employee on the tea farm and helped us plant thousands of our first tea plants.

 Jo Johnson taught Timmy how to blend tea.

Beverly Wainwright has collaborated with us on tea processing and most recently on the Award Winning 13 Moons Oolong tea.  

We have had incredible supporters such as Faith Bailes who runs Tea World Expo and Jeni Dodd who has joined us festivals such as the Midwest Tea Festival.

We have had incredible support and acquired a great deal of education through collaborations with Dr. Bi and Dr. Chen. Our recent experiment conducted with Dr. Bi has us testing fertilizers which you can read about here. 

Our day to day staff is all women. Sagan King works side by side with us in the tea fields.

Jollean Smith works on our Marketing and Virginia Utermohlen Lovelace helped us create an award winning cookbook and continues to help us lead great tea courses including the Blending and Pairing with Black Tea coming up March 25. 

Also, I don't want to leave out the women in our worlds that maybe don't work with us but have played an important role in our life. 

My friend Allison Hayes and Terry Booker keep me grounded and sane. 

Both Timmy and I feel a great deal of gratitude to our mothers as well. We know we were not always easy, but we are here because of them. We love you.

Woman are braided into our lives throughout. We feel their importance and value. 

There is still a great deal of work to be done for equality for woman. Oppression exists. Inequality exists. There is work to be done here and we will do what we can to support.

For the unknown women in the tea fields around the world and to the women who have played a part in the tea fields right here at home. To all women. We applaud you on your strides and support you as you continue to fight for equality.

Happy International Woman's Day.

Please note: If we have not mentioned a woman of importance in our life this is a memory issue and not a sign you were not valued. We hope we haven't missed anyone but if we did know it will hit us and we will think of how we appreciate you.