Drought has hit our Mississippi tea farm. The hot and dry weather has been relentless. We have had 11 days above 100F and not had measurable rain since July 1st. We have had 63 days above 90F this summer. In other words, it has been hot and dry and now to the point of brutal and dangerous. Tea grows between 50F and 100F. It is also a poor conductor of water through the bush. We are currently running the irrigation over 7.5 acres of land on a daily basis. We pumped 655,200 gallons of water onto the crop last week. We are also watering at night to help evaporation stay to a minimum but with night time temps in the...
There are so many great stories at the tea farm. Jason is sharing about one of the tea plants displayed at the front of the farm. This tea plant was donated to the farm from a lovely person from Hattiesburg. It was shared that the plants were acquired from Lipton Tea which they brought over to the US after fearing tea imports could be impacted by overseas relations. It was the 50’s, a difficult time for some international relations and Lipton wanted to test out tea growing. The research station closed down some years ago. But some of the plants still remain throughout Mississippi. The tea plant donation, allows us to preserve a bit of history in a...
Watch our latest YouTube video where Timmy talks about the process of making the limited edition Mississippi Pine Needle tea*. It's a high quality green tea that is only available once a year. This green tea is hand picked in the field. Then we pan fire it to stop the oxidation process. In the final step, the leaves are placed into the carding machine where it is heated until the leaves roll perfectly into a thin needle shape. The flavor has the components of Umami and Vegetal. The taste is described as "gives you a sweet, buttery feel". It is an amazing green tea as it has little to no bitterness. This popular tea is definitely one to have in your...
