Other than Farm Blog

 Pests and disease are inseparable parts of tea farming, thus pesticides to prevent and treat the pest and disease problems.  In this series we will look at: 1. The relationship between wild grown tea plants and pests 2. How modern tea farming amplify the pest and disease problems, 3. How and what pesticides they use to treat the problems, 4. As a consumer how to avoid heavily sprayed tea 5. Organic and wild harvest tea Part one focuses on the first two topics. 1. The Relationship Between Tea and Pests Wandering into old mountain forest of Japan, I have encountered wild tea plants growing sporadically in their own natural habitat.  There are not abundant tender supple tips to harvest, but in general plants are healthy.  The wild tea shows small signs of pests and disease, but it is minimal.  The plants vary widely in their leaf shape, size, color, and even growth form.  Some even appear as bonsai trees found in Japanese garden.  The plants ...

The year 2012 was full of wonderful developments for our family farm. Here are some highlights to share. Waimea Tea Farm In January, we received a visit from Dafna of  Roots of Hawaii , a purveyor of our tea at farmer's markets on Oahu.  We discussed the creation of herbal blends using our teas and set the intention for making new products using other Hawaii ingredients. In February, during a family trip to Japan, we were notified that we were awarded a USDA Value Added Producer's Grant (VAPG).  When we returned home, we harvested our First Flush Premium Green Tea and First Flush Premium Oolong .  In March, we expanded our operation to begin harvesting tea grown on neighboring farms! In April, we harvested our Island Green Tea , and tried out a new variation –  Island Green Tea  Orchid Dew , with great success. In June, we received notification that we were awarded a USDA Rural Business Enterprise Grant ...

Here is a recipe which perfectly marries Volcano Island Honey Company's White Honey, some of the best honey in the world, also produced by God, the bees, and a neighboring farm, with our Sweet Roast Green Tea.  This ice cream is smooth, rich, and wonderful!  We used our Original Sweet Roast, but any tea can be used to give variation in color and flavor.  Food coloring can also be added to give a more vivid green hue.  Alternately, use free range chicken eggs, grind the tea before infusing, and consume fresh before the green fades away. Enjoy!  For a suggestion on how to use the leftover egg whites, see my post for Green Tea Egg White Cake . by Dana Shapiro **Note that photo below includes the use of green coloring. 1/2c Volcano Island White Honey 6 egg yolks 1.5c milk 1c cream 3T (or 2 tsp ground) Original Sweet Roast Green tea 6 drops green food coloring (*optional) 1. Bring milk to a low boil in a saucepan. Promptly remove from heat. ...

This recipe can be modified in many ways.  It can be diluted, spiced up with white rum, or served with ice cream instead of whipping cream.  When I make it, I make two versions, one for the kids, and one for myself.  We all love it! 1 oz Simple Green Tea Syrup 1 oz heavy whipping cream or ice cream 6-8 oz club soda 2 oz Bacardi White Rum (*optional) Serve over ice and enjoy!

Modified from recipe contributed by Chef Rodney Uyehara Serves 6  I was delighted to have been given this recipe from a client after she hosted a party of dinner items, all including tea.   Besides tea, my family loves all things rice, so much that a meal which doesn't include it, may not be considered a meal.  For this reason, I often bring rice dishes to pot luck gatherings.   With the wheat-free dietary movement gaining popularity, as a fancier alternative to fried rice, and because the Arborio rice is eco-farmed by Lundberg, this recipe is a winner in my book.   Ingredients:   2 c Aborio rice 2 c chicken stock, heated 8 oz Hamakua mushrooms, slicced 1/2 c raw pine nuts 1/2 c shelled soybeans 2 Tbsp butter 2 Tbsp chopped garlic 2 Bay leaves 1/4 c extra virgin olive oil 1 T ground Sweet Roast green tea 1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese 1/4 c whipping cream Salt and pepper to taste Sauté sliced mushrooms, pi...

(Munavalgekook) Serves 8-10 Have leftover egg whites from making green tea ice cream ?  Looking for a unique cake to make?  This cake has its roots in Estonia.  Modified here, it is excellent with a cup of our Premium Oolong tea. 6 large egg whites 1c plus 2T sugar 1 1/3 c all-purpose flour 1 heaped Tbsp potato starch 3 tsp ground green tea 1 tsp baking powder 5Tbsp melted butter, slightly cooled Whisk egg whites and 2 Tbsp sugar until thick, pale, and very foamy.  Mix sugar, flour, potato starch, tea, and baking powder in another bowl, then sift into egg mixture and fold in, gently.  Finally, fold in the melted butter.  Pour the batter into a buttered bundt pan and bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes.  Test for doneness with a toothpick.  Cool slightly before turning out of the pan.  Glaze or enjoy as is.

Have you ever wondered how to get more antioxidants into your diet without adding too much health food to your diet?  Green Tea syrup can be used for almost anything, from pancakes to mixed drinks or sodas, and many many things in between.  See my recipe collection for more ideas.  Enjoy!   2c sugar 1c water 2tsp ground Organic Mauna Kea Sweet Roast Green Tea Place sugar and water over a low boil until sugar dissolves and liquid thickens.  Remove from heat.  Mix in tea and let sit for 5-10 minutes.  Strain if necessary.  Store covered in refrigerator.

At last, but not the least of all three recipes is coconut Mochi with cooked green tea accented on top of coconut Mochi. This recipe is based on Kashiwa mochi, or Mochi wrapped in oak leaf. Oak leaf on Kashiwa mochi gives a pleasant bite of tannin to the plain mochi while not being too overpowering. Typically, oak leaf is removed before consumption. Tea leaf on this mochi, on the other hand, is not removed, but consumed with the mochi. Because soft leaves of the green tea variety are used, flavor is milder. We also blanched the leaf a bit to keep the tea leaves from getting further oxidized. Ingredients: 2 oz fresh green tea tips 1 lb mochiko 2 1/4 cup sugar 1 tsp baking poder 1 can coconut milk 1 can water Potato or cornstarch to dust 1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x13 inch pan. 2. In a large mixing bowl, stir the mochiko, sugar and baking powder together. 3. Add coconut milk and water to flour mixture. Stir until the batter is smooth. 4. Pour batter i...

This is our second recipe that we experimented with. The flavor of green tea is subtle, yet more fresh than using fully dried leaves. It also gives flexibility of using partially processed green tea which is less likely to be oxidized and can be stored in a freezer. The recipe follows the same coconut Mochi base replacIng raw green tea with cooked green tea.   Ingredients: 2 oz cooked green tea tips 1 lb mochiko 2 1/4 cup sugar (we used pure cane organic sugar) 1 tsp baking poder 1 can coconut milk 1 can water Potato or cornstarch to dust 1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x13 inch pan. 2. In a large mixing bowl, stir the mochiko, sugar and baking powder together. 3. Add coconut milk and water to flour mixture. Stir until the batter is smooth. 4. Pour the batter and green tea leaves into blender. If tea leaves are previously frozen, let it thaw out without heating to minimize further oxidation. 5. Run the blender until green tea is cut up small to desired particle size. Occa...

We picked tea and put aside small handful of green tea tips to put in some green tea mochi. and we made three kinds of green tea mochi. Green tea mochi using raw green tea leaves gives most vibrant green color and also stronger and more fresh green tea flavor, almost minty or citrusy. Depending on which variety or harvest type of tea leaf used, e.g. Black tea variety tip and 2 leaves, the flavor changes. Green tea variety works quite humbly without expressing itself too much. This green tea mochi also pairs well with all our green teas. This recipe uses raw green tea in mochi mix before baking. Make sure you have access to fresh source of green tea leaves. Also, you need to work fast to avoid oxidation of green tea after it is chopped up. Ingredients: 2 oz fresh green tea tips 1 lb mochiko, or sweet rice flour 2 1/4 cup sugar 1 tsp baking poder 1 can coconut milk 1 can water Potato or cornstarch to dust 1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x13 inch pan....

We've been waiting for green tea harvest from this young field. While plants are young, it's good time for handpicking though it's not the most productive form of tea making. We had clear blue sky this morning unlike most other days and went ahead with harvesting. While plucking our way through the tea field, fog drifted in and and soon enough rain started to sprinkle. We were just finishing up with the harvest. Rain is always a big factor that determines our harvest quality. Understanding and being able to predict weather forecast is a big advantage to getting better tea quality.

Just finished our first flush green tea yesterday and started raining.  What better timing there could be! We just had our slow drying and roasting left to do.  Most of our teas are just waiting for the final roasting. so we did our quick sensory evaluation (品茶) Most of the spring green harvest is fairly tippy although we emphasize more on aroma and flavor profile itself than shape of the leaf.  Flavor is light, but more potent.  The color of dry leaf is dark green to black, but infusion brings green color of green tea. Liquor is light yellow, and extraction is moderate.  Aroma is fresh and green.  I always had trouble describing green tea as grassy, but some people might confuse as flavored tea or oolong due to sharp aroma of kama-ka, which is a unique characteristics of Aoyagi style of pan-fired green tea. Astringency is low to moderate.  Some Japanese tea farmers described as clean astringency as opposed to residual astringency of low qu...

We just made a test batch of interesting green tea.  Perhaps it's the unique characteristics of our new select variety that resides well in sweet honey flavor.  We just call it "Honey green",  but it sounds rather confusing as if honey is added to the tea. The tea itself is a little bit off from what I consider as final product.  I wouldn't serve it like that.  so I started blending, flavoring and roasting at various degrees. Certain spices work well with this honey green, but from the name implies, honey seems to work the best. I normally don't add extra flavor to tea unless the tea is intended to be flavored, even milk or sugar, but if the tea demands it and there is certain kind of harmony between the tea itself and the extra flavor, I think it is delightful and I would publicly embrace tea flavoring.

This is one of my biggest challenge.  chocolate typically doesn't go with tea very well, but wouldn't it be great if it did? I've been testing special blend which might go well with chocolate.  Chocolate goes much better with oolong than green, but just don't quite harmonize yet.  Perhaps it's extra spice. Hot chocolate oolong tea, untraditional mix with a bit of surprise.  I'm almost there, ask me at farmers market, you may get to try it one of these days. Taka

I watched The Gerson Miracle.  It also reminds me of MOA natural farming and healing, but also made me think about how green tea may not be benefiting us. There are so many researches done on green tea revealing how it can be healthy.  Antioxidants are talked about everywhere you go and people talking about how habitual drinking of tea can benefit our health.  Test results and the numbers are convincing, but I just feel that there gotta be something other than or more than antioxidants that benefit our well being and ultimately cure us. Why in the original text of Lu Yu's "cha jing" describes tea as a medicine, but we consume it as beverage that acts like medicine and even Eisai "kissa yojoki" he describes tea as the best medicine for the heart which in turn controls all organs. In Gerson therapy, coffee is consumed for cleansing, perhaps if tea is prepared correctly, it will have immediate cleansing effect. Freshness of green tea is directly influencing...

Lately weather hasn't been reliable.  It's our winter weather, Rain.  I took a chance since it started out with good weather  in the morning.  by the time I started withering the sun has gone behind the cloud occasionally peeking out, but got just enough outdoor withering.  I will be watching tea indoor all night. Leaf is in good condition.  Flush has vigor and not too stiff, not too tender.  I just have to work on making it a little more even. Every time I am very impressed by how tea react to soil condition.  Tea is not vegetable, it's more like herbs.  We don't want tea to taste like vegetables.  It loses potency and wildness.

Most tea drinkers blindly think spring tea is better than other harvest, but I have found out that there are different qualities in each harvest and different processing styles that bring out the best of each harvest. Spring tea and seasons. Sencha is a specific style of processing. Typically steamed at the initial processing stage and slowly rolled into dry leaf. This style processing benefit from young tender leaves and high level of amino acids because of brewing practices that follow the processing. It allows the leaf to bring out concentrated tea liquor and full range of flavor. Sweetness, astringency and bitterness in balance. Similarly each processing style is developed to express the best of desired tea type and their particular harvest. If Winter harvest was used for sencha processing, undesired quality in sencha is quite obvious due to nature of sencha processing that expresses dynamic range of flavors and aroma. Winter tea has its own unique quality and cannot be proces...

Lately I'm very interested in flavored tea. What happened to me? I have to say that I'm not interested in cheap teas just adding fruit flavors on low grade tea so that you cannot taste any tea at all. It is some extra flavor that enhances of experience of tea. I came across a good genmaicha which uses really high quality sencha. Typically genmaicha needs high temperature to bring out the nutty aroma, but good grade sencha needs lower temperature. Their nature is opposite. Somehow during the processing the sencha seems to have received extra step that reduces typical high grade sencha taste. It doesn't retain the same look either. They don't fight, just harmonizing. I can guess what the process might have been. Very faint green tea. what can we add to complement the flavor? It's much like a good cocktail, you don't kill the flavor of rum, but how can we bring it out better?

I have obtained several unique teas from Japan when I was there in late July. Some sencha, some pan-fire green with various styles of processing and hand processing too. Some of which are not sold, only experimental varieties which I received in exchange . Most of these teas I already tasted at the farms that I visited, but I can look a little more closely to see their quality and processing style.

After so many years of searching for big thick iron wok for hand processing green tea, I finally found one in a rustic metal store in rural Japan, but I had no luck transporting it back to Hawaii. It measures about 1m diamter and 40cm deep. or pay big money. The store owner said that the wok has been sitting there for over 50 years. Nowadays people like to use aluminum or stainless steel kinds since they don't need much maintenance like iron ones, but heat conductivity is totally different. They do not give the type of uniform high heat like iron one does. I found bunch of small iron ones, smaller than 40cm diameter, that people would just give me, but too small. Maybe hobbyist might just like to make some tea with that although from my experience that small ones don't hold enough leaves and can't heat high enough to stop oxidation.