San Miguel
Island, Azores June
2015
The tea plantation (Cha' Gorreanna)
The tea plantation on San Miguel Island Azores is the only
tea plantation in Europe. They have produced tea for export for over a
hundred years. The machinery is all flat
belt drive which means it was probably purchased a hundred years ago. There were things that we learned about
tea. The difference between black tea
and green tea is that black tea is cooked longer. The tea leaves that are harvested are only
the new sprouts of the tea plant. The
top three leaves are harvested. The top
leaf is called orange pekoe. The second
leaf is called pekoe. The third leaf is
referred to as broken leaf. When they began growing tea they had to import people from India to teach the Azorians how to grow tea.
The tea plants are harvested by a machine that runs in the
gaps between the plants. Originally
there were individual plants that were picked by hand. Now the machine picks the leaves and the
individual plants have turned into a hedge. The gentlemen in the foreground are moving tea from an oven to a box where it will cool and be ready to be sorted.
The machines are old but are well maintained still working. The overhead shaft and flat belts are how machinery was run before electric motors.
In the Azores hydrangeas
are everywhere.
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