There’s a New Tea Farm in, Of All Places, Mississippi
Finally, extreme locavores (or patriots, we suppose) can have access to domestic tea.
All true teas come from a single species of plant, Camellia sinensis and include black tea, green tea, white tea, and teas that are primarily made of leaves of C. sinensis but with some flavors added (think jasmine tea, or Earl Grey). Crafting different types of tea depends on how you process, dry, and treat the tea leaves, and also depends on what stage of life the leaf is in when you pick it. (Sorry, peppermint tea, chamomile tea, and ginger tea; you all are made from material from some other plant entirely.)
But regardless of the huge variety of types of teas, it all comes back to that one plant. And that plant tends to prefer hot, moist climates, typically tropical areas – although some teas grown at higher altitudes are prized as more intense. (That’s due to the tea having to struggle to get all its nutrients from a less forgiving climate; it tends to concentrate flavorful aromatic oils and compounds in the leaves.)
Lately, though, we’ve started to see that good ol’ C. sinensis is hardier that we ever expected. Some teas are now grown as far north as the UK, where Cornwall has emerged as a potential producer of some very fine teas. And down south, in Lincoln County, Mississippi, Jason McDonald and Timothy Gipson have started a tea farm of their own. It’s not the first American tea farm; there are a couple dozen in Hawaii, one in South Carolina, and a few in the Pacific Northwest. But it’s always worth noting a new entry, and this is the first in Mississippi.
The farm, now titled The Great Mississippi Tea Company (great name, we have to say) was constructed with help from nearby Mississippi State University agricultural experts. Bromwich Tea, an American tea producer, will be handling the production of the raw leaves from the company, which is about to start its very first harvest. From September 14 until October 9, the first crop will be picked and processed and samples will be available soon after, though there’s no word yet as to wider availability and price. But we’re excited to see whether American tea can live up to the rich global history of the beverage.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].There’s a New Tea Farm in, Of All Places, Mississippi
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
September 16, 2015
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
I am a Tea Planter from Sri Lanka now living in USA. How can I contact Jason Macdonald to obtain information regarding setting up a joint venture?