As harvest season arrived in Wazuka, much of my work focused on storytelling, capturing photos and videos and sharing the realities of life on a tea farm with people around the world. To tell any story accurately, I believe you first need to live it. For me at d:matcha, this means that my work is incredibly diverse. While my main focus is on building our digital presence and strategy, I get to also help in the fields and in our day-to-day operations. This month, I wanted to tell the story of what happens on a tencha harvest day, from the leaf, to your cup.

The Fields

The journey begins in the fields. While visitors often see beautiful rows of green tea plants stretching across the valley, harvest reveals another side of the landscape: dark hillsides due to tea trees being shaded. For over 3 weeks, the view outside my window was different than what I've been used to, and I am happy to see the hills come back to green.

Throughout harvest season, different cultivars are picked at different times as they reach their ideal timing. Careful planning and coordination is key to harvest at the best time, but other circumstances like weather (rainy weather halts the harvest) and scheduling can affect harvest timing.

The Harvest

At d:matcha, we harvested both by machine and by hand in a careful balance of efficiency and tradition. Our main harvest method is a two-person manual arched trimmer. Two people stand on either side of the tea row and slowly walk down it while holding the trimmer at a specific angle and height. Height is key as too low harvests old leaves, which would make bitter matcha, while too high does not harvest all the tender young leaves we carefully cultivated.

This year, we also practiced traditional handpicking for the first time, learning from local grandmothers who have been performing it for dozens of years. Handpicking is slow and tedious but allows us to solely pick the best new leaves. We go down every single branch and pick tender leaves growing on the stem. Once leaves are harvested, the clock begins ticking. Fresh tea leaves are highly perishable and must be processed quickly to preserve their quality. From the fields, the leaves are immediately transported to the tencha factory.

The Factory

Stepping inside during harvest is an experience of its own. Freshly harvested leaves arrive continuously throughout the day and move through a series of carefully controlled processing steps. The leaves are first steamed to halt oxidation and preserve their vibrant green color. They are then dried through a specialized process designed specifically for tencha, the raw material used to produce matcha.

What struck me most was the pace of the operation. During harvest season, the factory rarely sits still. Leaves are constantly arriving, machines are constantly running, and every stage depends on the one before it. The work happening in the fields and the work happening in the factory are inseparable parts of the same process.

When we enjoy a bowl of matcha, it is easy to focus only on the finished tea, yet the teamwork required to keep everything moving all reveal aspects of tea production that are often invisible in the final product. Harvest season offers a reminder that every bowl begins much earlier: with the people in the fields, the freshly picked leaves, and the many, many hands that guide them through each stage of their journey.