Tea leaf cutting at Coonoor

Saturday, March 26, 2005

This is Elizabeth Rani. She’s from Kerala and works here at the Adderley tea estate as a tea leaf cutter. I always thought leaves were picked by hand and dropped into a backpack. These people use an instrument that cuts and collects leaves in a pan, which they then empty into a sack lying nearby.

The sacks are piled into a truck which takes them to the factory a few kilometres away. The truck is weighed whole (instead of individual sacks). The sacks are lifted a floor into a drying area where a fan blows at the leaves from below for seven hours. The leaves, now somewhat drier, are ground, dried again in a chamber heated to ~180°C, filtered to remove sticks, and classified by granularity. This is the orthodox process. In the CTC process, tea leaves are directly cut and threshed and sent to the heating chamber.

This tea is then sold by auction. A small percentage is also directly sold in the neighbourhood.

Elizabeth has invited us to the local church for Easter Mass at 7:30 AM. We’re hoping we’ll get some interesting pictures there too.

eppendorfs — Mar 27, 2005 6:05:32 AM — # ↩

I must say, you have an amazing gift of narrative writing. If you ever contemplate writing a book, make sure you have me in " Also Thank you List" , as one of the bloggers who recognised your talent early on :)
- eppendorfs
aivalli — Mar 27, 2005 12:41:07 PM — # ↩

This is Elizabeth Rani.

Home come the queen of England is doing this ? :-?

-nerdy
grecianurn — Mar 27, 2005 1:34:41 PM — # ↩

I remember this tea plantation in Sri Lanka where they picked the leaves by hand. But then that was ten years ago.
- Kiran Jonnalagadda — Mar 27, 2005 7:29:25 PM — # ↩
  
  I think that varies by plantation.
latelyontime — Mar 28, 2005 12:20:10 PM — # ↩

el brilliantano...I louuuuu this! :)
Anonymous — Apr 4, 2005 9:02:47 AM — # ↩

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