太陽の運行で一年を四区に分け、二十四節気を重ねた悠三堂の「自然のこよみ」。数字ではなく季節の巡りで時を捉える「自然経営」の考え方をご紹介します。

梅雨番茶の収穫が始まりました 🌧️🍃

梅雨の季節がやってきました。恵みの雨をたくさん受けて、のびのびと大きく育ったお茶の葉。

この茶葉を使って、毎日の暮らしの中でカジュアルに楽しめる、体に優しい番茶を作っていきます。

雨の合間を縫っての畑作業は一苦労ですが、みんなで声を掛け合い、この季節ならではのお茶作りを楽しんで進めていきます。

大和高原の自然栽培茶園から

私たちの茶園がある大和高原（奈良県）は、標高が高く寒暖差が大きい土地。梅雨の時期にはたっぷりの雨が降り注ぎ、茶葉がぐんぐん成長します。

自然栽培（農薬・肥料不使用）で育てた茶葉は、この土地の恵みをそのまま吸収し、素朴でやさしい味わいに仕上がります。

梅雨番茶とは？

梅雨番茶は、梅雨の時期に大きく育った茶葉を収穫して作る番茶です。春の新芽とは違い、しっかりとした葉を使うため、カフェインが少なく、お子さまからお年寄りまで安心して毎日お飲みいただけます。

素朴な味わいの中に、大和高原の自然の恵みがぎゅっと詰まった、自然栽培ならではの一杯をお届けします。

収穫の様子や新商品の情報は、Instagramでも随時お知らせしていきます。お楽しみに！

一番茶の季節を終え、悠三堂は普段使いのお茶づくりへ。梅雨に摘む「梅雨番茶」と、そこから生まれるほうじ茶・しろばんちゃ・釜炒りほうじ茶をご紹介します。

Today I would like to talk about YUSANDO's agricultural welfare collaboration efforts. We are a small tea farming company that mainly produces tea in Nara, but also in Kyoto and the surrounding areas. Since we established the company in 2016, we have been producing and selling tea using natural cultivation without fertilizers or pesticides, through trial and error. It is a small company started by myself and my sister. From the beginning to the fifth year, our sales increased steadily and we were always busy. From the beginning, I was in charge of the fields, and my sister was in charge of bagging and shipping the tea. We had outsourced the bagging before, but it was a big burden to keep bagging so many teas by myself, so we were contacted by Green Thumb, a welfare facility in Katano City, and we started our agricultural welfare collaboration efforts by outsourcing the bagging to the welfare facility.

Initially, my sister went to the welfare facility to teach them how to pack the bags. Eventually, she began coming in once a week as a Green Thumb staff member. By having us, who are clients, also serve as staff at the facility, communication between staff became smoother, and we ourselves had more opportunities to come into contact with the users, which gave us an opportunity to think about how each user can grow and what kind of work we could do together.

Once they had mastered bagging to a certain extent, we next entrusted them with weeding in the fields. During the busy farming season from May to November, we have the Green Thumb members come in three mornings a week to help with light farm work. At first they were clumsy at weeding the tea fields, but as they did it more and more, they became faster and more careful. We mainly have them weed between the tea rows, but we ask the members who are good at weeding to operate the brush cutter and cut the surrounding areas. We have the young, energetic members help us with the tea harvesting work, so we are trying to increase what they can do.

In 2021, my sister gave birth, so I started working at Green Thumb once a week. It was my first time going to a welfare facility, and I was nervous at first. After a few visits, I got to know the members better and began to understand their backgrounds and what they were thinking. I decided to change my thinking to create work that I could ask them to do, with the aim of raising the level of what everyone can do a little and making it acceptable in society, rather than saying that we can't do it just because we are a welfare facility.