VALUE ADDITION | MEERLANDSVLEI
during the hot months between January and March or April, when temperatures in this region can easily rise above 45 ° C. The heat from above and the sunlight reflecting off the concrete slab can make it feel as though you are being roasted from both sides.
The tea is mostly harvested by hand. Especially where the bushes grow more vigorously and develop side branches, it is easier to reach them by hand than with a cutting machine.
“ The tea is cut, tied into tarpaulin bundles and weighed. It is then loaded onto a trailer and taken to the cutting machines. Each bundle is handled about seven times before the tea finally reaches the cutters. But our cutters work carefully and take pride in what they do. A productive cutter can harvest as much as 1.5 t of tea a day, and in this heat that is no small feat. We try to get around 15 t of wet tea onto the drying yards each day,” Herman explains.