Summer, 1999: 

Dear friend,
  Unusually cold ocean waters are offering a magnificent bloom of seaweeds on the Mendocino Coast.  This twentieth season of our harvest here is being worked by mom and pop with sons Shanti and Loren, and
several friends.  We'd like to highlight the following:

Our New Product: Green Tea
 We are blessed to be dealing in the United States the best organic Japanese green tea I've ever tasted, Tsukigase Health Green Tea. Moreover, because of the trans-continental relationship with Misako Watabe of Newdawn Trading Company, we are in contact with the Iwata family, a rual family business devoted to growing the healthiest and sweetest green tea possible in their garden.  Certified organic by the Government of Nara Prefecture, Japan, where the green tea is grown in
Tsukigase Village, it is the highest quality pick, first pick of new leaf.  Interplanting with special herbs gives the tea an unusual sweetness.
 

 Years ago I began drinking green tea regularly, simply because I wanted a low-caffeine stimulant which wasn't hard on my body, as coffee or black (fermented) teas are.  Now green tea is believed by many to be very good for one's health.  I really am not qualified to judge the
evidence that green tea may help prevent cancer.  It seems probable that Tsukigase Health Green Tea, being organically grown young leaf lovingly
produced by a small farming family, is among the healthiest green teas available.
 

 A frost reduced the Iwata's green tea crop this year, but they kept some undamaged with overnight heating.

 The cold ocean in mid-June gave us a rare big bloom of Mendocino Dulse with good drying weather, but not good enough (hot enough) for all of the dulse to dry out looking clean and red.  Some of it sweated out a
lot of salt while drying.  I think it is great dulse, but some of it may not look that great to some people.  By  rinsing it one could reduce the saltiness of the dulse a lot, but that salt is  great-tasting minerally balanced salt.

Sea-Rinsed Nori  is actually nori picked clean and dried without rinsing in fresh water.  It is tougher, saltier, and richer-tasting than our usual nori, swished clean in a barrel of spring water before sun-drying.

 Mendocino Nori, Wakame, Kombu, Sea Whip and Sea Palm Fronds still are our basic products and spiritual friends here in Mendocino.

 and now for the stream of consciousness people...
 

 Spiraling through our twentieth harvest season, dance of love and fulfillment, the space of delight from which to contend with the forces of violence.  Happy summer!
 

      John and Eleanor Lewallen