Pagilaran Tea Plantation: Semarang, Central Java

The other day I posted an article on an interesting tea plantation in East Java and mentioned that there are others in Java that are well worth visiting even if you are not a tea-guzzler.

I recalled a small article by Suherdjoko entitled ‘Living from and for tea’ explaining this great place south-east of Semarang on the slopes of Mount Kamulyan:

Thousands of women with weather-beaten faces donning cone-shaped sun hats and rubber boots pick young tea leaves from morning to late afternoon. These are the tea pickers of a plantation in Semarang, Central Java, who live from and for tea.

The plantation owned by PT. Pagilaran in Keteleng village of Blado subdistrict, Batang regency — about 150 kilometers southeast of Semarang — consists of 1,130.25 tea fields, located from 840 to 1,600 meters above sea level. In this vast area, about 2,500 workers depend on tea to make a living.

In the dewy morning, when cool winds blow through the branches of the mitoa (silky oak), the saman tree and the suren (red cedar) that grow on the slopes of Mount Kamulyan, dozens of women tea pickers spread out through the plantation to begin work.

Armed with a packed lunch of rice with corn, young jackfruit, chili paste and a little salt, these women stay out in the fields all day long. They work with a smile, although they make only Rp 150,000-250,000 a month, depending on the volume of leaves they pick.

Generations of tea pickers have tended to such plantations in the area for the one-and-a-half centuries since 1840.

Suherdjoko