An engineer by trade, Lori Baker always knew that she wanted to live on a farm when she retired. But her dream expanded to living on a farm where she grows tea.

Baker and her husband, Bob Baker, bought farmland in western Howard County in December 2013, and there she melds her two loves: getting her hands dirty and creating pottery.

She had taken up pottery while going through a divorce in the early 2000s and found that she loved making teapots — which makes sense, since she despises coffee.

Yet it was her new husband’s idea that they try to grow tea. They bought 50 tea plants and never looked back.

“I think it’s one of those serendipitous journeys where you just kind of follow your heart along the way and it leads you to where you got to go,” Baker said.

Heron’s Meadow Farm and a boutique called BLTeas are tucked away on Daisy Road in Woodbine. Maryland doesn’t exactly have an optimal climate for growing tea, and their farm may be the only one in the state.

After trial and error over the first few years, the farm has grown to over 900 tea plants. The property is also home to Baker’s pottery studio and tea shop.

To supplement the yearly harvest, Baker imports tea that comes from Sri Lanka, Japan and China.

Baker’s husband came up with the name of the tea shop.

“My husband is a punster, so B is Bob, L is for Lori and T is for tea, or all together, it’s a sandwich,” Baker said.

The tea shop of course has plenty of loose leaf tea, but also handmade mugs, teapots, saucers, teacups, and charms for tea diffusers. This season, the shop features an “ugly Christmas sweater“ theme — including textured mugs —for her creations.

When do you harvest the leaves?

Baker: The tea plants are perennials, so they are in the ground and in April they start to wake up a little bit.

Usually by the first week of June we can do our first harvest. When we harvest, we only pick the new growth on the plant; old growth is bitter and nasty. And then we will harvest a couple more times throughout the summer.

Not much is produced from the harvest. I probably harvested only 200 little one-ounce bags of tea throughout the summer.

All of the farm’s grown tea is sold out for the year. Normally, the harvest lasts until about the end of October. In November of 2023, we had a really, really nice harvest, so we were able to get through until almost Christmas. But the winter of 2024 into 2025 was really hard because of extended cold snaps — in fact, we thought we lost the whole field.

How do you make tea from the leaves?

All tea comes from the same plant, the Camellia sinensis. Whether you get a black tea, green tea or a white tea depends on how long you process the leaves. White tea is the least processed and black tea is the most processed.

Think of an apple. The longer you let it sit out and the more you kind of poke at it, the darker and more bruised it gets. That’s the same with a tea leaf. The more you roll it and crush and let it be exposed to air, the darker it will get.

How do you flavor the teas?

I hand-blend and hand-flavor everything. I start off with an idea in my head of what kind of flavor profile I want, and then I just kind of play with it. How much tea versus how much cinnamon versus how much raspberry.

All teas are fundamentally flavored with extracts. So when you see a raspberry or bits of an apple in tea, they are there for aesthetics.

We blend either to my husband’s or my taste. We have very different tastes. He is more of a purist; he likes unflavored teas.

I like all teas. I like fruity teas, and chai teas are one of my favorites. In fact, our holiday chai — it’s more like masala chai — is a huge seller.

Then there’s our Heron’s Grey, which is an Earl Grey. Everybody has to have an Earl Grey. We’ve done twists on that. We have of course a London Fog, which is a vanilla Earl Grey, and then we have The Earl’s Bee Tea that we did for a pollinator show. That tea is an Earl Grey with dandelion roots, hibiscus and other pollinator-friendly things. It’s a cool flavor. You’ll never find it anywhere else.

Customers can also come in and make their own tea. You first sample a couple of teas to get an idea of what the different spices, flavors and flowers are like. Then we have all kinds of ingredients on the table and you make your own tea.

What is the goal of BLTeas?

Our end goal in reality is to not have to buy leaves. But, I don’t know if we will ever get there. A lot of that is a good thing from the standpoint of the more tea we produce, the more people are finding us and the bigger the demand.

Where can people buy your tea?

The farm shop is open Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. During the holiday season, the shop is open an additional day, Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Tea can also be purchased directly from the BLTeas website.

The Howard County Department of Agriculture and the Howard County Economic Development Authority opened a small store in downtown Ellicott City called The Market at Caplan’s. The county renovated the old Caplan’s department store, and the market features Howard County local stuff. We have some of our teas down there.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.