“It was a long day, but a good day.”

That’s how Colleen George summed up the first harvest of wasabi at T’Sou-ke Nation on Oct. 19. “Our first order wasn’t a huge one, but it was doubled at the last minute.

“I really couldn’t picture it before,” she said of the harvest. “Now we have something to measure things by.” The 15,000 wasabi plants have been growing in three large greenhouses over the past 15 months.

It’s a $300,000 investment by the forward-looking T’Sou-ke people and a vital part of achieving their vision of food and energy security along with economic and cultural sustainability for the nation.

The tangy, delicious leaves will be harvested along with the rhizomes [stalks] over the coming months for delivery to restaurants and grocery stores. The leaves will be used for salads while the stalks are used to make the bright green condiment served with sushi.

Colleen has worked with the wasabi for the past five months. “It has been quite a lot of learning,” she said. “But I have done a lot of gardening, so I understand growing.” The wasabi will be harvested on a per-order basis. Colleen and other workers prepare special packs to keep the wasabi fresh and cold during transport to customers.

On the horizon, there are great expectations for selling wasabi to customers attracted by the plant’s medicinal qualities.

Wasabi is claimed to have anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-platelet and other positive health effects, but the relative scarcity of the plant means it is not in wide use.

Meanwhile, Colleen is sure of her future as wasabi worker. “I won’t ever go back to an office job,” she said on the day after the first harvest.