Lavender Moisturizing Soap
Mini Gardener's Collection
Did you know there are over 400 varieties of lavender?
“That’s what started it. A simple plan to protect the quiet valley property originally acquired
as a foothold in 1989 on San Juan Island – off the northwest coast of
Washington state, between the mainland and Vancouver Island.
“Having used the property for nine years thereafter as a weekend retreat from my then home in Seattle, Washington, I decided to move permanently to the island and, for a variety of reasons, build a new home on a different property. For some reason – the silent voice of fate perhaps – I found myself reluctant to sell the original property, and decided instead to preserve it as ‘open space’ — but open space with a difference.
“Rather than just passively protecting it from residential development, I wanted to
share the open space with other residents and island visitors, and to make it self-sustaining
by making it productive and even enhancing its natural beauty.
“Guided all along by our Vision Statement, PELINDABA has continually evolved as it has grown, from its open space preservation origins to a successful sustainable agriculture and economic development prototype.
“This evolution has been organic, each new activity being born out of the demand of necessity or the serendipity of opportunity. Throughout, however, the touchstone has been to ensure that nothing would compromise our purpose to do well by our island environment – physically, economically and culturally.”
1998 – The Original Plan : Open Space Preservation
Simply to improve the appearance of the property by removing derelict outbuildings and fences and then planting the fields with a non-invasive, self-maintaining, physically attractive crop that would enhance the natural beauty of the landscape.
Seeking a crop that would satisfy several criteria – unique on the island, low water and fertilizer needs, and just as importantly one with a discernable path to economic viability – we eventually arrive at lavender and a simple plan – plant a small field and sell the crop to others to do with as they wished.
1999 – Execution
After considerable research, we prepare the fields, source and plant approximately 2500 lavender starts, nurture them carefully and then hold our breath — which turns out to be quite unnecessary. The plants “take” spectacularly,
and we are on our way.
(Full story now available on the farm’s self-guided Audio Tour facility.)
2000 – Transformation
Encouraged, we plant another 5000 plants. The same year, however, unanticipated changes in the market economics of lavender raw materials determine that we will have to go well beyond the modest limitations of the initial plan if we are ever to become economically sustainable. In a nutshell, we will have to become our own customers, so to speak, and venture into value-added lavender product handcrafting for ourselves.
Building our own Production Center and developing our own formulas, recipes and procedures, allow us to retain full product value within the venture. Doing so on the farm itself helps distinguish us from many others, not least in allowing us to further affirm our focus on quality by knowing intimately our source of flowers, buds and essential oil – our own organically certified fields!
It also allows us to extend the concept of locally sustainable agriculture by providing local employment opportunities for island-based handcrafters and artists.
This choice of a handcrafting rather than the less expensive mechanized manufacturing model for making products has its obvious downside however. We will have to sell the products ourselves through our own retail outlet rather than wholesale them to others – at least until we attain greater size and can recognize adequate economies of scale.
2001 – Opening to the Public
After two years of research and preparation, on 30 June 2001 we open our first store — The Gatehouse — as an on-farm Gift Store and Nursery. Committed at the same to time to educating the public, we add a Demonstration Garden with more than 50 lavender cultivars demonstrating the wide diversity of this extraordinary plant genus.
In concert again with our original purpose, we also open up the fields for visitors to wander through and enjoy the vistas of lush rows of flowering fragrant plants. We add additional picnic facilities and also make the lawns and fields available for community and private functions, including weddings.
We also invite painters and photographers to paint and photograph for their artistic endeavors as and when they wish (never locking our gates) and for sculptors to exhibit their works.
2002 – Expanding our educational offerings
By popular demand, we start conducting frequent docent-guided tours for farm visitors as well as more programmatically for groups such as Elderhostel (now Road Scholar). We also host the first of our annual free-admission San Juan Island Lavender Festivals, with demonstrations, talks and workshops, accompanied by music, theatricals, food and refreshments.
We complement these further by developing self-tour facilities with signage in key locations on the farm. Away from the farm, we actively support and help expand the concept of economically viable sustainable agriculture and organic farming practices throughout the County by giving talks to community and service groups, participating in the island’s Farmer’s Market, and mounting educational displays at the annual San Juan County Fair.
2003 – Website upgrading
To accommodate our rapid growth in product sales, fueled by word of mouth and favorable press alike, we find we need to redesign our relatively primitive original website to better handle customer service and product fulfillment through our on-line store.
2004 – First off-farm retail presence
In response to popular demand, Pelindaba Friday Harbor opens in May in Friday Harbor as a hybrid Product Gallery and Refreshment Place. Being in the Pacific Northwest, we soon are obliged to add coffee to our initial offerings of Lavender teas. Lavender baked goods – both sweet and savory – are also offered, all made ourselves in our newly completed custom-built commercially certified Kitchen & Bakery at the farm.
To support the continuing growth in demand for our products, we plant another 8000 plants and upgrade our distillation capacity by installing a 50-gallon still.
2005 – Pelindaba Friday Harbor as Gathering Place and Events Forum
With the addition of light lunches and suppers, the location becomes even more popular as an away-from-the-farm extension of the Gathering Place concept. It also becomes an island cultural haven, hosting book readings, musical and theatrical events, special interest forums, and film evenings.
2006 – Farming Activities Expand
Continuing to pace our growth, we plant another 4000 plants.
2007 – Pelindaba Expands Off-island
Having thoroughly affirmed the appeal of our product line on the island, we decide to test its appeal elsewhere by opening Pelindaba Seattle in the heart of the city’s retail core.
The positive results of this test soon signal that we are ready for the next phase of growth. Having steadily increased our plantings over the years, we now add a further 6000 plants to bring our total to approximately 25,000. Having also significantly enhanced our distillation and production facilities and methodologies, we have laid a solid foundation for what we now come to envision as a wider geographic expansion. While growth for its own sake is not our objective, we determine that this expansion will help secure the sustainability of the overall project.
2008 – Pelindaba Bellevue Square, Washington
This, the last in our trial program of retail outlet models in a variety of settings – farm, small town retail area, major city retail core, and now upscale regional mall – further establishes the viability of our retail expansion program concept as it draws many accolades.
2009 – Fire !
And then, in an early morning major conflagration, our entire administration, production, and inventory facilities burn to the ground from a fire apparently originating from the simple malfunction of a domestic clothes dryer. Pausing for perhaps two heartbeats, we rapidly secure temporary space and are up and running within a few weeks, all our data having being successfully backed up off-site. The fields and Gatehouse are unaffected, but as we need to replace our still, we build a new distillery with much greater capacity than previously, and commence construction of a significantly enlarged new building to house our Administration, Production and Inventory activities.
A strategic review leads us to allowing the lease on the café/restaurant component of Pelindaba Friday Harbor to expire, but renewing the lease for the Product Gallery component. Popular and rewarding as the café/restaurant has become in many ways for many people, we decide to concentrate our efforts more fully on the expansion of our core lavender farming and product production enterprise.
2010 – Visitor Center
Behind the Gatehouse and adjacent to the new Distillery, we add a significant exhibit area with panels, displays and video monitors to further enhance the educational experience of a farm visit. Recorded audio tours are subsequently made available to provide in-depth narrations as visitors wander the grounds, and the ever-popular lavender craft workshops from the festival are now offered in the new Visitor Center throughout the Summer.
Allowing the leases of our two off-island stores in Seattle and Bellevue to run out in the Spring, we close those stores in order to launch our Retail Licensing Program whereby we license suitably qualified applicants to open Pelindaba Lavender stores in various off-island locations. Pelindaba Lavender Product Gallery opens in Santa Rosa, California as the first store operating under this model. Several others are in various planning stages.
On the farming side, we harvest a bumper crop, and the new distillery allows us to dramatically improve the efficiency of our essential oil distillation operations.
We are committed, through our vertically integrated model of sustainable agriculture, to preserving open-space farmland on our beautiful island from further development, protecting it from pollution, and providing a destination of natural beauty for all to enjoy “up close and personal”.
We are committed to using only our own organically grown and certified lavender flowers in all our products. Following the same ethos, we also distill all our essential oil ourselves, in our own on-site distillery, and from our own flowers, thereby retaining intimate knowledge and control over all that goes into our products.
We are committed to handcrafting our products ourselves on-site. This not only helps assure their quality, but also, by tapping into the abundance of local artisan creativity, allows us to readily sustain our long-standing reputation for bringing elegantly designed and effective lavender products to a discerning public.
Demonstration Garden
Harvesting our Organic Lavender
Pelindaba Lavender Friday Harbor
