Northwest Flower & Garden Show 2010
Once again we had a wonderful time at the show, it was a
pleasure to see old friends and meet many new.

Much to our surpise and pleasure we
won "Outstanding Visual Presentation"
for the second year in a row!

 

 

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It is springtime at the Farm, time for us to back out to the field and
you to your gardens. Are you planning on adding lavender to your garden this year? Below you will find our Lavender Growing Tips to help you
cultivate healthy and productive lavender plants.

Download Lavender Growing Tips!

September marks the peak of our annual harvest for lavender essential oil distillation. This is the final harvest of the season, when there is the maximum amount of oil in the flower buds.

Pruning lavender must be done every year to
promote high yield the following year.

The New Still

We have been distilling our essential oils in the on-site distillery for 10 years. For the first five years, while our harvests were still relatively small, we used the same small copper still that we had used for our original research into the parameters for optimum essential oil distillation. We then acquired a specially built 100 gallon still that was used at maximum capacity, right through the 2008 harvest. Sadly, the Distillery was one of the buildings consumed in the May 2009 fire at the Farm. While certainly devastating, the need to rebuild this has provided us the opportunity to install a much larger still that has increased our capacity 10-fold, which will make the process of distilling thousands of pounds of hand-harvested lavender much more efficient.

Installing the new still.

Fully installed in its own specially-constructed new building, we fired it up for the 2009 distillation and the oil and hydrosol are now pouring out in abundance! The Organic Lavender Hydrosol (by-product of the distillation process) is decanted into the blue 5-gallon jugs, while the pure Organic Lavender Essential Oil is separated into the brown UV protected, glass bottles. Similar to a red wine, lavender essential oil is then aged before it is used directly or in the lavender products we handcraft on the Farm.

Even though the larger still will make our yearly distillation much more efficient, every part of the process is still done by hand to ensure the utmost quality. The thousands of plants that go into each season's distillation are harvested by hand, each step of the distillation cycle is monitored very closely at the distillery and the finally the products that are made with the our organic lavender essential oils and flowers are made by hand by local islanders.

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Images of our 8th Annual
San Juan Island Lavender Festival

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Fields Under A Blanket Of Snow
December 2008