Fine words, but how exactly do they differentiate Pelindaba Lavender products from the kind of lavender products sold in most gift, cosmetic or discount stores and supermarkets?

We start with the fact that, with very few exceptions, all the products we offer are handcrafted right here at our farm on San Juan Island. Our island is home to many talented artists and craftspeople, and our farm has become a "home from home" for several of them.

Our adoption of a vertically integrated approach to sustainable agriculture amplifies our passion for excellence and ultimately produces the differentiation we - and our discerning customers - seek:

• We sought and were granted "Certified Organic" status by Washington State Department of Agriculture in accordance with their rigorous certification program. This certification assures customers who purchase products derived from our plants that we follow good organic farming principles and that no synthetic chemicals have been used at any stage of plant cultivation or harvesting.
  
  
• We formulate our Personal Care and Therapeutic products using pure organic lavender essential oil. This is in marked distinction to many other lavender product manufacturers who mix or even substitute their oil with synthetic lavender "fragrance" or "essence". While this significantly reduces the cost to the manufacturer, it also significantly reduces or eliminates all the aromatherapeutic benefits of the essential oil to the user, a false economy indeed.
  
  
• To ensure the highest quality, we derive the lavender essential oil we use exclusively from our own plantings on our own farm. In this way, we can assure ourselves and our customers that the source of all our oil is indeed from organically certified plantings.
  
  
• Furthermore, we distill all our essential oil in our own custom-built distillery on the farm. We then ensure the oil has adequate time to properly "age" (like a good red wine) before we use it in our products. In so doing, we avoid the potential concerns experienced by the many producers who buy some or all of their essential oil from third party suppliers over whom they have no direct quality control - a particularly relevant concern with the recent influx of low-cost (translation: low-quality, not organically certified) essential oils, especially from Eastern Europe.

The net result is that we are able to give full expression to our Vision statement (see Home Page). Our open-space preservation objective has been complemented by our efforts to preserve and nurture the art of handcrafting, helping to sustain not only the land but also a way of life for some of our fellow islanders as we meet the rapidly increasing demand for all-natural products.

Choosing this path is inevitably more difficult and expensive than the path chosen by most other lavender producers who ship their flowers and/or oil to third party manufacturers and then put their own labels on those machine-made products for re-selling. Caring for Quality calls for what some have called a more "honest" approach.

Keeping our production activities right here on the farm also allows us to directly control, monitor and ensure the highest quality at all stages of production. It also allows us to be highly flexible in continually improving and expanding our overall product line and meeting the periodic customization requests of some even more particular clients.

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