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Lavender Farm Tours from Coast to Coast

Take a Fragrant Farm Tour and Re-connect with Your Inner Zen

By Georgie Lea Smith

Folgate and Hidcote Pink
Folgate and Hidcote Pink

If there is one thing you’ll never forget about touring a lavender farm, it’s the smell.

“They ALWAYS drive up and say, ‘I could smell this coming down the road!” an observation Washington state farmer Sarah Richards, owner of Lavender Wind Farm, chuckles fondly about.  

Because of course a lavender farm smells… delightfully, wonderfully, fragrantly so! But touring a lavender wind farm is not only an aromatic experience, it combines the beauty of the plants, the connection the land and outdoors, the stimulation of the exercise and the gratification of learning something new about plants, farming and rural communities. 

Agri-tourism is most commonly thought of as touring a working farm.  Perhaps gathering some eggs, milking a goat, pulling a few weeds, maybe even staying overnight and cooking up a farm meal from what you harvested that day. It is a experiential travel experience that has been surging in popularity over the last decade as an increasingly urbanized American population reach out to their rural origins, scheduling their vacation days with a trip ‘back to the farm.” 

Poppies and Lavender

Looking to Relax, Unwind and De-Stress?  Tour a Lavender Farm

Touring lavender farms is a particularly delightful subset of the ‘agri-tourism’ craze. Farm tours in general are all about the hands-on experiences that visitors love. Learning about the farm and what they do, enjoying the physical landscape and beauty of the farm, connecting back with nature and feeling the ‘land’ beneath your feet. 

But touring lavender farms takes all that and raises the bar several notches. Offering up all the delights of a typical farm tour but adding in not only the beauty of the blooming plants, but the unique benefits that the lavender oil provides – reduced stress and anxiety, elimination of nervous tension and enhanced blood circulation. 

Honestly, when you combine the relaxing ‘back to nature” of a farm tour with the aromatic, de-stressing benefits of lavender – isn’t it amazing anybody ever leaves a lavender farm tour! Nap-time anyone?

Pinning Bundles
Pining bundles for hanging

Finding a Lavender Farm Near You to Tour

The most famous area to offer endless purple fields of lavender is without a doubt, the Provence region of France. With oodles of lavender farms located across 100s of miles, this is a lavender-farm, tour-experience extraordinaire. Here in the United States, there isn’t one area so famously dedicated toward lavender production. But, never fear – because lavender is such a hardy and versatile plant adaptable across most growing regions of the United States, you can find a lavender farm not too far away from almost anywhere you might be. 

The first thing to keep in mind, timing your tour for the “purple” season. Most lavender farms in the United States are in peak bloom (aka ‘purple’) from roughly the first of June til sometime in August. Some farms may also offer early spring ‘planting’ tours or fall-harvest time tours that might specifically explore such topics as drying lavender, lavender crafts and distilling lavender oil. But, if you want to experience a lavender farm at the height of its beauty and aroma, best to go when the flowers are blooming. 

Next, you need to find a lavender farm that offers tours and is open to the public! Each farm is unique and will have different experiences they can share with visitors. Some farms have an on-site store and allow you to view (and even wander) the fields. Others may be only open for scheduled events or host festivals. Some offer specific tours aimed toward unique topics or designed specifically for your group. The best place to find reputable lavender farms in your area is checking with the U.S. Lavender Growers Association for a farm near you. https://www.uslavender.org. 

Meanwhile, here a quick round-up of lavender farms coast-to-coast offering on-farm tours.

Coast to Coast – Five Lavender Farms Open for Farm Tours

Olympic Mountains and Strait of Juan de Fuca from our lavender field.
Olympic Mountains and Strait of Juan de Fuca from our lavender field.

Washington – West Coast Ocean Breezes

Lavender Wind Farm. Whidbey Island, Washington. Approximately two hour drive north of Seattle. 

A 9-acre farm featuring 19 varieties of lavender, a farm pond and a Hopi-inspired lavender labyrinth. This breath-takingly beautiful farm offers ocean and mountain views along with their stunning fields of purple. Lavender Wind Farm is open during the ‘purple season’ for self-guided day tours or specifically themed guided tours. Click here for more information.  https://www.lavenderwind.com/lavender-farm-tour/

Read about Tours and Passes at Lavender Wind

Colorado – Rocky Mountain Plateaus

Sage Creations. Palisade, Colorado. Just a 3.5 hour drive from Denver and an even quicker trip across the Utah border from Moab. This organic certified lavender farm features high desert and plateau views. They offer many lavender-centric experiences, including u-pick and guided ‘agri-tours’ of their farming operations and practices.  Check here for more information – https://sagecreationsorganicfarm.com

New Mexico – Desert Blooms

Purple Adobe Lavender Farm. Abiquiu, New Mexico. This southwest desert farm is just a quick 30-minute hop from Santa Fe and located in the same valley the famous painter Georgia O’Keefe lived and painted. Take a guided tour for the farm, learning all about the history, uses for lavender and more. http://www.purpleadobelavenderfarm.com

Kansas – Purple on the Prairie

Prairie Lavender Farm. Bennington, Kansas. Over 4600 plants grown amongst the native tall and short-grass prairies of north-central Kansas, this farm is really close to an urban center, just 20-minute drive from Salina which is likely one reason it has the honor of being Kansas’s more visited farm! Tours are available any time they are open for small groups, larger groups are encouraged to schedule. https://prairielavenderfarm.com

Virginia – Sniff and Sip through the Sheandoah Valley

White Oak Lavender Farm. Harrisonburg, VA. A two-hour drive from D.C. or just a one-hour drive from Charlottesville, this lavender farm is located in the renown Shenandoah valley of Virginia. Also a vineyard, you can smell the farm-grown lavender while sipping the farm-grown wine! Seasonal guided tours are offered four days a week and include lavender information, u-pick and a great walking tour of the farm. https://www.whiteoaklavender.com/

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Inventory Taking Time

Inventory and cleanup time

 

Our Coupeville shop will be closed from January 1 to January 7 for Inventory and general cleaning and repairs. Many of you have a scone or cooking addiction, so please order scones or cookies (or other baked goods) for pickup on Dec. 31.

We will be fulfilling online orders during that week.

The shop will reopen on January 8th – all sparkly clean and happy to see you!

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Oil Awards 2017

We are honored to have our oils recognized with four awards by Lavender Sommelier.

In the USA there hasn’t been a national level judging of lavender essential oil. Some other countries have developed a standard for oils and then trained people to judge them. Notably, this occurs in New Zealand and Australia. Now, Mesha Munyan and others are working to establish a USA judging skill and standard for lavender oils, and we welcome that effort.

Grosso Gold Award 2017 Folgate Silver Award 2017 Super Bronze Award 2017 Hidcote Pink Silver Award 2017

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Blueberry Jam is BACK!

Finally, we’ve got our wonderful Blueberry Lavender Jam back in stock!

Blueberry Lavender Jam

Made from blueberries grown right here on Whidbey Island. Lavender gives our tasty  jam a hint of Mediterranean culture to your eating pleasure.  Try it on scones, muffins, waffles, crackers with cream cheese or serve it as a chutney with ham.

Our jams and jellies have been developed in our own kitchen and are made with our blended culinary lavender.

Ingredients: Sugar, Blueberries, Pectin, Lemon Juice, Lavender. Net Wt. 7 oz (180g)

Click here to order.

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2017 Growing Season Finished

This was a great season! Thank you to all the people who came to visit the farm this summer, we loved seeing you and watching you enjoy the purple fields, the various flowers, and our new Blooming Season Concert series.

The FARM SHOP is closed now that the harvest has finished.

Our COUPEVILLE SHOP is open ALL YEAR – so we’ll see you here.

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Grosso and Folgate Oils Win Awards

Lavender Sommellier, who is a member of the International Perfume Foundation, awarded Lavender Wind Farm two awards for our oils!
Lavandula x-intermedia var. Grosso Gold Award

It was around 2003 when we first distilled our lavender thanks to a lavender grower about a mile away from us. He had a Newhouse Mini-still that looked pretty big to me! I learned how to work the elaborate system, pay attention to the drops of oils visible in the distillate, and how to time the process to get the best oil I could. He was gracious enough to let me use his system for a couple of years until I was ready to get my own still. I opted for a human-scale still that was a rotating column still made out of 100% copper from Portugal. We now have four of those copper stills – Grandfather still, Papa still, Mama still, and Baby still. (Really, I am such a girl in some ways and Goldilocks has stuck with me.)

For the last two years we have been using Grandfather still, which is a rotating column still about 150 liters in size. It is so big we had to build a platform to get to get high enough to load the lavender. Here is a video of Sarah a few years ago, and then Farm Manager, Sydney, working on a batch.

We harvest the lavender fresh. The column and cap of the still hold about 90 lbs of lavender. From that we get about 18 to 26 ounces of lavender essential oil per batch, depending on the variety that we are distilling. We distill each variety separately.

You can come to the farm and watch us distill the lavender oil during the summer.

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Flood, Fire, Farming

Lake Lavande at Lavender Wind
Lake Lavande at Lavender Wind

Fire! Water! Earth! Air! The four elements from ancient times describe the necessities of life. This year, water was the element that came down from the sky in droves, drops, puddles, lakes, and sheets. It soaked the ground, saturated the fields, created lakes where there had been none, and caused bluffs to collapse into the sea. It flooded our fields. The earth could not contain the water, the air blew hard, but still wasn’t enough to evaporate the water. And in the end, after the waters receded fire is what came to clean up the lavenders that drowned.

Dead Lavenders April 2016
Dead Lavenders April 2016

Farming is full of risks as any farmer around the world will tell you. This year it was water. Neighbors were pumping out flooded basements and pranks were played by setting out plastic pink flamingos in one of the many lakes that were created in the saturated fields. Lavender, though, is a perennial crop. It stays planted in the ground for an average of 10 years, producing for at least 8 of those years. This year, many of our 4 year old lavender plants were drowned. The waters of the temporary lake (Lake Lavande) drowned the lavenders. Even so, in February and March one couldn’t tell they were dead. But, in April it was clear. The plants that are grey, rather than green don’t have leaves coming out, they are dead.

Pitching away dead lavenders
Sydney, pitching away dead lavenders

To keep the fields healthy we had to take out the dead plants as soon as we could get onto the field without getting the tractor stuck in mud. We dug out the plants with the bucket, shook off the dirt, and piled them up to transport them to their funeral pyre.

The green weeds you see above are horsetail. It is a deep rooted living fossil (because it has been on the earth for so long) and it loves the damper ground. It is extremely difficult to eradicate, so we will keep this part of the field brown all summer to weaken it. But, that won’t make it go away, that takes years of hard work (and chemicals if you are willing to use them, which we aren’t) and even then there is no guarantee it will be gone. Some people use it for medicinal purposes, but we haven’t pursued that option.

Drowned lavender pile
Pile of drowned lavender, not sure how many plants are in that pile yet.

There is a possibility of disease, so the plants are being burned. One night, after work, we burned 300 of them in about an hour and a half. That only made a small dent in the big pile, so we’ll be having more bonfires when the weather permits. Lavender burns hot and fast, the fire would flare up with each plant we put on top of the coals. It was beautiful and hot.

Bonfire of Lavenders
Bonfire of Lavenders

The farm had something like 14,000 lavender plants, and we probably lost about 10% to 15% of them to the floods. We are still counting. But, that means we probably have between 85% and 90% of the lavenders that are in good shape even though there are still patches here and there that we are watching closely to see if they will green up. If not, we’ll have to pull them out and burn them, too.

Luckily, last year we had a bumper harvest, this year it will be leaner. Even so, we are looking forward to fields of purple in another couple of months, and that first day of harvest when we again get to breathe the fragrance that armloads of lavender bring.

Good Looking Lavenders
Good Looking Lavenders

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Debra Prinzing interviews two lavender growers

Screen shot from Debra Prinzing's page with our interview
Screen shot from Debra Prinzing’s page with our interview

Lavender interview by Debra Prinzing (Author of Slow Flowers: The conscious choice for buying and sending flowers)

Mike Neustrom and Sarah Richards were interviewed by Debra at the Northwest Regional Lavender Conference in Portland, OR Oct. 2014.

We are so thrilled to be able to talk with this influential cut flower industry author. From her site we found that Debra Prinzing is a Seattle and Los Angeles-based writer who can credit her happy existence writing about gardens and home design to great preparation: a degree in textiles and design and a long career in journalism.

All we know is that Debra is passionate about flowers, growing & buying them locally, her books are both beautiful and entertaining. It was an honor to be included in her podcast series.

Listen to the Podcast

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Boat Naming Contest at the Art of the Boat Festival

Lillie Mistral
Lillie Mistral

We had Sarah’s 13’ Sailboat set up on the driveway of Lavender Wind’s shop during the Art of the Boat Festival.

It’s a darling little boat manufactured by Micro Marine (a company that was based in Massachusetts, we have no idea how it got out here). We set up a sign challenging people to try to name the boat and if we picked one, we’d award that person a $20 gift certificate. Then we put out a quart canning jar and waited.

We got a lot of entries, it was hard to decide! Thank you to all who used their brains to help us figure this out. There are two winners because we took one word from each of two entries, and took some poetic license with the spelling of one. Most people would chose a different name, but each of the words chosen has meaning to Sarah and represents a part of her life.

That cute little sailboat is now named  “Lillie Mistral”

The winners are: Betsy Brace & Leslie Claesson

They have been sent a Gift Certificate via their email address that they had on the form.

For your enjoyment the entries were:

  • A Frayed Knot
  • Naughtayot
  • Nautical Smiles
  • Penn Cove’s Water Lily
  • Mistral
  • Wind Dancer
  • My Boat
  • It’s All About Me
  • Wind Runner
  • Wind Child
  • Lil Veg
  • Jen-nay
  • Lavender a Sea
  • Purple Love
  • Jiblet
  • The Lavender Lady
  • Itty Bitty
  • Wallow
  • Cove Dancer
  • Gull Chaser
  • Adept
  • Fore Sail
  • Baby Blue
  • Star Dancer