|
 |
|
|
|
Industry Profile: Lavender Fields Forever... |
|
|
|
Written On: January 2006 |
|
|
|
Written By: by Ron Dalby |
|
|
|
Washington fields once populated by Holsteins now smell a lot better...
Arriving in the middle of a dreary, soggy spring day, the invitation was irresistible. In the envelope was a brochure filled with pictures of fields of lavender on bright sunny summer days and a page of information about the annual Sequim Lavender Festival that takes place the third weekend in July every year—three big days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The only reasonable thing to do was start planning a trip to Sequim.
Approaching Sequim in mid-summer on Highway 101, you can smell the lavender. Air that a couple of decades ago was heavy with odors from a number of small dairy farms is now absolutely delightful. Turn off the air conditioner if the weather is warm; roll down the car windows and savor every whiff of the sea breeze tinted with lavender. You won’t be disappointed.
Once you’re in town for the festival, the size of the lavender industry takes almost every newcomer by surprise. There’s something going on along the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula that most of us know very little about. Learning about lavender adds up to nothing but fun.
The Basics
Lavender is indigenous to the Mediterranean, according to the Let’s Do Lavender Web site, www.letsdolavender.com. It grows best in climates lacking high heat and humidity. It’s easy to grow and grows best in slightly sandy, well-drained soil that is low in humus and slightly alkaline. Sounds like the drier, northern side of the Olympic Peninsula, doesn’t it?
You’re better off purchasing lavender plants than starting them from seed. Lavender grows well from cuttings, and cuttings are almost always more successful that seeds. Plant on raised mounts if your soil is less than ideal, and don’t over water. Mary Borland, co-owner with husband Steve of the Olympic Lavender Farm, says, "Lavender plants don’t like wet feet."
The Products
"You can eat lavender," Gina Morgan said. Gina was in a product booth at the edge of the farm owned by her parents, Vic and Mary Brancacio. Although their farm wasn’t part of the official festival tour, it was right next door to one that was and she had a steady stream of customers wandering over from the tour buses.
Besides its culinary attributes, during the Lavender Festival you’ll quickly learn that lavender yields a wide variety of products. Some are fairly simple such you-pick bundles of lavender for display in your home. Others are more complex and may require drying a vast number of lavender bundles or squeezing the oil out of the buds to make various products.
Here’s a partial list of products made from lavender grown in Sequim. All these were available for purchase during the Lavender Festival. Many are also available to purchase through online stores run by Sequim-area lavender farmers.
Besides these made-from-lavender products, you can also visit one or more of the farms, borrow the proper knife, and wander into the fields to cut a bundle of lavender to decorate your home or make a lavender topiary. In fact, at one of farms on the Lavender Festival tour, there’s an outdoor booth set up to teach people how to make lavender topiaries.
In other words, there is a lot being done with lavender in and around Sequim, and there’s a lot you can do with lavender if you want to involve yourself in the festival.
The Business of Lavender
Unlike most farming operations, making a living with lavender doesn’t take a whole lot of land. "You could probably make a living on one-and-a-half acres of land," Mary Borland said.
Like many lavender farmers in Sequim, hers, though it is a serious business with several seasonal employees, could almost be described as a hobby farm since both she and her husband hold down other jobs. She and Steve started their lavender farm in the mid-1990s, part of the first wave of lavender farmers in the Sequim area.
Mary also notes that the real profit from a lavender farm comes from the products derived from the lavender, not the visitors plunking down a couple of bucks for the right to cut a bundle to take home.
Making products, however, does require an investment in equipment; what kind and how much depends of the products you wish to make. For those products requiring dried lavender buds, you need a fairly large barn or other building for hanging sheaves of lavender out of the weather. If, on the other hand, the products you wish to make require lavender oils, then some sort of a press is going to be required. Depending on the scope of your lavender operation, you may need both.
The Sequim Lavender Festival
Everything comes together in Sequim on the third weekend in July when the local lavender growers association sponsors the Sequim Lavender Festival. A couple of blocks off the main drag—Highway 101—an entire street is cordoned off for several blocks and hundreds of vendors set up outdoor booths to peddle their wares.
You can sip lavender lemonade—different, but quite tasty—while listening to live bands, sample the food in various booths, or shop for a variety of unusual products, many made using lavender oils or lavender buds. A local barn becomes the venue for a square dance on Saturday night, and buses are in constant motion carrying visitors from downtown to various lavender farms as part of the tour.
When you arrive at the festival, purchase a button—$10 in 2005. It allows you to get on and off the buses as you desire for the entire weekend. Be sure to visit as many of the farms as possible. All are beautifully maintained, and each one offers a different selection of products for you to consider. And, besides the vendor booths downtown, each farm has several booths set up on its property to add to the fun.
Finally, be sure and take your camera. A sunny day and the stunningly beautiful fields of lavender with Mount Baker faintly visible in the distance combine to make for great pictures.
|
|
|
|
