Blog @ Purple Haze Lavender Ltd.

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FINALLY!! The farmhouse rental is up and running and we are now taking reservations on our online availability calendar.

It took a lot of work getting the house ready; mostly ALL new furnishings including new beds and fine linens, a flat panel tv and dvd player, all new pots,pans,dishes and silverware and much more.

The house is surrounded by our lavender fields and has a wonderful view of Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. We’re located just about a mile from beautiful John Wayne Marina on Sequim Bay. The town of Sequim is also just under a mile away and Olympic Discovery trail borders the farm to the south.

We expect a flood of reservations judging from the inquiries and comments so reservations well in advance are recommended.

It’s so cool to have this project done as now Rosalind and I are going on a little road trip to Mexico in our camper. Staff will administer the house rental in our absence. Please direct and and all questions to info@purplehazelavender.com

OK, we’ve got some good news and we’ve got some bad news. First, the bad news; we have purchased the house across the street from the farm and will be moving into it soon. After 12 years in our beautiful little farmhouse, we will miss it terribly but both Rosalind and I want a new start in our marriage and will take up housekeeping just a hundred yards or so from the farm.

Now, the good news; we will be offering the farmhouse as a vacation rental starting around the third week in November. We still have a lot to do to get it ready but things are progressing as planned and we should be moved in about a month or so. We have installed a hot tub on our back deck, and that, with all the other amenities, should assure that the house will be rented regularly. It already has a steamroom, wireless internet, satellite t.v.,large gas barbeque, and is three bedrooms and two bathrooms so would be a neat “family getaway” for the holidays and throughout the summer months. We will be adding “rental”pages to our website in the near future, but for the time being if someone is interested in renting the farmhouse, they should email us with questions or inquiries at info@purplehazelavender.com . We feel it will fill up quite quickly so plan way ahead and contact us soon if interested

We’ve marked all of our lavender plants down by 25% and they are going fast at the farm. We do this every year as we don’t want to keep them through the winter in the greenhouse. So come on down and get some plants to put in the ground. With this cool, wet summer we are experiencing they should thrive when transplanted.

I finished my last distillation of Helichrysum yesterday and will start on the various lavenders today. We will distill until everything is done which should take us a couple of weeks so visit and we’ll show you the process.

We also had a unique group visit us yesterday. It was the Olympic Peninsula Chapter of Combat Vets Association. A bunch of really nice guys on motorcycles. They shopped for awhile and we visited over the distiller.

FINALLY we were able to finish distilling the Helichrysum yesterday and now will start on the fields of Grosso lavender. This process will take a couple of weeks working about 8-10 hours a day. It’s really kind of fun as the visitors to the farm get a chance to see where the essential oil comes from and the process it takes to get it. Typically, we will get about 40-60 pounds of lavender oil but this year it may be less as we took out some mature plants this past spring and replaced them with new, smaller ones.

After getting married last Friday, Rosalind and I took our new camper to a remote section of Eastern Washington for a two day honeymoon. The weather was wonderful and we had a little lake all to ourselves. We’ll be able to travel more this fall when all the distilling is finished.

My friend,Dennice, provided the photo on today’s blog…pretty gorgeous pic of the farm, huh?

Everyday now is spent harvesting helichrysum and distilling it. The yellow streaks of it in the fields are disappearing as Jose and his crew take the sickles to it. I love the earthy fragrance of it almost as much as the scent of lavender essential oil.

Yesterday we were visited by accomplished pastel artist Dorisjean Colvin of Olympia, Washington and her good friend, Marsha Lippert of Shoreline. They spent the day creating some fantastic artwork of our fields. We would like to have them back more often.

The visitors continue to come to the farm to pick their own lavender, wander through the gift shop, eat lavender ice cream, or to just generally take it easy. All the varieties of lavender are now in full bloom or past it and we are harvesting constantly, filling all of our drying barns.

Today is a very special day for me as I will be marrying the love of my life, Rosalind. We are so very happy together and anticipate the future.

….and we made it fairly unscathed. Even with the rain all three days people turned out in droves to enjoy the food and music, the ice cream and lavender margueritas. Out of six bands, Geoffrey Castle was our headliner at Purple Haze and he just WOW’ed the crowd with his electronic violin. Don’t ever miss the chance to see this incredible man perform.

The people really seemed to enjoy themselves wandering the farm, tasting the cuisine,(lunch was catered by The Bushwacker Restaurant), and checking out the various vendors scattered around on the lawn and in the orchard.

Now, harvest has begun and we will dry bundles of lavender and distill essential oil for the next month or so. Jose and his crew will be working from just after daylight until around 3 in the afternoon cutting and hauling lavender to our various lavender drying barns.

In tomorrows blog I’ll try and include some photos of some really cute babies and kids we saw at the festival…..now….back to work

Just about all the drying barns are full now and the distiller is going all day long. It looks like we will distill the helichrysum this week so the yellow stripes in the fields will be going away. We are still reeling from the impact of the festival but most of the staff have now had a day off or so.

This final week before the annual festival finds us all in a dead run as tourists are showing up early and staying late. Our U-pick fields were packed with eager pickers this past week and the colors of the different varieties of lavenders are just spectacular now. All of the English varieties are in full bloom and the Intermediates are only about a week off. Jose and his crew have got the farm looking really, really good and Staci has got the new seasonal staff running smoothly.

A couple exciting things from last week; Our first shipment of our gift boxes went out to Sequim’s Costco store and are selling well there. Also, Tully’s Coffee started selling lavender mochas made with Purple Haze’s lavender sugar.

This week will be trying for the crew here as there is almost no “downtime” now until after the festival. We are fortunate to have the people working for us that we do.

The summer classes are filling up as expected and we might have to add new ones as time goes on.

The farm is up and running now and open Friday through Monday for the rest of the month. We then go to 7 days a week starting Memorial Weekend. The hours for now are 10-4. Our new webcam is getting a lot of attention. It’s pretty cool to watch the lavender grow in “real time”..

I travel to Saskatoon in a week to speak at an International Conference sponsored by the Saskatchewan Herb and Spice Association. It joins together the Natural Health Products Research Society of Canada and The Canadian Herb, Spice, and Natural Health Products Coalition. I presented in Saskatoon several years ago and found this organization to be incredibly knowledgeable and extremely interesting.