Blog @ Purple Haze Lavender Ltd.

….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.