On 6/14.2018, we posted some photos of our English lavender harvest.  I was a bit disappointed. While the lavender was beautiful, there was not as much as I had hoped.  We did get some bundles and dried them.  We had a lot of the English lavender eaten by our bunnies the first year and so most of the replants I did this spring were from that.  I replanted or replaced more than 20 plants.  Because of those reasons, the English harvest just wasn't as big as expected.  However,  next year I am hoping for a bit more.  All the plants look great and we have conquered the bunny situation finally.  

I have been anxiously awaiting the Grosso and Phenomenal harvest.  These are just second year plants and our first harvest.  We got so much MORE than I expected and I am thrilled!  I was really a bit edgy about planting Grosso, as I know it doesn't overwinter as well as English lavender or Phenomenal.  However, both rows of Grosso we planted not only survived, but have thrived and given us a terrific start to harvest.  We still have some plants that weren't ready to be harvested, but we harvested about 3/4 of the plants last night.  Hope you enjoy the pictures.  

Hey all!  We are getting info on some farmer's markets and some great suggestions.  We also have been contacted by a few markets as well to join.  Just wanted to update where we are.  We finally got the lavender field completely planted.  We are almost finished spreading rock.  I have harvested some English lavender and waiting on the Grosso and Phenomenal.   We started with the Vintage Home Market at 110 Sycamore in Downtown Wyandotte in June.  They don't have all our products but a sampling.  I will be taking more down in the next couple of weeks to stock up for the Wyandotte Street Fair/Art Fair.  The shop will be open during the street fair so please stop in and shop!

We have a few Vintage and Handmade  in person markets scheduled for fall and the holidays.  Those are posted on our Events page.  As far as this summer, we are not involved in any Farmer's Markets.  What we hope to do is make a list of the different markets we are interested in or have contacted us and go down and look.  

What we don't want to do is spread ourselves too thin.  I am the only full-time worker (farmer, product maker, floral designer, painter, web person, sales and market person and many other hats!).  My husband helps and supports me tremendously, but he works a full-time job.  He's not a full-time farmer yet!  My adults sons also help as needed but both work and one is in college.  So we are definitely being a bit choosy about what markets we go with to fit our schedule best as I will need some help from at least one family member to transport and set up products, tents, etc.  

Good news is we have some ideas for a couple of in-person farm events next season.  I am working on them and will announce when everything is worked out.  We are excited to be able have some people come out to the farm and see the lavender and what we are doing here.  

Hopefully soon I can add a few markets to the events page as well!  

It's a hot one - Happy Father's Day! 

Here Just a quick update to show you the start of our harvest.   Most of our plants are first and second year plants so they are not at maturity.  Next year's harvest should be larger. Today I harvested the English lavender that was ready.  There was Hidcote, Melissa, and Munstead varieties.  The Grosso and Phenomenal intermediate lavender, which we have quite a few of,  are not ready to harvest yet.  They come a bit behind the English lavender.  Here are some photos of the harvest today.  I was so happy that for our first harvest season since we moved to our property in Monroe that we got such nice bundles. 

We are impatiently awaiting harvest here but yet still planting at the same time!  We have many of our English lavenders that are this close to harvest.  I am planning a day out in the field (not doing orders inside) tomorrow through Wednesday, to get caught up on planting and harvesting.  We have almost all of our Grosso and Phenomenal budding. The Grosso have gotten so big.  I was really worried about that particular type of lavender because it's less hardy for overwintering, but they seem to be doing just great.  

We hung our make-shift drying rack up and it's awaiting bundles.  We talk to/network with a lot of lavender growers and other farm owners through the United States Lavender Growers Association.   A great idea for a make-shift drying rack was posted via a picture.  It was using cattle panels.  Those non-farmers - that is a sort of a panel of fencing to keep livestock in.  They have cattle panels, hog panels, and goat panels.  We wanted the cattle because they have a taller height.  The issue was they were 16 feet long and we don't have a truck! We have an SUV.  We lucked out at our local Tractor Supply store when the sales clerk took us out back to look at the panels out back of the store.  Lo and behold, they had some cattle panels that were called Easy Panels that had the height we were looking for  but were only 8 feet long.  So we took two and tied them to the roof of the SUV.   My husband hung them up in the barn with baling twine.  When we harvest I will get some pictures of the entire process.  Since this is our first harvest, I don't expect it to be huge.  These are mostly 1st and 2nd year plants.  They reach maturity at 3 years.  We do have a handful of older plants that we brought from our old house.  I was happy to see they are doing great, survived the transplanting, and are very close to harvest as well.  

We bought more plants this weekend- of course, why stop now? I ran out and got two trays of mostly Munstead.  It's what the closest greenhouse had left, but to be honest with you I have always had really good luck with Munstead.   I like our Hidocote as well.  Our Melissa is doing very well although looking light lavender instead of pink.  They aren't completely in bloom so maybe that will change.  I am having a harder time with Folgate.  I heard this was a good variety for cold winters, but it's probably just so-so for us.  I have a couple die on me this season.  Our Phenomenal is doing well too.   So I will be finishing off the back field planting and harvesting very likely the same week.  

We got more rock.... yes more.  We had 18 tons the first deliveyr.  This time we have about half that.  We need to fill in bare spots in the front field and cover the back field.  So tomorrow son #1 is coming to help spread rock while I plant and possibly start to harvest.  

The test plot for sunflowers, zinnas and wildflowers is coming along.  I see shoots and things growing.  Our test plot for gladiolus, dahlia, and yarrow is doing well.  We got two more roses - Gypsy red and yellow.  Things are coming along.  I should have some harvest pics soon!  Happy harvesting.   

We packaged our wildflower and herbal potpourri in mason jars for gift giving.  You can still get them by the bag, but if you'd like to give a quaint gift of some wonderful smelling dried wildflowers, lavender, chamomile, rose petals etc this a cute way to give as a gift.  I also have been working one some Summer Festival Bouquets and wreaths!  

 We worked all through a very hot Memorial Day weekend.  I finished the planting of the new lavender plants.  We have a total of 300 now.  We still have a few more rows to fill in the back field.  We also have room for further expansion for other fields, but pretty happy with what we have at the present time.  The plants are all growing by leaps and bounds due to the hot weather.  Lavender is a sun lover for sure.  We have some buds on our Melissa, Grosso, Hidcote and Phenomenal.  I am not sure what kind of harvest we will have due to the plants only being second year plants (and some first year replacements).  If you want larger plants to produce faster you can purchase gallon
-sized plants.  However, for us, this was not economical to purchase 300 gallon size plants - that would be expensive - so we went with 3.5 inch pots.  The trade off is waiting for them to mature, which is usually around the third year.

I also planted yarrow, gladiolus, dahlias, an delphinium in a bed up by our patio.  We also started a test plot for cut flowers and wildflowers.  I planted some sunflower seeds, zinnias, and a wildflower meadow mix.  Our plan is if this works we will expand next year and give the sunflowers and zinnaes each their own beds and fill in the current bed with a wildflower meadow.  

We also filled in the our first lavender field with river rock.  This was quite the endeavor!  It took myself, my husband, and two adult sons several days to spread the rock.  We were very blessed by a neighbor with a tractor who not only tilled the new bed for the cut flowers, but used his scoop attachment to put the 18 ton! of rock in various places on the field so we didn't have to scoop it into a wheelbarrow.  He allowed my husband to use his tractor free for this.  We could not have done it without his help!  We do still have to order a smaller pile of rocks because we were a bit short and need to mulch the back lavender field I just planted.  So more rocks to spread! I do think the rock makes a night and day difference in the appearance of the field.  It will also help with reflection of the sun and drainage.  

Hope everyone has a happy June!  We will post further updates to harvest as they come!