Why We Started a Lavender Farm

Several years ago, before our lavender adventures began, and when our daughter was a high school freshman, she told me one day that her friends asked her why we have so many lavender things in our house. I thought it was a funny observation … and an inaccurate one. We didn’t have that many lavender things, I quipped. Surely, we had products in other scents.

Then, over the next few days, I started to take notice of all the lavender-scented products I had purchased and brought into our home. She and her friends were right: Lavender soap in the guest bathroom, lavender kitchen cleaning products, lavender bubble baths and salts, lavender-scented candles, and on and on. Even the artwork hanging on our walls was (is) of lavender fields in Provence — framed photographs we picked up in the early 2000s at an art show in Appleton, Wis., where we were living at the time. I wasn’t fully aware of my love of lavender until my daughter and her friends pointed it out.

I’m not sure when I started loving lavender so much, but as we’ve started this lavender farming venture, my affection (or my infliction, as my daughter may describe it) has only gotten stronger.

In 2007, an opportunity came up to buy the property next door to my parents, and we bought it as a family thinking that we’d use it somehow, although were never very clear about how. It was a good investment, and we thought eventually, we would figure out what we would do with it — build a house? The pesky issue of funding would always come up, and the idea dropped. Build a go-kart track? My Mom didn’t like this idea, and the neighbors likely wouldn’t have shared the same enthusiasm as my brother and our sons.

Many years went by, and the property sat. We kept making the payments and getting nothing in return. Eventually, interest in owning the property began to wane. At one point we all decided that it would be best to just sell it. Dad put up a for sale sign and showed the property to a handful of potential buyers. Fortunately, we weren’t able to sell it.

Fast forward a few more years and new possibilities started opening up for my husband, Mark, and me. Our four kids were grown and nearly flown. We were no longer bound by school schedules, hectic evenings of homework, extracurricular activities, weekend soccer games, and scouting events.

We were suddenly finding ourselves in a new chapter. With more time on our hands and the possibility of retirement in the not-too-distant future, we started dreaming.

In 2021, I floated the idea of building a lavender farm on our property to my family, the idea took off, my family was on board immediately, and the momentum has continued to build ever since.

We decided on lavender and not some other crop for two main reasons. First, lavender likes hot, dry conditions. The Methow Valley is exactly that in the summer – hot and dry. Second, we knew we could draw on my Grandma Sylvia’s experience as a lavender grower. She grew lavender on her farm in Kingston, Wash., in the early 2000s after a trip our family took to Greece for my Brother’s wedding. Grandma came home inspired by the Mediterranean and planted a crop of Grosso Lavender out in one of her pastures. She filled the aisle of her big beautiful barn with row after row of bundles of lavender, the process of drying lavender. She sold her lavender bouquets and sachets at the farmer’s market in Kingston, ran her business successfully, and developed quite a name for herself.

Grandma Sylvia showing her great-grandchildren the beautiful art of gardening.

These days she lives in a smaller home in the lavender capital of our country – Sequim, Wash. She grows some lavender and has created a cottage-style garden that is so beautiful, it’s the talk of the neighborhood.

My Grandmother and I have had fun collaborating on this lavender farming endeavor. She goes with me to pick up our new lavender babies from Sequim, and she’s the one I consult with when I have a question about the plants. She’s taught me how to prune and make bouquets, and she’s the one who bought me gold-colored paperclips to hang the bundles with so they would look even prettier. Grandma and I love doing “research” by touring lavender farms, and we usually make it to a handful of farms each summer. We also love testing lavender products, and she’s been a product tester for our farm’s bath bombs.

Another reason to grow lavender is that it ties in nicely with my other love, mental health and wellness. I am a children’s mental health therapist, and more and more studies prove what’s been known for centuries – that lavender makes us feel more relaxed and less anxious. I love that I get to continue to help people outside of the therapy room, too.

What’s been most fun about our lavender experience so far is the love and support we’ve received from so many people. Friends, family, friends of friends, friends of family … so many have taken up an interest and ask us regularly how our lavender is doing, how our business is coming along. I think that’s what I love best about this new adventure – the connections we’ve made with others around a plant that I love, and is loved by so many.

We hope you will follow along so we can connect with you, too.

With love & lavender,