Surrounded by Lavender

This weekend is the annual Lavender Festival in Oregon. Some of the farms are open year-round but on this weekend, all of them open their gates to the public. The festival website was fun to explore--it included useful map tools since the farms are scattered across the central part of the state. A friend and I did a little bit of planning and yesterday we visited three small farms that were relatively close to us.

This field was vibrating with thousands of bees.

I came home saturated with lavender. Depending on the farm, you might find essential lavender oil, lavender soap, lavender lotion, lavender-infused honey, mint tea with lavender buds, fruit and lavender jams, lavender chocolates, lavender lemonade (you can even get that in most coffee shops this time of year), lavender-infused herbs and salt, dried and fresh and potted and U-cut lavender, make-your-own lavender wreaths, lavender-themed artwork...and some of the larger farms had additional vendors, food, even music.


My friend and I had a good time looking over the lavender bounty. We hung around the distillation demonstrations--for the aromatherapy! I thought that the oil was in the leaves but it is in the buds. They have to be picked before they flower. When you distill, you start with an enormous pile of cut lavender, including stems, and a lot of water, and end up with a few liters of essential oil, a mash of plant material, and many gallons of lavender-infused water, a sort of weak tea. Some farms filter this water and sell it as a body mist; I thought that recycling was pretty clever.

I bought three plants--two are an unusual white-flowering variety developed at one of the farms. Even though HellBeast consumes everything organic that I leave out in the house (and some inorganic things, like flip flops), I also bought a bunch of cut lavender. HB seems to have met his match--he gave it a very thorough examination but the taste test did him in and he won't go near it now!

We sampled homemade lavender chocolates. The cilantro-lavender was a surprise but the white chocolate infused with lemon-geranium-lavender was outstanding.

This farm had landscaped gardens, fountains, and gazebos of various sorts in and around their lavender fields.

For my dinner that evening, I combined lavender honey, soy sauce, white wine, and crushed mint leaves that I cut right outside my front door and used this to pan-glaze a pork chop. I tossed a yam and green onions in the pan to soak up the extra juice. Mmm! You could really taste the lavender. It was fabulous.