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It’s actually almost 1/2 over. We have been working hard during this rather strange spring. Cold, wet, hot, dry nothing knew what was going on. Our orchard had trees that did not even bloom and I haven’t figured out what the heck happened. While at the same time some trees are full of fruit set. Doesn’t seem to be variety either. One apple full – one not much same with the pears. One variety of asian pears did not bloom and yet another kind are all set up good.

Our well works very good even though we have an abundance of rain at least we know when it gets hot, and it will, we won’t be dry again.

We also installed a greenhouse this spring. At least it’s dry inside when it rains and we have propagated most of our own vegetables this year. Speaking of Veg we have put in a field and should have a good crop to sell. A little expansion from our lavender this year. We decided to put off a lavender expansion in favour of food production.

We have planted a lot od Asian veg and look forward to long beans, eggplant, cauliflower, Asian Broccoli and Mellons. We planted almost 75 melon plants.

I’m also trying an experiment. I have propagated almost 100 asparagus plants from seed and am getting a bed ready. We’ll see how it goes it takes 2 to 3 years to grow into a viable crop.

We will open this year for customers for Lavender, Lavender Products and Vegetables. Not sure of what days or times yet. Hope to see you drop by this summer.

We used a lot of water last season being so dry. Upwards of $100 plus a month as we are on a meter.

We did some math and decided that a well was in order for next year. We did our homework and then installed a shallow well down to 18 feet. water at 13 ft below grade. We installed a 3/4 HP shallow well pump and ran some tests. Even with a extremely low water table this year fe had a flow of 6 gallons per minute. Next spring when the watertable is much higher we should ger 10 GPM.

We filled out all the required paperwork and sent it in and in record time it was approved and we were issued a water use licence and a . Well Tag Number: 124171

https://apps.nrs.gov.bc.ca/gwells/well/124171

We have new products this year,

Pure Lavender Oil. We distill from our plants in house to ensure it’s quality. We cut the flower stalks from about 3 to 4 plants and then it takes about an hour to distill the oil which is separated from the Hydrosol in a special oil separator. 10 ml is $14.95

Hydrosol 100ml and 50ml. Hydrosol is the second product from distilling. It is basically distilled water with suspended lavender oil molecules in it. We sell 2 sizes of spritzers. It can be used to mist your pillow at night, as an air freshener or any other thing you can think of. It’s milder than oil and can be used as a light perfume. $7.50 and $4.00

Lavender Sachets. We take fesh lavender bunches and dry them, then remove th flowers. We then put the dried flowers into Organza bags. You can use these bags in a drawer, hang them in the closet or put them under our pillow at night.. $3.50 each.

Wellness Balm. This is an all purpose balm that can be used for a myriad of uses. It’s very gentle on the skin, You can use it on your feet, on sore muscles and other such uses. $8.50

Thai Massage Balls. We import these from Northern Thailand, They are filled with wild sourced and natural herbal ingredients. The best way to use them is to put them in a steamer and then when cool enough you roll them on the skin. We suggest an old tshirt as they do stain, They have a natural anti inflammatory effect that lasts for quite a while. $7.50 each

We sell from single units to bulk orders. Inquiries at lannalavender @gmail.com or 250-442-1411

Pick up only at our farm location in Grand Forks.. Cash or e-Transfer.

Took us a bit to finish the last bed and clean up a bit.

All we have to do now is sit around and watch the lavender grow.

We put gravel around the individual plants and then put Cedar bark mulch between them all. Managed to get this all done and some cleanup before it rained.

It was so hot the other day that we couldn’t work outside. So I made this mini Buddhist Temple for the field in front of the bench. We haven’t decided what buddha we will put in it yet, but we are working on it.

At the front of the bed we have a nursery area where we are trying to save some of our frost damaged plants. We also grow lilac bushes and other plants to use around the yard and if we have excess we sell them.

So now all we have to do is sit and watch the lavender grow and in late July or early August we will have a couple of farm days where you will be able to come have a look at the field and buy some fresh lavender or our Wellness Balm. Have a good spring and summer.

We had planned Phase 2 for last year but with Covid 19 playing such a big part we decided to put it off a year.

Well now we are done and we have phase 2 finally planted.

We decided to install a seating area, as well, in the middle of the new field. This way people who come to the farm will be able to sit and enjoy the fragrance of the lavender.

Last year our winter was mild and we had almost no snowpack on the ground. This caused a problem with cold weather and frost damage to our existing crop. We had to prune back some plants drastically and had to replace 4 that were damaged beyond hope.

We have found the damaged plants are coming back a lot quicker than we expected will probably not have much lasting damage.

Base:- Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Pharmaceutical Grade Bees Wax.

Other ingredients, Camphor, Menthol, Lavender Oil, Clove Leaf Oil, Peppermint Oil, Eucalyptus Oil and Cinnamon Leaf Oil.

It’s December already. How time has flown by this year. We have a skiff of snow on the ground and our Lavender Field is ready for the winter. So maybe it’s time for a bit of an update.

We will double the size of our fields this spring. We had everything ready by the end of the summer but didn’t want to plant young plants out before they had a chance to get some size on them. In the spring we’ll get to that.

Our first year of production went well we had a larger yield than we had anticipated and ran out of drying space having filled up both our entry in the house, smelled nice, and our garage. We had a lot of dry lavender this year. Our fresh lavender sales were decent considering we only sold direct and locally.

We have also started to produce our own Wellness Balm. See the blog post about that. We are selling it along with our fresh dry Lavender Sachets. You can contact us through our facebook page at.

https://www.facebook.com/Lanna-Lavender-Farm-2247888325462213

Our other big need was to buy an Essential Oil Distiller. There are hundreds of different ones to chose from from small to huge and from relatively cheap to incredibly expensive. We opted for a small to medium size one just below the mid price range. It will allow us to do about 30 to 40 bundles at a time. 3 to 4 plants. This will give us 2 products. Essential Oil for our Balm and Hydrosol. Hydrosol is a byproduct of distilling and is a lavender sented water that can be used as a body spray or as a natural room spritz etc. We will market Hydrosol in 100ml spray bottles next year.

That’s about all for now so we are wishing everyone a Good, Happy and Safe Holiday Season

During the Covid shutdowns and social distancing we decided to work on a couple of lavender based products. One of them is our Wellness Balm it’s a therapeutic feel good relaxation rub that is designed to relax you and make you feel better. It surprisingly works fairly well on sore muscles.

That brings us to our other rub, still in development, Max, This is like our Wellness Balm but sort of on steroids. It’s a lot stronger, more potent and has that athletic rub feel and smell. Max is not available yet as it is still in testing and development.

Both products are based on our own carrier of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Pharmaceutical Grade Bees Wax. To that we add the other ingredients, Camphor, Menthol, Lavender Oil, Clove Leaf Oil, Peppermint Oil, Eucalyptus Oil and Cinnamon Leaf Oil.

Our ingredients, other than Olive Oil and Bees wax are all sourced from a Canadian Essential Oil Company that guarantees the quality by testing all thier products. For us that means we can have complete control of our quality as well as having access to tested Essential oils from around the world.

Our Olive Oil is from Italy and our Bees Wax is from a small producer in Alberta who runs it through filters that take out all pollen and other impurities.

We have this product and some Fresh lavender Sachets from our Farm Available on Facebook for local sales only and you can also see our Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/Lanna-Lavender-Farm-2247888325462213/

Lavender Tea Bread:

Lavender Tea Bread Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk

2 Tbsp. dried lavender flowers, finely chopped, or 3 Tbsp. fresh chopped flowers

2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

6 Tbsp. butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes.
icing is – confection sugar and either water or milk

It was a very wet spring and lavender normally doesn’t like wet but we have sandy well drained soil and ours loved it.

Then it got hot really hot. 96 Plus (36C) Hot with a little wind and the Lavender field loved it as well. For our first harvest year we felt we were doing a lot better than expected. Next year it should be in full production and yield up from 450 to 500 bunches.

We plan on doubling the field size next spring.

We’ve harvested almost 3/4 of the field now and we’ve had a hard time finding space to hang the lavender bunches to dry. Our entry way is full but as much as we like lavender it’s a bit overpowering at times.

With a full entry way we converted a large portion of our garage into a drying shed. 350 bunches takes up a huge amount of space.

Our first bunches of dried lavender from our entry way netted us almost a kilo of flowers. Doesn’t sound like much until you see it

For next year we have to do something a bit different to utilize the drying space more efficiently.

Now it’s on to our production of other lavender related products but that’s for another blog post.