What made you start a lavender farm?

What made you start a lavender farm?
I get asked this all the time, "What made you start a lavender farm?"
Sometimes I wish I had some fancy answer that made it seem as glamorous as it truly is to be a lavender farmer. But to tell you the how, I have to tell you the why, and the who I am that leads to the answer.
My basic nature or tendency is to be a creator a researcher and designer. Coming from a small town in a lower to middle income bracket, there weren't always funds for extra things. My mother was a creator of all things, nature lover, gardener and canner. She passed that love onto me. While I raised my children I too stayed home and needed a way to be creative with my time and our resources so that I could continue to be home with our four daughters. I too gardened, canned and grew herbs and flowers. I wanted to treat my kids naturally with herbs when they had minor health ailments, but needed more information. I enrolled in a online course for a family herbalist certificate. This is where things began to become more clear. As I learned about herbs it seemed that all the answer to all the ailments seemed to be, yup...you guessed it lavender! I had a couple lavender plants at the time and began experimenting with it, drying them, making lotions, oils, soap and such.
Meanwhile after my certificate was complete, my husband got transferred to Oregon. I found there were other lavender farms in Oregon and Washington and my love for lavender had grown with my experimenting, gained knowledge and research that I acquired. So we bought a 2.5 acre farm and began removing wild blackberries that took over nearly 3/4 of the property. We ordered plants and began our plans and our adventure into lavender farming! As like most lavender farmers we entered into the adventure with very little knowledge of how to farm it. We made a few mistakes that lead to what we call our "education" in farming. 

We have now become experts in so many aspects of lavender and farming that we strive to pass that on with our consulting services and story. We continue to learn daily in our experiments with lavender the beautiful nature of this lovely plant. We look forward to inspiring others in their adventures while continuing to create our own.

If you have followed us in our adventures you will see the passion we have for culinary lavender through all of our recipes and Lavender packaged mixes. You will see many social media posts on business aspect and inspiration for business as well as consulting to help others live their dream. You will also see ways to use lavender and inspiration for using lavender in weddings. I hope through hearing/seeing my story you are inspired to live your dream, take the risk and be who you are meant to be!

Be YOU no one does it better!
Sincerely, Nicole

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Left to right: Bethany, Brittany, Dan, Nicole, Jessica and Kristen
We are growing and need a new picture....we now have 2 son 'n laws and 1 grandson!