I thought I knew all there was to know about lavender…it’s purple, it’s supposed to help you sleep and the fake stuff smells really really bad. Oh, and you can cook with it. Well, then I went to the U-Pick festival at the Evening Light Lavender Farm in Deer Park WA and learned a few other things.
Yes, it’s purple, but it’s also white and pink and other shades of , well..lavender…mind blown right? White lavender..kinda like purple oranges…just doesn’t make sense. Yet it’s true, and the white ones are culinary. Say what? Culinary, because not all lavender can be used for cooking…some is just to smell good or look pretty in your bouquet. And here I thought, we’d go pick some lavender and come home and make shortbread. That did not happen because the kind we were picking was not for cooking. But, I did buy two of the culinary plants. If I can keep them alive I should be able to cook with them next year.
Also, lavender plants grow in mounds with hundreds ( no, I didn’t count, seemed like hundreds though) of stems coming off the mound and ending in the flowers. The stems are very thin and you have to cut many many stems to make a bouquet.
Artificial lavender scent can be so strong it gives me a headache, but the fresh plants are surprisingly mild. They even smell just a little bit like rosemary. We are drying the lavender we picked to make into sachets…a little something to go under the pillow for a restful night.
You don’t have to wait for a festival to visit the farm, you can just go to look at the beautiful landscape and visit the store where you can find everything lavender….from essential oils to flavored salts and sugars and everything in between. Check out their website Eveninglightlavender.com. If you aren’t by Deer Park WA, look around for a local farm. Maybe you won’t find lavender but there could be something else out there just as wonderful…happy hunting!