Lovely, Luscious Lavender!

Yesterday I went to the Lavender Festival at 123 Farms in Beaumont with my dearest friend Carol and her husband Jim. This is one of the largest organic lavender farms in the U.S. It was a little chilly and overcast, but we really enjoyed the day. Carol bought some lavender essential oil (which smelled heavenly) and some culinary lavender. I also purchased the culinary lavender and am excited to start cooking and baking with it. They were also selling lavender lemonade which was delicious, bouquets of lavender, lavender plants, a lavender cooking book... you get the idea!

Carol and I took a "class" where we made a lavender wand. The smell was heavenly as we wove the ribbon to make the wand. The ladies who were teaching the class came all the way from England. They were commenting on how our weather was like that back in England and that they were told California was always sunny and warm! I told them of our "June Gloom" and that I was actually enjoying the cooler weather, as I knew what was in store for us (hot weather and soon).

We caught the very end of a talk where a couple was demonstrating how lavender is distilled. I can't remember the the exact numbers, but it was an incredible amount of lavender that is required to make a fairly small amount of essential oil. "Lavender water" is also yielded from this process, which is used for room sprays, etc. (the water-based product of the distillation process). It was quite interesting.

I have some more pictures of the lavender fields that I will share this week. It was a really lovely day.