Andrew Acomb

Yesterday Jennifer and I went to the annual Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington. This year we went to 5 of the 8 farms participating in the event. Out of all the farms, I had the most fun at the Olympic Lavender Farm and the Purple Haze Lavender Farm.

The Purple Haze Lavender Farm is probably my favorite. This place is just HUGE! They serve alcohol, have tons of vendors, and have live music that echoes through the fields.

You can’t leave the Purple Haze Lavender Farm without trying some of their lavender ice creams. My favorite flavor is the “lavender lemon custard”. Just the right amount of lavender. Tasty!

The Olympic Lavender Farm may be smaller but they had some really neat vendors. Jennifer and I learned all about guard llamas and how to distill oil from the lavender flowers.

While at the farm, I met a guy named Sam who builds some awesome potting sheds. Jennifer and I have been looking at sheds for awhile, but haven’t found any as nice as his. Check out his website called Sam’s Workshop to see some of his work.

Also at the Olympic Lavender Farm, there was a booth that was selling lavender honey. Their honey came from the beehives that we walked by on the way in. This honey was actual lavender honey. Some manufacturers will take regular honey and then add lavender oil to it and call it lavender honey. Not these guys! Their bees visit the lavender plants right there on the farm.

Another thing I found interesting was these spinning wheels that are used for making yarn. I saw them at a couple different farms. They are wooden, handmade and human powered by means of two foot pedals. The contraption folds up and even has a little handle on top making it easy to carry.

The Olympic Lavender Farm in Sequim, Washington had an operational distillation plant set up for everyone to check out. There was a very friendly guy standing by to explain how the whole thing works. Pretty neat.

The sign in the photo above was actually from the Purple Haze Lavender Farm. Their distillation plant was HUGE! You can probably figure that out from what the sign says.

Yesterday, Jennifer and I went back to Graysmarsh Farm in Sequim, Washington with our new friend Beth. We started off in the raspberry field. The raspberries were just about over for the season, but we were still able to pick just over five pounds.

Then we split up. Jennifer went for the blueberries with Beth and I headed for the loganberries. I have never picked loganberries before so I had to ask an older woman in the field for some advice. She gave me a quick tutorial on the varying levels of loganberry ripeness and how to properly pick them. You have to be careful when picking because the berries were so juicy they sometimes explode between your fingers. I ended up with five pounds of loganberries and Jennifer picked about five pounds of blueberries.

When we got home, I immediately started making a loganberry sauce. I can’t reveal all my secrets, but its pretty simple. Just loganberries, a little bit of lemon juice to bring out the tartness of the berry, and a minimal amount of sugar. Perfect on vanilla ice cream!

Yesterday, Jennifer and I went to the Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington with her cousin Mellisa and our niece Adele. It’s the largest Lavender Festival in North America lasting for three days. “Sequim is located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and the world famous Olympic National Park. The Sequim-Dungeness Valley has an ideal microclimate for growing lavender. With less than 20 inches of rain per year, the area is similar to the Provence region of France where this amazing herb is native. Because of the unique conditions and dedicated farmers, Sequim lavender has received national recognition for its superior quality.”

We found some great parking just a block away from the street fair. We parked in the parking lot of an old church that was bought by a non-profit community theatre organization called Olympic Theatre Arts. The group is renovating the church and building an addition turning it into a wonderful theatre. The entire project is being funded through donations. Our money we paid for parking went towards their building fund.

We walked down to the street fair. I really didn’t expect to see so many vendors. I would say there were close to 100 booths and stands lining either side of the street. I saw a wide variety of products all containing lavender. I stopped off at the Sequim Valley Products booth and tried some of their raspberry lavender syrup. It was really tasty. Just the right amount of lavender to compliment the raspberry flavor. I ended up buying a bottle. There were may other types of vendors selling nearly every type of craft. I also stopped at the Aldrich Farms stand and tried some of their raspberry lavender sauce. Very delicious. I bet it would be great on some toast. I bought a couple of bottles one for myself and the others as gifts.

When you first arrive, you pay $15 and receive a button. This gets you into any of the eight farms participating in the festival. This also paid for bus rides. There were multiple buses leaving from the street fair headed for the different farms. Pretty cool service, especially since there was alcohol available at the festival. Although the buses were very convenient, we ended up driving.

We decided to go to the Purple Haze Lavender Farm on a recommendation from one of the girls working at a coffee stand. It is a 10 acre certified organic farm. Their fields contain over 15,000 plants of more than 50 varieties. It was no more than a five minute drive from the street fair. When I got out of the car I could hear music. As I got closer to the main area of the farm, I could see a musician on a stage playing a violin. The music echoed through the beautiful fields of lavender. It created a wonderful atmosphere as we explored the farm. I later found out that the musician was Geoffery Castle. I enjoyed the music so much I ended up buying his CD titled Mist on the Mountain before we left. Click on the title to visit his website and listen to excerpts of some of the tracks from the CD.

I read in a newspaper flyer that the Purple Haze Farm sold a variety of lavender flavored ice cream so I was on the look out. With a nose for ice cream that could rival that of Chunk from the Goonies, I located the ice cream stand. I found out that the white chocolate lavender ice cream was most their popular. So I got a dish with one scoop of that and one scoop of the lavender lemon custard. You might think it would taste really weird, but each flavor had just the right amount of lavender. Really delicious!

We wandered around the farm a bit more. There were so many different types of lavender I have never seen before. One of my favorites was the white lavender. It actually has just a bit of pink in the flowers. This particular variety was called Mellisa. Strange coincidence since Jennifer’s cousin who came with us is named Melissa. Before leaving the farm, I also bought one of these plants for only $6.

We continued exploring the farm. There were stands set up in one area of the farm. Here some people were painting faces for a donation to their charity. Since Adele was being so good, she got her face painted.

We only made it to one of the many farms in the area, so Jennifer and I plan to go back soon to explore another one.