4x4 Required

As forecasted the rain began yesterday.

And continued.

It may sound a bit strange (but if you know me you're used to me being strange - yes?) but I absolutely love heavy rains.  Yes they make for a mess and can be dangerous.  I love the deafening sounds of heavy rain.  I love the roaring of an overflowing creek.  I even love the feeling of isolation.

Yesterday evening Chris checked the rain gauge between our house and the red barn - it held three and a half inches of water.  This morning I checked it again - another two and a half inches had fallen.  After coffee and a bagel we put on wellies, jackets, and hats and walked down to the lower pasture where the creek was over flowing.  It is at least twice as wide now and the large boulders that lined the crossing are no longer visible.

Still curious - we walked down the lane to the dirt road and further to the blacktop where there is a low-water bridge about a mile away.  Actually it isn't as bad as expected but still overflowing with water.  Last year they cleaned the "whistles" or pipes that run beneath the cement and allow water to pass under the bridge.  Because Clear Creek is lined with gravel the whistles can easily be clogged when heavy rains erode the floor and banks of the creek.

If necessary we could possibly cross in our truck which has 4x4 or maybe use the big tractor to cross (which poses the question of what to do then?).  It's not necessary as far as I'm concerned.  I enjoy a little isolation.

For an update on knitting - while going to and from, and staying in, Memphis last week I finished four of the five repeats of Chart A on the Icarus Shawl in llama yarn.  It's going to be great!

Chris and I went to the Tulsa State Fair to see the knitting displays.  I won a blue ribbon for the Blue Silk Aeolian.  Sorry no photos - but we'll take some nice ones when I get it back home next week.

On the way to Memphis I was knitting away when Chris pulled over the van.

"Get out" he said.

"What? Why?" I asked.

"Just get out."

So - being the sort of trusting type I hopped out.  He didn't appear angry so I only worried a mild amount that I was being deposited on the side of a highway for knitting and not carrying my side of the conversation.

I love this guy!  He'd found a sign for me!

cross posted on lostcityknits.blogspot.com

Heading South

Clear Creek Lavender is once again headed south to Memphis and the Pink Palace Festival.

Earlier this evening I reread a blog post from my personal blog written while we were in Memphis last year.  While I haven't practiced or perfected my southern drawl in the past year I am delighted to be going back to Memphis where being polite is natural and even the barbs are sugar-coated.

I asked Christopher tonight at dinner where we'd had the great ribs and since his memory for names is much better than mine he immediately said "Corky's".

MMmmm Corky's dry rub bar-b-que!

If you too are attending the Pink Palace Festival, be sure to stop by and say hello!

Vodka tonic anyone?

Fall Festival kick off at Winfield!

Autumn is in the air here on the farm. The past week has been foggy, rainy, and mild in temperature. The second round of coreopsis is blooming as is the Munstead. Combine the changes in weather with the flurry of activity in the studio and surely you will know it's time for the Fall Season to begin!

First show up is the Walnut Valley Festival or as everyone refers to it "Winfield". Winfield is a festival like none other we attend. First - there's the camping. Land Rush was on September 10th but people began lining up for the land rush on August 20th. Yes - really! We know people who have been attending Winfield for twenty plus years, each year camping with the same crowd of twenty-thirty-forty families under a huge lighted peace sign.  There'll be jamming and laughing into the wee hours.

Then there's the music - six official stages, plus a few more will give any attendee a chance to see and hear the music they enjoy. Small groups or duos traveling and singing on tour, big names that you recognize and of course the contests for flatpicking, dulcimer, fiddle and a few more. The next rising star may be competing. Heck Allison Krauss won in 1984!

And of course, there's the tie-dye. I've never seen more tie-dye in one place than Winfield, Kansas in September! It's crazy good! There are oodles of tie-dye vendors, along with the traditional crafts of jewelry, pottery, and you guessed it - lavender soap and sundries! You'll find us in the pavilion. Or most probably you'll find one of us in the pavilion and the other in the crowds enjoying some of the fantastic music Winfield has to offer this year. Come and say hello!

It's what's for lunch!

I love when the Armenian cucumbers show up at the farmers market. For a few short weeks each summer we have Chilled Cucumber Lavender Soup for lunch. It's the perfect cool lunch on a hot day and it's easily made ahead - even for several days worth.

You can click on the sidebar for more recipes using our culinary lavender products!

Chilled Cucumber Soup with Lavender

1 Armenian Cucumber, cubed
½ cup Plain Yogurt (unflavored)
1 + Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
½ Tablespoon Clear Creek Lavender Salt

Cube cucumber and put in blender with olive oil and yogurt. Blend until smooth, add lavender salt and pulse briefly. Pour into small bowls and chill several hours. Just before dining swirl a teaspoon of olive oil or yogurt in the center of each serving.

Woody Fest weekend!

While the MTV generation was zoned out on what was happening in LA yesterday, I was thinking about good music – music with integrity.

One of our favorite Oklahoma summer events happens this weekend. Woody Fest!
Folkies and music lovers in general from across the country descend on the little town of Okemah, Oklahoma to celebrate the life and music of Woody Guthrie on the weekend near his birthday. Woody wrote and sang songs of the working-man, the common folk.

I’m not going to go into the tragic details of Woody’s final battle with disease. You can get that elsewhere online or in books. You can read Woody’s words, you can sing the songs and feel a little camaraderie with your fellow humans and the plight of the average Joe.

Each year there are favorite performers that we look forward to seeing again. And as always we anticipate the joy of finding a new “favorite” to add to the list. Such acts as Monica Taylor, Barton & Sweeny, John Fullbright, The Red Dirt Rangers, The Burns Sisters, Randy Crouch, Buffalo Fitz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, and Don Conoscenti just to name a few. (Don’t expect any of these people to wear a sequin glove or do the moonwalk.) For links to the performers check the WoodyFest site on the 2009 Entertainers Page.

And it’s not just the performers we look forward to seeing. It’s the people. I’m horrible at names, faces I’m pretty good at though, and the first glimpse of some of those faces brings joy to my spirit. The young hippie couple from Krebs, she is from the Lovera family and they have a new baby that we’ll see for the first time. Mary Ann and her sister from back East, Sam from Tulsa who we’ve watched grow into his teens, the fellow vendors like Dana, Diane, Charley and Chance. The Sisters of the Purple Veil will no doubt be there too.

I think we've even figured out how to keep the shea butter fresh and will be bringing that along this year. So if you're planning on coming to Woody Fest - come say hello!

This is going to be a great weekend!!!

crossposted on lostcityknits.blogspot.com

Color me happy!

Early July means crazy-making in the studio. Soap takes six weeks to cure, so I'm preparing for the fall shows. The bars I cut this morning are just so scrumptious that I had to show them off a little. The green might lighten up a little as it cures. Although I hope not much. This color without synthetics - only natural beauty - herbs and plants.

Here are Lavender Chamomile and Lavender Lemongrass...

Midmorning break from soapmaking...

The Soap Box

It’s summer and it’s really hot in Oklahoma. The triple digits and high humidity busted our schedule a few weeks early this year. Usually it’s around the first of July before we begin to melt while working out in the field, but not this year.

Summer is a tough time to sell one of our most loved products, the Lavender Shea Butter. I purposefully do not put a huge amount of beeswax in our shea tins, I know that creamy silkiness is why we (our customers and ourselves) love it. When the temps hit 90 degrees plus – the good stuff melts. That’s just the way it is. If you have a tin – don’t leave it in your car, or in your purse for that matter. Many of us ladies have had that nasty experience of leaving a tube of lipstick in the bottom of our purse on a hot summer day, reached in and drew our hand out coated with red/pink/peach goo. Not so pretty. You can put your shea in the refrigerator to re-solidify it if needed.

In less than two weeks we’ll be missing from the CSFM as we make our annual trek to Woody Fest. It’s a fun-filled free concert weekend of folk music honoring the great Woody Guthrie in his hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. If you’re one of our regular Woody Fest friends, or if you’re new to Woody Fest, please be sure to stop by the booth while you’re enjoying the Pastures of Plenty and the great music. If it’s hot again, and it’s sure to be, we’ll be handing out those Iced Lavender Towels that help keep us refreshed and smelling pretty.

Because of the heat we won’t be taking Lavender Shea Butter to Woody Fest, but we will be bringing something new – our Soap Sampler Gift Box! This winter Chris and I thought we’d try a little something new – little being the appropriate word. Our regular soap weighs about five ounces – it’s a hefty bath bar, we love it and hope you do too. Chris made a few new additional soap molds for me and I’ve created a smaller bar – the Square Deal Soap – just for fun. After a little searching we also found the perfect size box to hold six Square Deals. It’s a great way to sample our different bars of soap. Ever wondered if you’d like the Lavender Cedar bar? Always bought just the Lavender Bud bar? Need a gift for yourself or a friend? Now you can have a small box of five our favorites (two Lavender Buds are included – because who doesn’t love that bar?) I’ve also whipped up a new blend of soap – Lavender Lemongrass. It’s quite yummy and can only be found in the Soap Sampler this summer. (I hope to make it in the large size for the fall shows.)

Here’s a peek at the Soap Sampler Gift Box – the price is good – six bars of handcrafted soap featuring our organic lavender buds for only $16. How can you beat that?


Oh and be sure to look for Clear Creek Lavender as vendors in the Oklahoma Food Coop!

Bohemia

At a fairly posh event recently, where funky little Clear Creek Lavender was a bit out of place, I was reminded of a Dorothy Parker poem as I sat quietly by myself watching brand conscious consumers check each other out to make sure they were wearing the right brands themselves.

"Bohemia" by Dorothy Parker

Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

Second Time Around

Chris and I have moved into our new house on the farm and we're loving it! It's great to finally have everything we own in one place. The backpacks we used weekly for the past how-ever-many years have been put into closets to be used only for "real" travel now.

The new house has a revolving door apparently. It’s funny that we’ve had more visitors in the month that we’ve lived in the new place than any month we lived in Tulsa. First Hillarey and Lance visited for my birthday. We had a great time and I think the kids love the new place as much as we do. Then my sister brought my parents out for a look-see. My mom kept ooohing and ahhing and telling us how much she liked it. It was a family fandango for a while there.

Then we invited our friends Emily and Mike to visit so I could make up for missing Mike’s birthday party. They had seen the house during several of the building stages and were eager to see the finished project.

Chris received an email shortly thereafter from a visitor we didn’t expect or know. Several years ago while bicycling on our tandem we joined a group called Warm Showers, which provides you with a list of names and phone numbers of people who would host touring cyclists in their home for a night – providing a meal and you guessed it – a warm shower. Our first Warm Shower guest was coming through Oklahoma sometime between Saturday and Monday. Emails zipped back and forth and Chris and I got excited about David’s visit.

David Byrne is on his second world bicycle tour. The first was in 1975 shortly after finishing high school. David traveled two and a half years crossing all of the latitudinal lines and visiting 29 countries.

Thirty-four years later David has decided it’s time to undertake another big trip -- he’s recycling the world. This time around he plans to cross all of the longitudinal lines. There are only two points where David’s path will cross the original trek -- his hometown in Minnesota and his birthplace in France where his parents were stationed after WWII.

As it happens Emily and Mike were scheduled to visit the same evening that David was scheduled to arrive. Since Mike and Emily have traveled many of the countries that David has been or will be on this trip we thought it would work out great.

David arrived first and settled into the old farmhouse. A bit later he and Chris were discussing travel options between Oklahoma and Houston, Texas that would provide a shoulder to ride safely out of traffic, offer camping possibilities, and some scenic enjoyment when Emily and Mike arrived.

After a quick tour of the house we all joined around the table and enjoyed a simple meal of quiche, kale, and stuffed mushrooms, with Tiramisu for dessert. Talk flowed freely of travel, movies and the personal histories and stories that make pleasant conversation a memorable experience.

The next morning after breakfast Chris took David next door to see the monastery before David climbed back on the recumbent bike for the day’s journey to Robber’s Cave. Below are a few photos I took of David and his gear. You’ll notice there isn’t much in the way of gear. David is traveling light – really light. One pannier is for clothing the other holds his sleeping bag and hammock, along with a few essentials. There’s one small daypack slung across the bar and secured to the pannier. A small bike bag rests under his seat and a crumpled plastic soda bottle holds and protects extra tire tubes and parts.

The gear is impressive. Or should I say the lack of paraphernalia? A former boss of mine, John, used to tell us how he longed to be able to pack everything he owned into one suitcase. While we just finished building a new house and I continue to buy more yarn than I need, I understand this desire. Mobility is so much simpler when you live lean. A few possessions are easy to pack and go when the urge to travel presses upon you.

David is a retired UPS driver and his wife Julie, is a teacher and also a bicycling enthusiast. Julie, who is taking a two-year sabbatical, will be joining David in Columbia for the rest of the tour.

Yesterday Chris and I went back to work with errands and tasks usual to our life. But for me, and Chris too I think, my mind keeps wandering about skinny spinning wheels and the feel of the road a few inches beneath our pedals. Maybe we’ll tackle the west coast from Seattle to San Francisco on the tandem next….

To quote Chris, “David is taking the trip of a lifetime, for a second time!”









(cross posted from lostcityknits.blogspot.com )

War Eagle

Thanks you to everyone at War Eagle in northwestern Arkansas for keeping us busy for four beautiful fall days. Next year we want to have a camera on hand and take photos of some of your group costumes.

Memphis Pink Palace debut

Denise and I are back in Oklahoma after a four day festival in Memphis, which marked our debut east of the Mississippi. Thank you for coming out and kicking up some dust! We had a good time, and will see you next year.

These Four Hands...

...plus some help from good people.

Chris and I talk a lot about how and what we want our lavender business to be and how to achieve our ideas. If you visit our tent at the farmer’s market or at another event you’ll hear us use the phrase “these four hands do all the work”. We grow the plants in the field, we make the soap ourselves, we package the products, we set up the stand, we tell you what conditions your plant needs and we bag your purchase. Two people and four hands do it all. We like how small we are and hope our customers appreciate the work we put into bringing a bit of ourselves to the plants and products we offer. You won’t find our products in stores or our label in a venue where we aren’t standing behind the table.

The past two weeks we’ve been at big and busy events. It rarely happens but we called in the troops to help us out. Our past customers may have noticed new faces selling them lavender soap or helping them learn how to cook with lavender pepper. The three women who came to our aid were people close to us and we are very grateful for their assistance.

At the Sand Springs Herbal Affair my good friend Cathy covered our backs with cashiering and selling of products. Cathy is someone I instantly liked when I met her at my all-time favorite knit shop, Fringe (now closed). She’s smart, funny and tells great stories about her adventures bicycling around New Zealand or living in a cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska. I always have a good time when I’m around Cathy.

Making an appearance in both Sand Springs and Jenks was my sister, Londa. She’s the gal with the fun silver spiky hair and sparkling smile. My big sister has always played an important role in my life. If you were at our booth very long you probably heard her talking about our culinary line. Londa is an amazing cook and is completely fearless in the kitchen. We’re often trading recipes or cooking ideas. She’s also the gadget-girl in the kitchen – if there’s a new kitchen tool she’s got to try it out.

And rounding out our team was my daughter Hillarey. Most parents are biased and think their kid is wonderful, and we’re not immune to that, but she’s really pretty amazing. Smart, independent, and creative, Hillarey is often the sounding board we go to if we dealing with issues and need another opinion. She’s is a good person to have in our lives. Hillarey’s an art student and the beautiful silver jewelry that she wears, and often that I’m wearing, are her creations. I like who she is and what she stands for (and up to, sometimes!) and I’d like to think that even if I hadn’t given birth to her I’d choose her for a friend.

Now it’s back to “these four hands doing all the work”, but we want to thank the extra six hands that helped make the past two weeks a smooth success.

The long awaited sign of spring

Each year in April while weeding I begin a quiet search for the very first bud. Yesterday while working in the Munstead section of the field, I spotted the first tiny spikes of the season. It felt so good to see those little guys that I called Chris over just to show them off. It may seem a bit strange, because after all this is what lavender does every year, but I always feel a bit of panic until it happens. Every farmer and gardener probably has the same anticipation waiting on seeds to germinate or plants to flower and set fruit.

Munstead, the cultivar we use in our culinary products, blooms in May. Generally it blooms in May I should say, because last year it was very late in the season before we saw spikes - all due to the wicked April freeze of 2007. We're selling Munstead again this year during plant season. If you're interested in cooking with lavender I highly recommend this plant over the more fragrant, long-stemmed variety. Its flavor is mild and can be used sweet or savory. Our Fat Spike and Provence lavenders are beautiful and fragrant but add a slight soapy taste when used for cooking. Not what cooks usually intend - unless they've got someone who needs their mouth washed out.

Recipe Collection

A few recipes from the kitchen at Clear Creek Lavender

Lavender Rubbed Salmon

Salmon filets
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Clear Creek Lavender Salt
Purchase two salmon fillets at your local market. Finger each fillet with a bit of extra virgin olive oil and place on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil. (The skin of the fish will adhere to the foil when you remove the fillet.) Sprinkle a teaspoon of lavender salt on the fish. Sometimes I add either rosemary or coriander. Cook for ten minutes, or until the center is no longer translucent.

Lavender Roasted Potatoes

Small golden potatoes
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Clear Creek Lavender Pepper
Red Pepper flakes
Select six small golden potatoes. Finger the potatoes with extra virgin olive oil. Slice them, almost cutting completely through the potato but leaving enough attached on the bottom to allow the potato to splay open a little. Place them cut side up in a baking dish. Combine lavender pepper and red pepper flakes. Sprinkle these over the potatoes and bake until golden.

Lavender Cookies

1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup Clear Creek Lavender Sugar
2 tsp cream of tartar
2 eggs
1 cup soft butter
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
2 ¾ cups flour
Mix sugar, half of lavender sugar, butter, and eggs. Stir in cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Mix in flour. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls (one oat a time) into a bowl of remaining lavender sugar and coat. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350F until edges are golden.

Lavender Blueberry Vinaigrette

¼ cup cooking sherry splash of white wine vinegar
½ cup fresh blueberries
¼ cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons Clear Creek Lavender Sugar
Add all ingredients to blender and blend until berries are liquid. Pour into curette. Great over butterhead lettuce with sliced apples or peaches, and walnuts.

Chilled Cucumber Soup with Lavender

1 Armenian Cucumber, cubed
½ cup Plain Yogurt (unflavored)
1 + Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
½ Tablespoon Clear Creek Lavender Salt

Cube cucumber and put in blender with olive oil and yogurt. Blend until smooth, add lavender salt and pulse briefly. Pour into small bowls and chill several hours. Just before dining swirl a teaspoon of olive oil in the center of each serving.

ONEOK Shout Out

We've just come home from the first lavender event of the year and want to say a special thanks to the people from ONEOK who visited us today at the Brookside Herb Festival. Someone at ONEOK started emailing our website and blog around, and we must have developed a following from the folks at 5th and Boulder because several ONEOK people stopped by! Denise used to work at an architectural firm downtown, and I worked in the Reference Department at Central Library, and we've both gone through the cafeteria line at ONEOK many times. Thanks for your business.

Chris and Denise

Dormancy's Twilight

We're starting to get busy again after a few dark and cold months. The greenhouse is up, last year's plants that died have been removed and the ground tilled for a new start in a few weeks. We have rented a studio in Tulsa for use when we make soap, shea butter, lip balm, and everything else, giving us much more room than we'd had before.

Regarding the lost plants from last summer, which I wrote about in the previous post, lab tests from Oklahoma State confirmed Phytopthora, Rhizocotonia, and Pythium, common fungi present in most soil, that becomes active in hot, humid conditions. Phytopthera was responsible for the Irish potato blight. At least we won't have to emmigrate.

Research indicated that these fungi can be combated with another, beneficial fungus called Trichoderma, which, after applied, lives on the roots of plants and protects them against the bad guys.

We bought a liquid solution of Trichoderma in a product called Promot Plus, and although the weather was breaking and the damage done, we applied it through our backpack sprayer to all the remaining plants. This was at the end of last season and the heat had subsided, so any results we saw need to be taken with a grain of salt. The decline subsided, but because of the break in the weather it might have anyway. The real test will come next July and August when it's hot and humid again.

But the plants we sell and plant this spring will all have been dipped in the Promot Plus solution. We know a lot of lavender growers see their plants falter in the heat of summer -- "It's just died!" they'll say -- and humid conditions leading to fungus may be to blame.

We'll report on how the new plantings fare.

It's not the heat, it's the Phytophthora. Maybe.

Thousands of times we've said to customers who buy our plants, "They love the heat, but don't overwater." Yet this year, in the heat of August, we began losing plants. First our Abrialli lavenders started declining -- one or two plants would wilt, right next to healthy plants that received the same treatment. In a few days more would appear weak. Within a month, all of what had been our healthiest plants were dark and wilted. It was hot, right in the middle of August, and being Oklahoma it didn't cool off significantly at night. And it had been a wetter than average summer although the field could not be called wet at all. In September we began seeing the same trend in our field of Provence which, too, had been healthy and strong.

This is our fifth year growing lavender and we know more now than we did when we started. But in trying to figure out our problem we felt helpless. What could we have done wrong? Call it a case of choking -- the same phenomenon that lets a basketball player miss a shot he'd make any other time right when it matters most.

We needed fresh perspectives, so we called our friends Emily and Mike, nearby organic vegetable growers, who stopped by to see our field. They began asking questions.

"Did you harvest and prune the dead Abrialli?" -- Yes, we harvested them in June and pruned a few weeks later.

"Did you harvest and prune the healthy Tuscan next to the Abrialli?" -- No, the Tuscan didn't bloom this year, and we didn't bother to prune them yet.

"Is there any chance you harvested only from the Provence plants that are now dying?" -- Unlikely, but possible, and we started to see where this was leading.

Mike said, "You've done everything right. There's good drainage, the plants are spaced well and get lots of air circulation." Furthermore, we must have created favorable conditions because the plants had grown well until recently.

Emily and Mike are experienced farmers, much more than we are, and they were unsure of our situation. But their questions led us all to suspect a fungus or disease that is triggered by hot and humid conditions, and spreads, among other means, by hand tools. This would explain why plants that had been harvested and pruned were suffering, while those that hadn't been touched were fine.

To try and verify our suspicions we dug up two plants and delivered them to the Oklahoma State University Extension Office in Tulsa, and left them with Sue Grey, a great asset to local growers and a true professional. We'll have to wait for a culture to be grown off the plants to determine a specific culprit, and then decide how to treat the field. We're not a Disneyland lavender field where everything is perfect, so look here in the future for what we discover and decide to do. Early suspicion points to Phytopthora, a fungus that is widely present in Oklahoma soil and is active when temperatures reach 90 degrees with 90% humidity. We'll have to wait and see.

We're frustrated and hampered by the death in our field and want to know WHAT it is, WHY it happened and WHAT NOW. Of course, nothing is that easy, which is why the lavender business keeps our interest despite rough times. Figuring out the problems IS the point.

What interested us the most is how the very educated and experienced people we engaged in this problem were reluctant to tell us what to do. They didn't know, and they knew that they didn't know. Always be wary of those with answers.

We'll update as to the pathology findings, possible solutions and outcomes. And we'll reconsider our line about heat and watering. It's not that simple.

Edible

Briefly, the seasons overlapped. spring butterhead and summer blueberries were available in adjacent booths at the farmer’s market.

I’m an experimental cook. Not all my efforts are successful, as Chris and Hillarey can attest, but getting creative in the kitchen is fun for me. At the farm, food preparation is limited to what you grow and what we bring with us once a week as we leave the city.

As I was preparing a fast dinner after working in the field during the auspicious week when the growing season was slipping from spring to summer, I gave in to the temptation to be creative. Maybe it was the muses at play, maybe it was necessity, or maybe it was boredom with bottle dressings. And launching our new culinary line using primarily our own recipes is important to me.

Summer Solstice is upon us. Enjoying the bounty of the season’s harvest is great way to celebrate.


Lavender Blueberry Vinaigrette


¼ cup cooking sherry splash of white wine vinegar
½ cup fresh blueberries ¼ cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons Clear Creek Lavender Sugar
Add all ingredients to blender and blend until berries are liquid. Pour into curette.
Great over butterhead lettuce with sliced apples or peaches.

Almost Edible

As organic lavender farmers of the do-it-yourself variety we get to see many aspects of a business that often is missed in the larger commercial world. Both Chris and I have been working hard at hand-harvesting lavender and both fields for the last few weeks and we’re close to being finished.
Today though, it’s raining. We’re generally not fair-weather farmers but it’s a good day to catch up on inside tasks. Each January I try to estimate how many products we need on hand to get us through the first part of the season – essentially past harvest. With trusty spreadsheets color-coded and printed we start the winter chores such as making soap. All of our soaps are vegetable based and contain no synthetic ingredients. They’re also made completely by us – never farmed out to a contracted soap maker.
Soap making is like chemistry class in high school. It involves great care in mixing and measuring numerous ingredients and checking temperatures. Solid and liquid oils, essential oils for scent, our organic lavender buds, other herbs and spices and of course, sodium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide, or lye, is the ingredient that makes the soap hard, and as I overhead a chemistry student customer telling her mother – it’s what pulls the dirt away from whatever you’re washing.
Making soap also involves a bit of fun. I’ve searched around to find natural ingredients to use for colorants in our lavender soap. In the basic Lavender Bud soap I add an East Indian spice called Rattanjot to achieve a purple color. Other vegetable matter could be used too – like blueberries or indigo, but I’m not sure our customers want the lasting effect of lavender skin after showering. If it’s been a good year for Chamomile, and it generally is, we’ll have Lavender Chamomile soap. A bit of turmeric gives that soft yellow color. Another soap we enjoy is the Wicked Witch bar. It’s an avocado based soap, as opposed to olive oil, so it has a soft green color when cured. Avocado is emollient and very soothing on dry skin.
Often when I’ve got multiple batches of soap curing I’m struck by the colors of the bars that are lined up on the drying rack. They are lovely and have an almost edible appearance.
My calculations back in January were pretty accurate. We made more soap than my spreadsheet called for and I began soaping again recently to prepare for late summer and fall events. Today’s soap will be cured and ready for sale in six weeks.