Lavender Almost Lamentations

A Crop Readiness Kerfluffle

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As with almost everything in my life, the readiness of my farm's main crop coincided with a week so packed full of activities that I have officially become a lavender scented zombie. The moldering state that is my mind has been soothed by the sweet scent of the bunches of lavender that I have been cutting every morning for the last four days.

There have been parties, fundraisers, farmers markets, and potlucks galore. On the Fourth over 40 people showed up on my farm, after I marched in a parade with the Bookmobile, and I spent all afternoon and evening making pizza in the outdoor oven and being delighted by the antics of my friends and family. It was a BYOB event, which stands for Bring Your Own Bunny. I'm not joking, one of my family members brought a tote of bunnies. People were walking around carrying rabbits of various sizes and baby kitties, as I have four of them in residence.

Every Friday my husband and I have been hawking our wares at our local farmers market, he hand forges all sorts of items from hooks to hangers, and I create all sorts of culinary goodies out of our lavender, as it is the culinary kind. My lavender lemon shortbread is super popular with market attendees. That means after a Fourth of July for the ages, I got up early, cut lavender, and sold things at the farmers market all afternoon.

The next day brought more lavender harvest, it was my Saturday to run the library, and then I headed to Bayview, Idaho to join up with my family at an event known as Bayview Daze. There is a street fair and fireworks involved in this event, and my husband took some of shooting sports kids to this event, set up a table, and sold raffle tickets all day for a Henry Golden Boy lever action rifle that was donated to his 4H kids by Midway USA. The kids sold a TON of tickets, I got to spend the evening being amused at the antics of inebriated adults of all ages, and then we all enjoyed a spectacular fireworks show blasted off over Lake Pend Oreille. Bayview Daze is just cool.

Sunday brought yet more lavender harvest, and a potluck with old friends, and today brought again, yet more lavender harvest. There seems to be a recurring theme. Strange that. The good news is, I am over halfway done with it! This year's crop is amazing! We have had way more moisture than normal, so my plants are massively full with buds. The thing with lavender is if you are harvesting the flowers in the bud stage, you need to cut them before 10 in the morning, as the oil dissipates off of the blooms during the heat of the day.

There are much worse jobs though, if I am to be quite honest. It's pretty peaceful to wander out to the lavender field at dawn and snip off fragrant stems of lavender. Not much is going on, just a bit of cackling from the family of ravens who have taken up residence in one of our bull pine trees. Most mornings I can sneak out without drawing the attention of our neighbor's 6 huskies. If they do happen to see me I get to listen to a brain cobweb clearing pack of howling beasts. It's cute. Most of the time I truly enjoy lavender harvest, it just seems that this year I am getting my flintlocks kicked a bit. Perhaps it's time to inhale a bit of the stress soothing lavender and reevaluate just how I got myself into this crazy mess of too much to do all the time, but to be quite honest, that would probably take too much effort.

And as almost always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's quite fragrant and completely unrepentant about it iPhone.