Ah, lavender. The beautiful plant that, if you’re lucky enough to visit in a farm setting, is literally humming with bees. Julie Bielenberg, a writer and fellow Coloradoan, is partial to Colorado-grown lavender. But in her first article with Real Food Traveler, she visits several lavender farms, exploring the many wonderful uses for it. Be sure to visit the link at the end of the article to listen to a podcast with a lavender farmer who also gives you tips for growing the plant in your own yard. 

Photo courtesy Pixabay.com.

Everything’s turning up lavender, from cocktail and cookie flavor of choice to spa treatments and skin and soul remedies. The Colorado-thriving perennial has eternal usage, and limitless capabilities in the kitchen and beauty counter!

My own obsession with lavender began when I first visited the vast flowering lavender farms on Orchis Island, Washington, where humid nights and cloudy days of the Northwest seemed to be the plants’ nurture and nature. The aroma lingered on my clothes. Its oil rubbed healingly on my baby’s arms. And its consumption eased my mind for days.

“We use lavender for so many reasons! Lavender is valuable in any kind of skin preparation. It is one of the most versatile herbs,” explains Lily Morgan, creator behind Lily Farm Fresh Organics. However, it’s pleasantly edible as well.

“Drizzle some lavender-infused honey over fresh fruit and organic French vanilla ice cream. Make a pitcher of lavender and lemon balm iced tea after a day outside enjoying the garden,” suggests Laura Bergh, Proprietor, Indigo Blooms Botanicals and Lavender Farm.

Lavender flourishes where I live, in Colorado, both on the Western Slope and Eastern Plains. Bergh is founder of the Front Range Lavender Association and is ecstatic about her own farm’s growth, but also general interest in the lavender movement as well. “Each year we increase our field size and have one full acre. We keep testing new types of lavender for the Front Range, not only for beauty, but for pollination, culinary use, festivals, and lavender body care. We grow Royal Velvet, Folgate and pink flowering Melissa as our culinary lavender cultivars.”

Morgan writes in her book, Beauty, Health and Happiness, how lavender has over 10,000 documented uses, including complete opposites, for example, you use lavender soap in the morning because it is invigorating and refreshing to help you wake up and face the day. In the evening you use lavender essential oil in your bath to relax and restore.

Los Poblanos’ many products are a great way to enjoy lavender.

Unique Ways to Enjoy Lavender: Visit a Farm and Field

Clairmont Lavender Farms, Los Olivios, California

Family-owned Clairmont Farm in the Santa Ynez Valley surrounded by the Santa Ynez Mountains is dotted with three hundred year old oak trees. The driveway is lined with olive trees that were planted by the Spanish Missionaries nearly two centuries ago. The farm is entirely organic, harvested both with the traditional method of cutting each plant by hand, banding, and hanging the bundles in the barn (for sale in the shop year round) and also with a small hand held hedge clipper for the remainder of the fields to be used for oil distillation.

Los Poblanos, Albuquerque, New Mexico

My family has visited this property nearly a dozen times in the past few years—I have even brought the sweetheart cookies to the gardeners; it’s that special. The historic property is set among 25 acres of lavender fields in addition to stunning guest accommodation farm-style buildings, an Inn for meals, New Mexico’s second oldest in-ground swimming pool built in 1934, the resort’s newer saltwater pool and colorful blossoms of pomegranate, fig trees and vegetable and floral gardens tucked into every inch of dirt. Go for a meal, a soak in the pool, but really, stay the night and lounge in your tub with lavender product and the essence of the fields blowing through your window.

Pageo Lavender Farm, Turlock, California

Pageo is a working farm that grows and harvests the lavender used in their handmade products including soaps and lotions and everything to linens sprays. Pageo Farms grows two types of lavender, Grosso and Loddon Blue, for visitors to smell, taste and photograph. There is so much more, so leave a couple hours for this visit. It’s a serene setting for weddings, events, and even a picnic. The farm sells box lunches with all the goodies, including a lavender gift.

Unique Ways to Enjoy Lavender: Make Julie’s Sweetheart Cookie Recipe

I make lavender lemon shortbread cookies. I get fresh lemons from my family’s Meyer lemon trees in California and add that as the “secret sauce.”

Simply take your favorite shortbread cookie recipe, I love Martha Stewart’s classic recipe and instructions, then add a half tablespoon of dried lavender to the dough before adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. People most enjoy the combination of cinnamon, dried lavender, kosher salt, and spiced vanilla bean sugar I mix and sprinkle on top of the cookies before baking.

Julie’s lavender shortbread cookies are a way to enjoy lavender.

— Story by Julie Bielenberg. Photos (except where noted) by Chad Chisholm

Hungry for more? Listen to this informative podcast interview with a real lavender farmer. You’ll learn some surprising things about the history and growing techniques of the plant.

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