Winter 2014 Ice Storm

It was two weeks ago today that we woke up to more clean-up work than we have had in years! A winter 2014 ice storm that left us without power for days, a totaled farm truck and LOADS of downed trees!

This winter has been different than most we have experienced on the farm. It was colder, snowier and icier than usual. And although the lavender seems to have pulled through just fine, there are other plants (such as our 7 year old rosemary in front of the house) that appears to have gone to that big compost bin in the sky. 

As I've mentioned before, our farm is a small family run operation. There are not loads of employees who show up everyday ready to drive the farm equipment around and do whatever necessary to raise, harvest and use our lavender to make our products. It's just me and one part time assistant. It's just one farm truck.

So, when we walked outside to assess the storm damage, I must admit that I was devastated. Our only farm truck was completely totaled.

There are whole trees and tree limbs down everywhere...

 I mean EVERYWHERE!

It's obviously just "life" and there are more people in the world that have things MUCH harder than having to clean up a bunch of dead trees or find a new work truck. But, it will occupy my time for a few more weeks...time that I would much rather spend on lavender projects. 

So, if you need me, I'll be outside with the chain saw. Anyone need any firewood?

We LOVE our Farm Friends

Although the lavender is sleeping right now, on the farm we are currently very busy wrapping up 2013. Finalizing year end business is one of those necessary evils before we can thoroughly dig in and plan all of our exciting 2014 activities.

One way we have made this activity bearable this year is by reflecting on our wonderful customers...you make all of the hard work worth while! One such individual that we have thought of many times lately is Sue Brown. She is not only a loyal customer but also a giving and kind friend! Not only did she make the effort to come to almost all our farm activities last year but she donated her time and energy to assist our farm when ever possible...and even often came bearing lovely lavender gifts!

Our 2013 Holiday Celebration was no exception. Fortunately, Sue was able visit us that day (with her equally wonderful daughter in tow) and had managed to find the time to "create" crochet lavender as a special gift.

  

I must say, we LOVED the handmade lavender and would like to send Sue a special "online" thank you for EVERYTHING she does for us and our small family owned farm!

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you may have noticed that Sue Brown's daughter, Katie (both pictured above), took all of our wonderful 2013 Holiday Celebration pictures. Such a wonderful family! We are forever grateful for you... 

It's a Lavender Kind of Holiday

Planning for the " Lavender Holiday Celebration" is in FULL swing on the farm...only 36 more days to go!

If you are interested in visiting us on the farm this year, please mark your calendars for December 14th between the hours of 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Plan on coming early as we are offering some exciting new limited edition items PLUS fan favorites from previous years!  

Holiday Celebration on the Farm
December 14th, 2013
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

We have been taking our holiday inspiration from many sources this year...especially Pinterest! Are you surprised? It is one of our favorite online tools! Below are a few gorgeous yet easy Lavender Holiday ideas to inspire you as well...

Lavender filled ornaments

Lavender colored Ornaments

Tins filled with lavender cookies

Do you feel the warm fire and smell the lavender hot chocolate in the air?

We promise to keep planning if you promise to come visit...

A Summer with Too Much Rain- UPDATE

Dale and I were in the field yesterday working and we were actually very encouraged! Some of the older plants did not fare well, and perhaps they were on their way out anyway -- and the very wet, cool summer gave them that nudge on out!!! 

We are glad that the summer rains stopped when they did. Happily, the one and two year old plants are still growing strong. The Hidcote and Royal Velvet is doing great and some of those plants are actually in bloom right now!

Our hearts are full of lavender dreams for our Harvest Celebration next June 2014!!

A Summer with Too Much Rain...

If you live in North Carolina like we do, then you know what an usual summer we have had this year. We are typically faced with drought like conditions and loads of heat & humidity. This year, it has been cooler and wet. I mean VERY, VERY wet.

We, as farmers in North Carolina, know how to deal with a hot summer and fortunately, an established lavender plant really likes a NC summer too. But, this year has been a challenge. 

I've mentioned to several customers that I truly wish we could just pick the entire field of lavender up and let it drain out...thoroughly. But then reality sets back in and I know we have to deal with the situation. And that situation is that plant loss is a fact of life...even plants that we have had and loved for several years. Fortunately, we only lost a few plants and obviously, it will not affect our product offerings, etc. for next year. But, it is definitely more then the usual yearly attrition due to plant age. It is more then we are use to! 

But, what can we do? Well, if you have "lavender survivors", keep the plants well weeded. When any plant has to compete with weeds, it tends to take a toll on the overall health of the plant. It is also fine to could go ahead and trim the dead wood and clean away the spent, gray foliage. Then amend with lime, bone meal, compost (our success planting mix). 

If you have lost one (or more) of your lavender plants this year, the best we can suggest is to dust yourself off and know that it's just part of a gardeners life! We have decided to look at our plant loss situation as an opportunity to redesign the field some. We will fill in with some of our old reliable favorites but we will also try out a few different varieties as well, like the pretty pink Melissa variety.

Fortunately for our beloved customers, we have several varieties of plants READY to ship via our Etsy shop (including the Melissa variety)...just in time for fall planting! 

Check our what we have to offer-
 http://www.etsy.com/shop/sunshinelavenderfarm?section_id=13306598

HAPPY FALL PLANTING!!

Never Any Rest...

There's never any rest for a true farmer...from working in currently very muddy fields, to shipping our products all over the US, to carefully preparing new handmade goodies for the Laze Days Arts & Crafts Festival inventory which will take place this Saturday 8/24.

Seeing you soon is the reward for many long days and work filled weekends!

~You Are Invited~

10th Annual
Lavender Harvest Celebration
on the Farm | June 1 & 2

One of two opportunities to visit the farm! Plans are in the works as we look forward to sharing the farm with you again. Saturday, the farm will be open from 9 am - 5 pm 

and Sunday from 10 am - 4 pm.

(There is no entry fee to attend. This is an invitation-only event, not one that is offered to the public or on our web site. Since you are on the enews list, YOU ARE INVITED! 

This is THE year to visit!)

This is the official invitation please RSVP!!

  Join us for our 10th annual
Lavender Harvest Celebration

Saturday, June 1 • 9 am - 5 pm
Sunday, June 2 • 10 am - 4 pm

Experience the lavender farm ~ the first of its kind in Orange County, NC.

Take a farm tour. Learn about this fragrant, soothing herb and how to care
for it in your garden or a container. Visit our kitchen garden and learn how to feed a family fresh vegetables from a small space. Stroll the gardens featuring an edible landscape.

Check out the pollinators, like our honey bees and learn how to bring them back. 

Get some lavender-y honey, while it lasts.

Learn how easy it is to care for a small flock of hens for
fresh eggs in the Poultry Palace.

Try something tasty with lavender. Sip Lavender Lemonade.

Watch artists paint waves of lavender and garden landscapes. Create a fresh lavender craft. In our barn, learn about the lavender process and stuff your own sachet and make a grill or outdoor fire bundle to take home. Fresh Lavender or Barn Crafts: $5 each

Find a spot on the farm to spread your quilt or set up your camp chair to enjoy fresh breakfast munchies, lunch or a snack from The Picnic Basket. New this year, a frozen treat for those who prefer fruit to dairy! For a treat, have a cone of Chocolate or Vanilla Lavender ice cream from Orange County's own Maple View Farm. 

Beneath our Lavender Garden Shed & Porch, find lots of lavender seedlings. Shop for farm fresh hand made gifts for body, home, and weddings. Lots of lavender-y and 

farm fresh items like newly harvested honey and one-of-a-kinds too.

Most of all, come breathe in the lovely lavender and relax! Please bring your own shears for cutting, sunscreen, hat, comfortable clothing, and shoes. Picnic blankets, camp chairs, 

and stools for your comfort, and umbrellas for shade are welcome. 

No pets, please and carpooling is encouraged.  

Our Lavender Harvest Celebration is a private, by-invitation only event and not open or promoted to the public. Thank you.

Directions: The farm is located in the Schley Community of Orange County near the Schley Grange Hall and ball field. From the intersection of Hwy 70 and Churton Street (or Hwy 86 North in Hillsborough) At the light after the intersection of Hwys 86/70, turn right on to Hwy 57 N and drive 6 miles to the "Welcome to Schley" sign after the entrance to Echo Creek Riding Academy. Turn left on to Schley Road (Landmark: brick Payne's Chapel Church on the hill.) Drive 1.6 miles to Millstone (gravel, private) Road on your left just after the first entrance to Woods Loop. Our farm is 1/2 mile from Schley Road and the second drive to your left at 4104 Millstone. Look for the rainbow streamers. 

Just follow the parking signs or volunteer directions.
Please turn right when leaving to return to Schley Road.4104 Millstone Road. Hurdle Mills . NC . 27541 for navigation systems.

Sure, use the "Forward to a Friend" option at the bottom of this email to pass 

your Celebration invitation along if you cannot make it this year.

Please RSVP!

  Our goal is to share the farm and provide an experience for you that is new, pleasant, fun, and interesting. We hope to see you in June! The farm is open just a few days each year. 

Share with friends and mark your calendar!

20th annual Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival

Our FIRST face-to-face event 

of the year!!

This weekend, we will be setting up our purple tent at the 20th annual Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival located at the 310 acre Fred G. Bond Metro Park in Cary, NC. The show is April 27th from 9:00AM to 5:00PM and is a rain or shine event.  

From the official Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival website-

The festival is filled with wonderful arts and crafts, your favorite festival foods, community based civic groups handing out information on things you can get involved with, and entertainment. Children will be delighted by activities just for them in the Children’s Village and will be invited to exercise their imagination as they play in the always popular Lazy Daze Playground – the center of the village. In the Earth Day area of the festival, you can find out how to play a role in preserving our natural resources and protecting the environment. This is the perfect family event to learn more about what you can do to make every day Earth Day.

We will be offering our lovely range of lavender products PLUS many varieties of lavender plants for your garden including Provence, Hidcote, Hidcote Giant and Otto Quast to name a few.

We will also be sampling our famous lavender lemonade and a few tasty lavender treats as well.

This show is one of the best spring shows around! We hope to see you this weekend!

Raffle to win $100 Gift Certificate

Try your luck to win a 

$100 sunshine lavender farm gift certificate 

to spend at this year’s 

Lavender Harvest Celebration, June 1 & 2, 2013!

Annie is one woman who works on two farms. sunshine lavender farm and a LOCAL NONPROFIT, The North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center. It serves children, teens and adults with special physical, mental, emotional and social challenges through horse-centered programs. (Daisy, one of the therapy ponies, will join us for the Celebration again this year!)

The Riding Center is currently running a "Paint Your Pony" campaign. Annie has volunteered to sponsor Pinto, one of the hard-working therapy horses on this farm and you can help too! PLUS, you will be entered into a raffle to win a $100 gift certificate to sunshine lavender farm to be used at the June 1st & 2nd Harvest Celebration.

How to Enter the raffle?

1. FIRST click to read the horse's story- Pinto Stories
2. SECOND, to enter the raffle, please Donate $5 to Team Pinto.
3. THIRD, select sunshine lavender farm  in the “Donation Credited To” window. 

The result? You are entered to WIN a $100 gift certificate to spend at this years Lavender Harvest Celebration at sunshine lavender farm!

We can CELEBRATE making a difference together! The WINNER will be chosen in one month on April 17 (which happens to be Annie’s birthday. Shhh.) Help her celebrate with a gift of community that YOU can be a part of too! Thank you.

A little more about Pinto the therapy horse-

My name is Pinto, and I am a popular guy here at NCTRC. My full name is Pinto Bean but I like to go by Pinto for short. I am easy to spot in the pasture because of my brown and white coat and very cool black and white mane.

I absolutely love when my riders and volunteers scratch my belly where the girth goes, it just feels so good! I like the gentle riders best, as I do not like loud noises and can be a little sensitive. The good thing about my sensitivity is that I am a good listener and I respond very well to commands. I really enjoy being a therapy horse, especially when I get to sniff and touch my nose on all of the toys!

Please join in my efforts to raise $2,500 for the Paint Your Pony! Campaign. I would like to continue my work here at NCTRC and earn all my stripes and I would so appreciate your help. Thanks for your support!

2013 Show Schedule

Now that the lavender farm helpers and I have established our show schedule for 2013, we are busy making products and keeping our Etsy store stocked. The show schedule this year is a bit different from years past. Although we have enjoyed many good times and met many wonderful farm friends at the local farmers markets, we have decided to suspend our participation for now. This will give us more "much needed" time to focus on products, relationships and the business direction that we would like to see Sunshine Lavender Farm head.

Our new show schedule for 2013 is as follows:

• April 27th from 9AM-5PM: Spring Daze Arts and Crafts Festival (TENTATIVE...On the wait list for set-up)
• June 1st from 9AM-5PM and June 2nd from 10AM-4PM: Lavender Harvest Celebration at the farm
• June 19th from 10AM-3PM: Lovely Lavender Lavender Day at Pharsalia in Tyro, Virginia.
• August 24th from 9AM-5PM: Lazy Daze Arts and Crafts Festival
• December 6th from 9AM-5PM: Holiday Celebration on the farm

Yes, this means fewer opportunities to see our loyal patrons...but we promise to make those face-to-face times even more wonderful and lavender-tastic!

Until then, please remember that you can always order our products from our Etsy shop 24 hours a day, seven days a week! 

Time to Prune Lavender!

If you forgot to prune the lavender around the end of October, did you know that you can do so mid to late February? It's true! It is always nice to have a Plan B, huh?

In a nutshell, your established lavender needs a yearly buzz cut. Annual pruning encourages good foliage growth and results in a full, round, and robust bush with many years of bloom in its future. If you left the lavender stems after they bloomed back in the summer, just clip those away now that they are brown and spent. (Gather them up and toss them in your outdoor fire ring for a fresh scent...it's a great fire starter too.) Then, trim off additional foliage, leaving 1 inch all the way around, being sure not to cut too far into the woody stems. Trim away the green foliage to create a nice rounded shrub. Make sure to sweep up the trimmings for a scented mulch that will keep the deer out of your pansies, to freshen pet beds or place in bowls on the top shelf of your pantry to keep the moths out. The possibilities are endless!

If you do not prune, your lavender will sprawl, get heavy on the outside limbs causing the bush to open up. Eventually, the inner trunk will split, moisture will get in there, and the lavender in time will go to the great compost heap in the sky. So, lets GET TO WORK!

2013 Lavender Harvest Celebration Date

Many farm friends enjoy our June Lavender Harvest Celebration each and every year as a tradition ... bringing loved ones along for a weekend of relaxing fun. We hope that you will join us as well!

 

See the farm during the lavender blooming season. Take a personalized tour. Visit the Poultry Palace & Kitchen Garden.

Craft with fresh and preserved lavender. Eat locally prepared food such as our famous Chocolate or Vanilla Lavender ice cream.

See artists paint, photograph and create. Find loads of beautiful lavender plants ~ more varieties than you knew even existed! You will also find our line of hand crafted items for body, gifts, home and weddings, some very special one-of-a-kinds, and so very much more!

Saturday, June 1
9 am - 5 pm 

Sunday, June 2
10 am - 4 pm

Hope to see you then!

Sunshine Lavender Farm Etsy Shop

We have finally taken the plunge and decided to open an online shopping opportunity for the entire "lavender lovin" world! We have spent many hours creating the shop in Etsy and are VERY excited about the results so far. All items will be listed on an individual basis and the shop will be updated daily. So, the second you know of lavender item need, check out our Etsy site-

http://www.etsy.com/shop/sunshinelavenderfarm.

 We will be disabling the shopping cart on our website by the end of this week. We encourage all of our farm friends to browse our new Etsy site ASAP and please, as always, let us know what you think! We LOVE constructive criticism...it's one of the best ways to improve ourselves!

Welcome to 2013...

Welcome to 2013, our dear farm friends!

The lavender fairies and I have spent the last few weeks planning our strategy for this year. We have several new and exciting plans to share with you SOON. For now, I will say that we are focusing on making our little lavender farm your favorite place to visit and share with your friends!

 

 

We are so honored to begin another year with you!

Until 2013...

Hello Farm Friends!! Our hope is that this blog post finds you warm and snuggled up to your loved ones right now...

We have decided to do the same and will therefore be taking a few weeks off from the blog and other farm activities to enjoy our own friends and family. We promise to return in 2013 refreshed and ready to re-start our lovely lavender adventure with you again!

Until then, take care of one another and make sure to give your love freely!!

Fresh & Natural Home Deodorizer

Are you having lots of drop-in guests lately? Wouldn't it be nice if you home always smelled yummy? We recently found a nice, natural way to fragrance/deodorize your home AND add a bit of humidity during these long, dry winter months too!

Grab a small stockpot and fill it about 2/3 full of water. Add one sliced lemon, a few sprigs of rosemary, a few sprigs of dried lavender (you can add lavender buds instead) and 1-2 tsp of vanilla.



Let your mixture simmer all day long on the stove, adding water as needed. I found that you can use the same mixture for several days in a row. After that, its best to toss and start over with a new mixture.

Try it and wait for the complements on your wonderfully fragrant home!!

Thank You for Visiting the Farm!!

We at Sunshine Lavender Farm wanted to say thank you so very much to all who visited the farm this past Saturday! We could not have dreamed up a better day. Although a beautifully light snow falling though out the day would have been wonderful...maybe next year.

 

Please see below for several lovely pictures of our products display and the shopping in action. We enjoyed was lavender hot chocolate, lavender cookies, and tons of door prizes too. It was fun to chat, sip, and munch the day away with you, our farm family!

 

Maybe you were unable to visit us this past Saturday but would LOVE to still purchase our lavender lovely items as gifts or just for yourself?? There are two places that you can shop our goodies online right now.

 

First, we have listed several one-of-a-kind items on our Facebook page. Browse our photo album to see some of our one of a kind candles, pottery, pieces and lots of lavender-y products for your Holiday shopping. If you are local and would like to order just send us an email and we will give you details on how to get them. We plan to deliver this Friday to Hillsborough.

 

Second, we have listed over 100 NEW ITEMS on our web site! Just click on Shop, then click on the category listing. And if you place an order this week through Friday 12/28, we will send you a darling mini lavender sachet as our gift to you! 

• ALL NEW!! One of a Kind Pottery & Unique Clay Pieces!
• BATH & BEAUTY~Soaking Salts~Hand & Body Cream~Bar & Liquid Soap~More!
• FOR THE HOME
• IN THE KITCHEN
• RELAXATION~Candles~Essential Oil~Eye Pillows~Sachets 

 Limited supply on some items and many are one-of-a-kind, so check out the web site or our Facebook page and mark your lavender loving friends and family off of your list today!

 

Thanks again for visiting the farm. We are humbled by your enthusiasm for our lavender adventure. Your support of our small family oriented farm is greatly appreciated!