The Lavender Farmgirl
by Iris Lee Underwood
Owner, Yule Love It Lavender Farm

My romance with lavender began several years ago during research on medicinal herbs for a literary project. Good fortune led me to Seven Ponds Nature Center in Dryden, Michigan, where a clan of women called the Friends of Herbs gathers to tend the center's herb garden.
There, under the approving eye of St. Francis of Assisi, when I first knelt with the sages and listened to ancient remedies and favorite recipes, I knew I was on holy ground. Visit after visit, my thirst for knowledge was satisfied by some sort of herbal iced tea: lemon balm, mint, rose hips.
Gradually, as I weeded and harvested lavender, smelled the scent from heaven, the plant's oil anointed me, worked its way into my skin, my brain, my soul.

I became an herb lady: a believer in lavender's healing virtue. Soon, the silver-green herb from the mint family grew in my gardens. Just like my Seven Ponds tribe, lavender flowers became one of my favorite expressions of love and gratitude: a fresh posy tied with ribbon, or dried and wrapped in a vintage hanky.

My friends cherished their garden gifts. They were amazed that after three years, the lavender still possessed its fragrance. Ah, to see and know joy in such natural simplicity. Then, one sunny day in 2003 I stood and stretched my back while deadheading my perennial island. Seven years after the death of my firstborn, I had never felt more alive, whole. I wondered What is it? and looked down for an answer.

There at my right foot was a lavender plant. I brushed my ankle against it and whiffed the chemical reaction. Let me stay here all day, I thought, and pulled a tissue from my pocket. There it was again; the scent of lavender on my hand. The tissue.

Like Saint Peter on the roof top, I stood in a trance, hip high in flowers. Rows of lavender appeared, surrounding our little Cape Cod. Two acres of lavender!

Yes, that's what I'm going to be, I vowed. I'm going to be a lavender farmer.

Well, my dreams are usually my husband's nightmares. Thinking of retirement in the next decade, growing lavender as a cash crop had to be ultimate insanity. Did I want to be confined to a lavender farm every summer?

Yes.

And what did I know about farming, or the lavender market in Michigan? 

Nothing. But I would learn.

After research and consultation with experts during the winter, I planted a 25' x 25' tester lavender garden the following spring, a loose version of an English knot garden. That summer, thanks to an "herb lady" who had given me materials on the event, my husband and I flew out to Sequim, Washington to visit the Eighth Annual Lavender Festival in mid July, 2004.  I went to study lavender farming and the festival model. My husband went for vacation.
It was just like my vision: hundreds of ribbons of lavender, rolling up, over and across open countryside. "Wouldn't a visit to Sequim's Lavender Festival every summer be enough?" my husband asked.

No. I wanted to encourage people to grow lavender. To be healed as I was healed. Only farming lavender, learning the Michigan hardy species, tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting, and risking the financial investment, only then would I become a lavender farmer. Only then would I know a lavender farm could be done in Michigan. I could invite people to my farm to learn with me, to handle the plant and be healed. To pick goodness and take a bundle home.

After the tester garden survived the winter, my daughter Ruth helped me plant almost 700 lavender plants in the spring of 2005. I planned and hosted my first lavender festival in July, 2005 with the help of volunteers who believed in my dream. The dramatic, longed stemmed Grosso bloomed a month earlier than expected: perfect timing for festival guests to harvest. Glorious! About 700 people experienced that peculiar sense of wholeness.

Encouraged, I expanded the farm in September 2005 with 200 additional plants to test the success of fall planting (yes, it bloomed the following summer). During the winter of 2006, I wrote my business plan, studied the lavender business and planned the Second Annual Yule Love It Lavender Festival. In May, I persuaded my husband to till more land where we, with the help of friends, added approximately 1,000 plants to the farm. July 2006, the lavender community grew to help me host 1,200 festival guests. I added farm tours, literary teas and “how-to” lavender workshops to the farm’s events.

In 2007, we expanded the farm to an acre of fifteen lavender varieties. We built a greenhouse and pavilion that houses the Yule Love It Lavender Gift Shoppe. Volunteers returned in July to help us welcome 1,200 guests to the Third Annual Yule Love It Lavender Festival. Imagine my thrill when a little blond girl stood aside a lavender field and said, “I want to be a lavender farmer when I grow up.”

Ah, the lavender romance! Those purple wands waving in the breeze have a way of winning your heart.

And that romance is the passion developing Yule Love It Lavender Farm, the first organic lavender farm in Metro-Detroit, compliant with the National Organic Program. It is the force that gathers small farmers in winter conferences to learn the latest about subjects like cover crops and composting. To share their success. To support and sustain each other during tough times. To romance the next generation into farming.

Pot by pot, row by row, my vision on that sunny day in 2003 is becoming reality. With Mother Nature’s sweet kiss and some serious work, Yule Love It Lavender Farm will eventually grow and harvest two acres of lavender. Not Provence, but the best resemblance I’ll ever see during my days as a farmgirl.     

And that is the wonder of it all. Although I may never see the lavender of Provence in full bloom, I have the extreme pleasure of viewing lavender outside the windows of our little house every day of the year. The scent from heaven is always with me, just like the memory of my firstborn. Just like the voice of the little girl who wants to be a lavender farmer when she grows up.