Summer at Penn Cove Ranch

Six days straight and about 300 hours of labor and we have harvested 10,000 Grosso plants. Right now it looks like 200+ lbs. of oil (100 quarts). I am not sure what my specific expectation was for the grosso by itself; but with half the plants it produced the same amount of oil as the Angustifolia. And it should. I think we will come close to our goal of 600 lbs. Dale ran the still all week end. We had a loose electrical connection at the junction box that threw everyone for a loop. Luckily Doug Nixon, our boilermaker, was in the area and was able to trace the source of the problem. We have been blessed with competent tradesmen.

We have about 2000 Twickel plants as the last of the Lavandin to harvest. I am guessing they will be ready on Saturday. We will spend the next couple of weeks strpping the dried lavender bunches for buds and counting the days until our second harvest of the Angustifolia.

The Grosso we harvested today presented its own unique set of problems. Another 18″ between plants would have made it a lot easier. I will speak with the grower! The oil is flowing. Dale has been distilling batches of 160 ozs and more. After tomorrow we will have a pretty good indicator of the harvest volume. We reduced the separator temperature this morning to 92 degrees. I like the initial results. We have harvested 1700+/- Grosso so far. We have about 8500 to go. Tomorrow should be faster. The plants are not quite as big.

Started the day making oil from the Provence. It is hard to cut as the plants are interlocking. We made two distillations and four pounds (64 ozs) of oil. It was cut too early in the day and the separator temperature was also too low. We followed with our first distillation of Grosso and produced over 135 ozs of oil! We will do two more before we are finished today. Dale is operating the still almost independently. By tomorrow he will be able to operate on his own. Nick continues to lead the harvest.

One silver lining to all this rain should be an increased second growth for much of the Angustifolia. The next 5-6 days are forecasted clear so keep your fingers crossed. We have 5 more oil samples ready to send to Dan Burgard, our resident University of Puget Sound Chemistry Professor. He orchestrates a very quick turnaround which is helpful.

Being forced inside by weather has enabled us to focus on wreaths and bundles. Joannie has constructed 135+ wreaths. They are mostly in the 8 inch size although we do have 10 and 12 inch varieties.We are using Hidcote, Twickel Purple and Angustifolia. All are dark blue purple and are made with a generous number of bunches. Soon has formed over 100 dried bouquets. Some are all white with the Alba variety. Most will be made with Grosso and we will also make mixed bundles of Alba and Grosso. Katie is designing custom boxes to facilitate shipping and marketing.

Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be rainy. Monday should see the weather break and the beginning of a more seasonal climate.

Third day of rain…ugh! We did finish harvesting the Richard Grey. Dale did his first distillation. We distilled 135 ozs from about 500 plants. He did a good job. Joannie and Soon are making wreaths and forming beautiful dried bundles. They took a break and helped everyone with harvest. We also got some weeding in and stripped 60 pounds of buds.

We are supposed to have rain until Tuesday. There is only so much you can control in life. This a good reminder. We are adapting.

Today is the second day in a row we have had rain. The plants are too wet to harvest for buds. They mildew before they dry. The remainder of the Provence will be harvested for oil. We will still have 600-800 pounds of buds. It looks like tomorrow will be a better day. We are trying to get a larger crew. The Grosso is ready. We have a relatively small window. Daily it is 10-3pm (plants cut mid-day produce about 30% more oil); and I would imagine 4-5 days at the most to harvest the Grosso at its peak. Oil will remain on the plant; it will just not be as much.

The bees are getting more aggressive. As there are fewer remaining plants ,the 100,000 or so bees concentrate in greater numbers on those plants. Everybody is getting stung. We are employing all sorts of home remedies…how about 9volt batteries!…to little avail, pain and swelling continues ever so mildly. We may have to move harvest up an hour to get through this window. This year we have Italian bees. They generally start about 10am. Last year we had German bees. They started about an hour earlier.

Today moved at a nice pace. We did a lot of work with flowers. Joannie and Soon packed 20 boxes consisting of 15 Super, 15 Grosso, and 20 Alba (white). We also moved all of the dried bunches into the house temporarily for temperature control. We need to keep them separate from the lavender we are still drying so they do not over dry and become difficult to form into wreaths.

The Groso is still a couple of days off, maybe Thursday. We are still harvesting Provence for drying and ultimately buds. The stripper (a machine from Australia designed to strip buds from dried plants) was successfully moved to the big barn and electrified. We are ready to strip!

Dale will start learning how to distill tomorrow. Lisa, his sister, did it for us last year. After distilling 50 or so tubs I feel I can teach someone else to distill. The new 1.2 million BTU boiler works really well. The entire system including condenser and separator (separates the oil from the hydrosol) requires very minor tinkering during the hour long process. He will pick it right up.

The Grosso is a remarkable purple. We added about two tons of organic lime and dolomite to the fields this year. I think that might have helped.

I think today may have marked the half way point. We were able to harvest about one half of the Provence. The drying stands are almost full. Fully loaded they hold about 8000 bundles. We have some lavender that is fully dried that we will box for dried bouquets. Soon has done a magnificent job cutting. The bundles are exquisite. She and Joannie worked 9 hours today harvesting fresh flowers for future sales. We made 16 pounds of Super. It is high quality oil. Tomorrow we will harvest and distill the Richard Grey. As I recall last year; it may be the best oil of all.

Susan put protective netting over a couple of our plum trees. We were able to harvest the sour cherries because the netting kept the birds away. Tonight is another beautiful evening at the ranch. Grosso harvest starts on Tuesday.

Saturday was a tough day. We slogged through 900 Super plants. Super is the largest plant we have. We planted them four feet apart…most of our other plants are three feet apart. We should have separated them by six feet! It was tough going. We also finished the 400 Hidcote in the East field. We made three batches of oil with the Super and Two more with the remaining Hidcote. All the oil was nice. Hidcote does not make a great deal of oil. Because of its deep purple color we probably should dedicate it to floral purposes next year.

The Grosso is not quite ready to harvest. We have 10,000+ Grosso plants. We have historically machine harvested these plants. This year we will hand harvest. It is more time consuming but more effective in collecting all of the plant material. It also leaves the plant shaped better.

We should have a crew of 10 today. We will harvest the rest of the Super and make bundles from Provence. Alex is coming up early to spray Trigger on previously harvested Angustifolia. This is an oraganic material that is supposed to spur cell division and plant growth…we will see.

Early GCMS test of the Angustifolia samples confirmed we are making very good oil!

We have made 100 wreaths so far. Joannie is doing 30-35 a day. She is spending 5-6 hours on it and I think that is great. She has learned to adjust the machine like a pro. We had a little welding event this morning. It seems that some idiot drove off without uncoupling the steam hose connected to the distillation unit. There was a decapitation of the steam line going into the tractor. I know the idiot intimately and he has assured me it will not happen again.

Today was spent cutting Provence for drying and eventually stripped for buds. We also harvested 8-900 Hidcote plants that will be distilled first thing in the morning. We received another 3 box flower order. Joannie is staying late to cut those. We have been blessed with some very good associates!

Tomorrow and Sunday will be big. We begin the Lavandin harvest. It should produce twice the oil as the Angustifolia…we’ll see.

This was a glorious morning. The early sun danced on the lavender. The remaining Hidcote shown dark blue. Super, a very large Lavandin, is at its full extension of four feet plus. It has a slight pink overtone, We will probably harvest it on Sunday. It should make a lot of oil.

We received an order for 150 bunches of fresh lavender at 4:30pm. Joannie and Nick stayed to fill it. Joannie also made 30+ wreaths today. We ran two Hidcote distillations. We have at least three more Hidcote distillations on Friday. Hidcote makes a lovely oil.
This is a big weekend. Saturday and Sunday will be busy. We expect to do 14 distillations…all Lavandin.

Days and nights like this are what the Pacific Northwest is all about. It is warm, clear, and just the slightest of breeze. We made some progress today with only three workers. We distilled the remainder of the Twickel Purple. The oil was superior! We also cut the last remnants of Buena Vista, about 250 plants. We will distill that tomorrow along with the last of the Hidcote. I would estimate 1200 plants or so.

We have distilled 174 pints (pounds) of Lavandula Angustifolia, sold 1000 fresh bunches, dried 3500 bunches for wreaths, cut 400 Grosso for dried bunches and 600 Provence bunches for buds. I think we are about 40% of the way from the end. It’s hard to say how much of the Angstifolia will have a second growth. If that proves robust then we are about 25% done. Luckily we have the harvesting god looking after us. See Michael’s creation below!

Wreath making is in high gear. After an early morning call to the manufacturer of our machine, we were able to make the necessary adjustments to restart production. Joannie is making some beautiful wreaths. She made one from the dried Jean Davis. It has a silver look. She thinks it needs a silver ribbon. Our goal is to make 200 dark blue wreaths first. Katie is cranking up the web site. We have narrowed our product offering to about six. We are debating whether to sell oil.

We are finishing up the Angustifolia harvest. The last of the Twickel Purlple is being harvested. Fighting the bees is speeding up the process!

Modern forms of transportation are introduced by the wizard of Penn Cove. Older forms of harvest lead to the distillation of the remainder of the Buena Vista. We did seven distillations yesterday and have the tub loaded and ready to go at 7:00 AM on Monday. Adam and Teresa left but not before Teresa showed Soon and Joannie how to reproduce her marvelous wreaths. I failed to mention that a former Ranch Supervisor got a slightly better job offer from American Airlines and has begun to soar like Gandalf. Michael has crossed the country and will soon settle in Chicago. You might remember him as the happy, waving tractor operator in a previous blog.

We continue to be blessed with wonderful weather.