Summer at Penn Cove Ranch

Saturday was a great day. We had a couple of revelations that should really benefit us next year. We used the Japanese tea harvester on the Twickel with great success. We had shied away from it because it does not do a very good job of shaping plants, especially the smaller ones. Alex, Mario, and Dale harvested 900 Twickel plants in the first hour. This compare to a normal productivity on plants this size of about 30-50 plants per hour per person! We have concluded that we should use the harvester on the larger plants and then clean up the uncut stems by hand. It should reduce the labor component by at least 40%!

Dale distilled the first tub and made 115 ozs of oil. Then the fun began. The bags that collect the cut lavender have always been somewhat problematic. They are easily torn and sometime shredded by the woody lavandin stems. After the morning harvest both bags were inoperable. The holes were too big to ignore. Dale then took Susan’s sewing machine and sewed up both bags! We were back in business.

Dale leaves for a 5 day trip to London to visit his sister on Tuesday. Hopefully he will return next summer. We should finish up the harvest next week end. We have about 1000 plants remaining. Yesterday we were only able to run two tubs due to the bag issues. The second harvest of the angustifolia is still an unknown. The Buena Vista is rallying. All others are still dormant.

The web site is near opening. We also have oil samples out to several people. Progress advances on all fronts.