Lockwood Lavender Farm: Sequim Lavender Festival 2004

As I mention in my previous post my husband and I vacationed in the state of Washington in 2004. Our main purpose of our visit was to attend the Sequim Lavender Festival. This trip was our needed push to continue growing acres of different varieties of lavender and direct our farm as a agritourism business.

The Sequim Lavender Festival, held since 1996, has grown to include three days of lavender farm tours, community events, and a street fair. The tours allow you to get an up-close view (and smell!) of the blooming fields and to learn how the growers cultivate and use their lavender. Farms on the tour provide a variety of amenities and entertainment, including gift shops, food and crafts booths, live music, and U-pick lavender blooms. You will find lavender products of every kind at the street fair, from oils and lotions to lavender lemonade to sachets, wands and plants.

Sequim Lavender Farm

Jardin du Soleil Farm

It was a beautiful day. I only wished I took pictures of the street fair in town. I was to busy shopping.

Purple Haze Lavender Farm

Purple Haze Farm uses Oyster shells as a weed barrier to calcify the soil, conserve water, and reflect heat and light.

Workshops on making lavender wands and wreaths to demonstrations on distilling lavender oil were held on each farm.

You may wonder what makes Sequim's climate so special in growing lavender especially since it is just a ferry ride from Seattle. A city with a precipitation total of 37.07 inches a year. Sequim has its own banana belt with a rain fall of 15 - 17 inches a year.

Presently the festival is going through a transition with two organization holding two lavender festivals. One by the Sequim Lavender Growers Association and another by the Sequim Lavender Farmers Association. They were until recently one group but do to philosophical and administrative differences they have split and the event now has two festivals with two locations.

The evening took us to Angel Lavender Farm for a barn dance. The particles you see in the picture are from the lavender hanging in the barn. We met so many kind and wonderful people and danced the night away.

In the far corner of the barn you can see their debudding machine. This machine was original used to clean grain seeds. The now named "Jitterbug" sifts dirt from lavender buds.

When ever we travel we try to find a unique places to stay. This once horse stable had a beautiful apartment on the second floor overlooked beautiful, Dungeness Bay.

Our next stop is The Olympic National Park.

Mount Olympus receives over 200 inches of precipitation each year and most of that falls as snow. At 7,980 feet, Mount Olympus is the highest peak in Olympic National Park and has the third largest glacial system in the contiguous U.S.