Ordered the still today!
Ordered our still today!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CDV2GZU/ref=detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
along with a burner for it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000291GBQ/ref=detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It should come next week sometime. It's a 5 gallon still, which is big enough to get some good oil production but not too big to manhandle on and off of the burner to refill with lavender stems/flowers.
Can't wait to try it out! Our friends Dan and Nicole at Norwood Farms in Tualatin have a similar setup, and offered to let us watch the process the next time they distill oil.
In other news, we heard from the lavender nursery today... They said the lavender has been slow to get going this year because of the cold wet weather. We had ordered 800 lavender plants last September:
Grosso- 180 plants
Melissa- 100 plants
Betty's Blue- 80 plants
Gros Bleu - 60 plants
Hidcote - 80 plants
Royal Velvet - 100
Mailette - 100 plants
Buena Vista- 100 plants
We already received (and planted) the 100 Royal Velvet last October. It turns out we're only getting 500 of the remaining 700... two of the cultivars, Buena Vista and the Maillette, did even not take root. Too bad, as they are very pretty. The remaining should be ready to pick up next week. The Melissa is a pink lavender, which should be cool to add to our collection.
So in addition to these 500 new plants coming next week, we have the following ~380 plants already in the ground:
Grosso - 100
Royal Velvet - 161
Fulgate 78
French Fields - 10
Pacific Blue - 7
~2 dozen assorted "English" lavender plants, planted by the landscapers in 2014
The 100 new Royal Velvet we planted in October will be too young to harvest this Summer, but the remaining 280 plants should give us a nice (hopefully manageable) harvest!
Finally:
Stay tuned for our new website, coming soon to our domain, outofthebluelavender.com! Jesse and Amy are helping us put this together and we have a template started :-)
Jerry & Carolyn
Out of the Blue Lavender LLC
