Lavender Creek Farm is situated in Settlement Road, Te Horo near Otaki just about 10 km North of Waikanae along SH1. The farm is owned by Susi and Vaughan, who have two adult children.
Susi is a registered nurse and owns a health food store in Wellington. Her interests are holistic health and healing. She enjoys making products from the lavender oil produced on the farm. Vaughan is a research scientist and he is very interested in growing organic grapes and wine making. The five hectares that they live on includes 7000 lavender plants, grapes, olives and coloured sheep. In 2002 Lavender Creek Farm won the Talga* for best lavender oil.
- Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen.Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so?'Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so.
- Call up your men, dilly, dilly, set them to workSome to the plough, dilly, dilly, some to the fork,Some to make hay, dilly, dilly, some to cut corn,While you and I, dilly, dilly, keep ourselves warm.
Saturday 11 January 2014: The annual lavender show, and we’re heading North to smell the lavender. Many dozens of spectators (0446) were milling about the property when we arrived.
The lavender flowers are harvested by these guys (above) with this very specialised cutting machine, which blows all the lavender flowers into a large canvas bag.
The cuttings are loaded into a large 100 litre stainless steel tray (0448), which is then placed inside a large pressurised steam vessel, and the distillate is cooled down and collected in a smaller vessel (0488) on the other side of the room.
Apparently there is a yield of 300 ml of lavender oil from this large batch of flower cuttings. Mind you, at the price of pure lavender essential oil, it is probably worth the effort. Finally, the spent flowers are discharged from the still and driven away on a trailer to lavender heaven. Below is a shot of the steaming ex-lavender (0512).
Snapping the family sitting in the rotunda (0492) between the rows of lavender in the main lavender field near the distillery.
The estate shop had countless (0449) lavender-related products on offer, including, believe it or not, lavender fudge (0450). Needless to say, I gave that a decided pass.
Familiar figures between the lavender rows (0457), (0454) and (0475).
Surprisingly, lavender is available in many colours, including Alba white as in (0456) as below:
Obviously, many visitors were snapping photos, including these three (0467) which I snapped in one go!
Plenty of bees all over the place, busy as ….
Everything is made as “French” as possible to emulate the Provence region in the south of France where lavender is a way of life. A couple old fogeys (0495) rest in the shade. Less of Frogs, more frog in the throat?
A very French farm avenue (0510), if that’s what French farm avenues look like.
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