Send a postcard from Sequim
The Year 2004 Annual 'Celebrate Lavender' Festival.
The Sequim Lavender Growers invite you to tour eight farms in the Sequim - Dungeness valley. A $5 button is your admission to the farms. That helps pay for the shuttle busses and other expenses of putting on the festival. The shuttle bus delivers people from several parking lots in the area to the Faire. The Farm tour busses run only on Saturday and deliver people to and from the farms!
Right now, ten days before the festival starts, the group is looking for volunteers to help out with the festival and at the farms - a 3 hour stint will net a volunteers: a t-shirt, a lavender plant, admission to the farms tour, and their undying gratitude... such a deal!
There's the Saturday Market extra-enhanced Street Faire too, on Saturday from 9 a.m.- 4 p.m. 2nd and Cedar St. All growers will be represented here, and there will be other vendors displaying their crafts. Lavender cookies, honey, jelly - and now bagels; lavender Spritzers- not for drinking but for spritzing on your body to cool off in the sunshine- soaps, lotions - so much to see and celebrate. aromatherapy, music, face-painting, crafting, so much to see and do.
One of the new Specialty Festival Items is coming from Olympic Bagel Comapny. They have created the lavender bagel with it's lavender-apple-honey schmear! delicious... That can be found at the Hurricane Coffee Company and Sunny Farms starting on July 18th.
Demonstrations,
clowns,
face-painting,
entertainment,
aromatherapy,
lavender cuisine...
and yes, even live music- dance away the night,too...
all will add up to a wonderful festival.
And the growers have made their farms open to touring.- a $5.00 button is your admittance fee to all of them. For example, like the other growers, The Sequim Valley Ranch will be open to the public, demonstrating propagation and potting, and featuring food, to enhance your visit...
so even a virtual tour is available.
Many will have classes in the different aspects of lavender cultivation and uses.
Other growers in the area have begun operations but are not yet open to the public.
Purple Haze Farm owners have been awarded a grant to study the effects of crushed oystershells on the yield of the lavender plants. Lavender once originated in limestone - there could be great benefits from using oyser shells as mulch, since the shells are abundant here in the Pacific Northwest.
In Sequim there are 100,000 Lavender plants at the growers, with more added every summer - and that does not count those plants scattered in private gardens everywhere in town. Sequim likes lavender and lavender likes Sequim.
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© Helen Hille and deebrrs, 2004