After slicing the stems with a sickle, Zach Lincoln bundles a hand-cut bunch of lavender at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021. Owner Tom Binder stands nearby.
Honeybees help out the lavender at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Owner Tom Binder surveys his crop at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021. There are 400 varieties of the plant, and his farm has 20 of them, Binder said.
Employee Zach Lincoln draws a cup of the popular lavender lemonade in the Crockett Road Lavender Farm store, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
About 1,000 bundles of lavender dry in a large shop at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Customers Patty Harmon, left, and Melissa Bowe cut bundles of purple at the Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
After slicing the stems with a sickle, Zach Lincoln bundles a hand-cut bunch of lavender at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021. Owner Tom Binder stands nearby.
Honeybees help out the lavender at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Owner Tom Binder surveys his crop at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021. There are 400 varieties of the plant, and his farm has 20 of them, Binder said.
Employee Zach Lincoln draws a cup of the popular lavender lemonade in the Crockett Road Lavender Farm store, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
About 1,000 bundles of lavender dry in a large shop at Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Customers Patty Harmon, left, and Melissa Bowe cut bundles of purple at the Crockett Road Lavender Farm, Thursday, June 10, 2021.
MILTON-FREEWATER — If ever there was a business built on kismet, it’s Crockett Road Lavender Farm.
The venture, just a few miles north of town off Highway 11, has been a symbol of love and luck for owners Tom Binder and Louise Dyjur.
More on that later because the only way to start a story about a lavender farm is through the senses. In particular, the olfactory system, which catches the scent wafting through the air over the 15 acres owned by the couple.
Although much of the blooming 2-acre crop is out of sight of the farm’s parking lot, the nose knows with the first step out of a vehicle.
It’s a short walk to see the stalks of purple, in colors from deep as a winter sunset to nearly white, growing in mounded fashion and gently moving in the day’s breeze.
There are names like Buena Vista, Gros Bleu, Sachet and Provence. There’s Melissa, Hidcote, Folgate and Betty’s Blue.
Heavily represented is Grosso, the variety used in 70% of the world’s essential lavender oils, although it takes 750 plants to make one quart of oil, Binder pointed out.
“I’ve noticed each variety has a slightly different scent,” farm employee Zach Lincoln said as a cluster of folks tromped out to the rows.
Right now, it’s the U-pick season, when the sunshine brings out the blossoms and the seemingly impromptu groups of lavender fans, Binder said.
“Someone will come out and pick, and the next day they’ll bring their friends out … We’ve come home from work at 5:30 and found people sitting in our driveway.”
With Lincoln’s help and the recent hire of neighboring teens, the farm can be open all day during the high season. Picnic tables dotting the area provide a place to chat, create a lavender wreath or essential oil, quaff lavender lemonade or read a book for the afternoon after gathering stalks, Binder said.
Pickers account for about 20% of the crop’s destination, and the rest goes into 60 or so products sold on the farm.
Plants destined to become oil are sheared off with a harvester, but lavender used for crafts and in most products are cut by hand. Lincoln showed his technique with a sharp sickle while noting that U-pick customers get less-treacherous scissors for cutting stems.
“I haven’t drawn blood yet. But yes, I’ve cut myself,” he conceded.
Some of the farm’s plants are French varieties, coming into their season now, others are English lavender, Binder said.
“There are 400 varieties overall, and we have 20 varieties here.”
But “here” didn’t start out like an abstract painting of romanticized lavender fields. Not at all.
Binder, then 22, first bought this property that sits on one of Crockett Road’s curves in 1982, when it was a successful apple orchard.
In 1989, everything changed when a report on Alar, a product used to regulate growth and make apple harvest easier, suggested the chemical caused cancer. Children, the report said, were especially at risk.
Although there continues to be disagreement on that finding between farmers, scientists and others, the result for Binder and other orchardists was that their apples suddenly had no buyers.
Some eight years later, Binder gave up on apples and sold the property, but came to regret doing so, he said.
In 2014, he and Dyjur married. While Binder continued his work in selling heavy equipment, Dyjur moved from her native Canada to take a job at Providence St. Mary Medical Center, where she is executive director of acute care services.
While the two were house hunting, they noticed the farmland was again for sale. For a second time, Binder became an owner of 53671 W. Crockett Road.
This time the ground was growing alfalfa. Which was fine as crops go, but the couple cast about for what would someday yield the best retirement income on the small acreage.
“Louise was sitting on a plane next to a man who talked about growing lavender,” Binder, 61, recalled with a smile and soft shake of his head at the providence of the moment.
“There’s a lot of demand for it, and it’s not over-produced.”
Their own research said the same. “Lavender is on every list of the top 10 crops to sell on small acreage,” Binder said, noting that holds true for single-crop farms of any size.
At a future date, he expects to have five or so of his 15 acres planted in lavender.
“Which is an incredible amount of work,” Binder said.
“But people can start out with a couple of rows in their backyard and make money.”
The couple put in their first plants three years ago and are just coming into a first commercial production harvest.
Evidence of this year’s early success lines the walls inside a large utility shop. Row after row after row of lavender bundles — about a 1,000 of them, Lincoln guessed — hang upside down to dry.
Other, singular stalks are drying flat on screens. These will go to restaurants to become part of a garnish or perhaps a cocktail stir stick. Lavender is a hot ticket in the culinary world, the men explained.
It takes about three weeks of darkness and moving air to dry out the plants. Afterward, most of the bundles will be processed through a special cleaner that strips bloom buds off the stalk.
Using machinery for the task very much beats doing it by hand, Binder said as he demonstrated the equipment by feeding handfuls of stalks into the top. The rotating screens remove dust, chaff and debris, dropping the buds into a clean tote, sans stems.
It’s inside the red barn, where the Crockett Road Lavender Farm store resides, that those results are magnified.
From lavender salt to sugar scrubs to candles to soap to honey to aromatherapy teddy bears, right now about half of the store’s merchandise contains the farm’s crop.
Some items are made here, some made elsewhere, Binder said.
The powdered lavender lemonade mix is probably the biggest seller, followed by the soaps, said store staff Addy Stewart and Tearsa Pooler.
Lavender-filled trivets and coasters, made by a man who lives next door, are popular, as are the aprons on the same shelf, Binder said.
“We try to be lavender themed on everything. It’s a lot of fun looking for things for the store.”
Lincoln pointed out the honey and mustard he uses to make candied pork loin.
“It gets all caramelized and crispy … it’s delicious,” he said.
Binder said they all continue to be surprised at the uses for the ancient plant, from medicinal to crafting to cooking.
“Everybody tells me the future is unlimited. The demand is increasing as everyone is discovering the benefits.”
Transforming a plain Jane farm into something beautiful has been its own reward, he said.
“Though the lavender farm is still under development and has a ways to go, it has been a great feeling to reach the point where we can open the fields and share the beauty and art of lavender with our friends and the public,” Binder said.
“We’re genuinely excited about this. We’ve spent a lot of work the last few years, and we’re at a point where we can let others enjoy it.”
Crockett Road Lavender Farm is open daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., through July. For more information, call 509-876-6880 or visit ubne.ws/lavenderfarm.
Sheila Hagar can be reached at sheilahagar@wwub.com or 526-8322.
Sheila Hagar has written for the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin since 1998. Sheila covers health, social services and city government in Milton-Freewater, Athena and Weston in the Walla Walla Valley.
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Crockett Road Lavender Farm employee Zach Lincoln crafted a simple glaze for candied pork loin.
Take 5 ounces of lavender mustard, mix with about 4 ounces of lavender honey. Stir together briskly, adding in 2 tablespoons of brown or white sugar.
Following cooking instructions for the pork, brush mixture on meat while grilling or smoking to produce a crispy, caramelized coating.
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