Hi there, and happy June!
We’ve had such a lovely first half of the bloom season. Meeting all of you is truly such a gift every year. The amount of you that come year after year is what gets us through this sprint of a season. The beautiful pockets of time where we just get to chat and answer questions about the farm and our processes are integral to our summers. Araceli Farms as a brand is this; the conscious decision to favor your curiosity, to create a delicious slice of reprieve, to set aside time for your rest, to only exist for a moment, in the fields, among the flowers.
For us the summer is the culmination of every other season; all our work from every other month of the year. Summer is visitors and leading tours and serving lemonade and prepping products, but it’s also the small moments that make work feel like play. It’s heading out to harvest some bouquets and accumulating a small group of visitors asking plenty of questions with the purest curiosity, it’s meeting a chef who has worked with our lavender for years, it’s hearing from families who made yearly visits a tradition before they even had children. Summer is already a special time, there is something about a clear blue sky that makes us all a little more open I think, but summer at the farm is a reminder of who we all are to each other; that we all just crave connection and that we’re actually pretty good at finding it. It’s hard sometimes to remember where we are in history, when it feels like differences define us much more than any common ground ever will. Every weekend I see the reality though, that we want to be kind, that a conversation just for sociability’s sake leaves us smiling; leaves us warm. I love summer, I always have, but the opportunity to connect with you all has added so much to the season. Thank you, the wealth of warmth, of smiles and sun, is a heated blanket in January.
While we have a lot of new exciting things growing at the farm, we wanted to take a moment to focus in on the star of the show this month, and our introduction to farming; our lavender!!. In case you haven’t attended a tour, or you want a refresher on our varieties, here is a bit about them;
Provence is a hybrid between a Spike and a French Lavender, and is the first variety you will see as you arrive! This beauty is one of our large varieties, and super aromatic! If you are looking for the classic Lavender taste, then this is likely what you’ve seen in the stores or tasted. It’s more widely available and each plant produces a ton just due to its size and prolific blooms; it’s great to start with this as it will give you a benchmark when tasting our favorites Folgate and Melissa. We do recommend you use very sparingly, as the buds pack a very strong perfumey flavor.
White Spike is, you guessed it, a spike variety. Another large variety; the buds are white even when in full bloom, and they offer a great contrast to our purple varieties, as exemplified by some wonderful U-Pick bouquets and wreaths!
Folgate is one of our favorite varieties. This small purple variety is so incredibly vibrant, even when dried, and has more of a blue hue with squiggly stems. This is the first of our four English varieties, which we planted specifically for culinary purposes. *All lavender is edible, however, your taste buds may not appreciate every variety. Folgate has a sweet, vanilla-y tinge that pairs amazingly with baked goods. It is a staple for us, used both in our lavender lemonade and the yummy cookies we carry from Dolly Farms and Panaderia Lupita’s!
Melissa has a very robust well rounded flavor, it’s earthy, herby but still has that lavender taste. This is a favorite for chefs, due to its unique and complex flavor profile. Melissa is our only small light pink plant and can be found in a few different rows in the middle of our field. When visiting we encourage you all to try our buds and compare their tastes, the best to compare are our Folgate and Melissa; these are the culinary favorites and tend to contrast each other quite well.
Royal Velvet and Violet Intrigue are our other small purple varieties. It can be difficult to identify their differences in the field, as they share vibrance and size. We often harvest these varieties for their color; they make beautiful additions to your U-Pick bouquets because they retain quite a lot of their color even when dried! These varieties are rich in color and flavor, and they lean more towards a “sweeter” taste.
Grosso, our final variety, brings the star-power. Grosso is what we use to distill essential oil, our favorite variety to use for bouquets, and also the most vibrant of our large varieties. Photographers often concentrate their sessions in the Grosso, both because we have so much of it, and because the color shows up so beautifully on camera. The variety also has a perfect scent for essential oil, it is strong but forgiving, and it is what much of our products begin with. If we had to choose an MVP, I think the votes would favor Grosso; make sure you check it out when visiting, even though it is on the far side of the field!
As the summer grows in strength we all need a refreshing drink, so I thought I would share a spritz cocktail recipe that can easily be made into a mocktail!
Our favorite drinks usually start with a lavender simple syrup (so shocking I know), so lets begin with that;
Simple Syrup Ingredients:
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
2.5 tbsp Folgate lavender buds
Making the syrup:
Step 1. Add water and sugar to a sauce pan
Step 2. Bring to a boil then remove pot from heat
Step 3. Add in Folgate buds, let sit for 20 minutes
Step 4. Strain into a vessel that has a pourable spout.
(optional: whisk in 2 tsp lemon juice) Pour into the container you’ll store it in and refrigerate.
I am a huge fan, as most people are, of the lemon/lavender combination; citrus pairs so well with the sweetness of our Folgate. Sooo we’re going to go with a Lavender Lemon Spritz!!!
Lavender Lemon Spritz Ingredients:
1 oz Lavender simple syrup
Juice of 1 lemon
Club soda *Use a lemon flavored seltzer water if you’re feeling crazy!
1 ½ oz Vodka
Making the Spritz:
Step 1. Mix lavender simple syrup with vodka and lemon juice, *use a shaker if you have one
Step 2. Top your glass off with your seltzer to your taste, and garnish with two short sprigs of lavender!!
Step 3. For a mocktail, substitute your vodka with a bit more seltzer water and you’re good to go!!
Step 4. Enjoy!!
As always we would LOVE to hear from you about what you make with our lavender; whether it’s in our blog comments or on Instagram we appreciate getting to see all of your creativity!!
Thank you all for being here, we hope to see you before our season draws to a close on July 5th!!!
