A mere hour and a half drive on a Sunday morning made the trip just enough of an adventure that we could satisfy our wanderlust without forking out major bucks or cashing in any vacation days. Turning off the 15 freeway just before Escondido we were told emphatically by the 'farm' website to follow their map and DO NOT rely on GPS. So we willingly complied and after pulling off of Old Castle Road and then meandering a few miles down Lilac Road we found ourselves being instructed by the map to turn onto what appeared to be the 'dirt road to nowhere'. Rachel checked and double-checked the map to verify that we weren't veering off course. Although the only confirmation of that was a few sparsely placed hand-painted signposts along the way that looked as if they could be pointing in any direction based on how hard the wind had blown on them recently. Country homesteads and farms melted alongside us as we left them in a cloud of freshly stirred up dust. Cows, horses, haybales, tractors, all the props of another world, dissolved into the passing landscape. Just when we thought the winding trail would never end we saw a little tiny sign pointing to the left. Eureka! We arrived at the lavender farm and my 'wow!' meter suddenly registered to 'Overload'.
It was just as I'd imagined and hoped it would be. Purple blankets of lavender spilling across hillsides and meadows. Sweet fragrance wafting in the spring sunshine. "What?! This is in Valley Center?!"I marveled. Rach was actually kind of blown away too. Walking around the farm was mesmerizing. We joined a group of equally entranced onlookers who had just started a tour of the place led by one of the farmer/owners. He explained the many varieties of lavender and where they originated, some from France, some from England and other parts of Europe, and showed us the distillery where it can take hundreds of plants to distill one little bottle of lavender oil. Rach got to chat with a local beekeeper and bought a jar of his honey to take home. Being interested in beekeeping, that was an extra bonus for her.
There was a lavender meditation garden and labryinth and a cool little store with everything from dried lavender to lavender-lemon scone mixes for sale. Yum, I couldn't leave without a little burlap bag of that! A teahouse next to the store had lavender lemonade for sale but we missed out on that since we forgot to bring enough cash. Up the hill from the store and teahouse was a little two-story barn in which the soap-making class was held. After the tour we dashed up there to arrive just in time for a woman to wave us up into the class since we weren't really sure where it was.
Soapmaking is quite a dangerous sport, it turns out. The instructor warned us that the lye used in soap is very caustic and you can receive serious burns if you don't handle it properly. She emphasized the danger of it and lamented over having to share her 'trade secrets' with us (even though each person there had forked out major bucks to be afforded that privelege) while stirring up a pot of lavender soap soup. It was fun to see the process but I'll warn anyone who may consider spending the money on that class, think twice. Not only will you not be participating in the production, you will also not be given complete instructions to take home with you. She will give you a couple pages of very vague instructions that have the main ingredients and where to purchase them strategically omitted. So if you are going there for any kind of serious learning I call it a bust. You will get a little 2 inch by 3 inch sample of her soap though! Woohoo! That was worth my $60! Not. Ah well, everything else there in that wonderful lavender-land made it all worth it. And though I've never been there, I couldn't help but think that beautiful little farm most assuredly must look like a postage stamp, at least, of Provence. But you'd have to ask Rachel about that. She's the world traveler in the family. Being there with her was the best part of the whole day for me.
