Day Trip Lavender Festival and U-Picking

I have been yearning for a day trip, you know the kind when you want to feel like you got away yet did not have to go very far. I got an email from an artist friend that she would be participating in the "Lavender Festival" this was at a 'local' cider mill, I say local it was about an hour away in a very country setting...perfect!

I did some research beforehand to see what else we could do along the way and found the cider mill was about 15 minutes from a u-pick lavender farm...perfect! At the cider mill, which is actually a huge farm were u-pick, beans, raspberries, broccoli, cabbage and tart cherries.

Above the blue broccoli the green beans.

Had to practically drag our 5 year old out of the beans!

We opted to pick green beans, they were .99 cents a pound, we filled a produce sized bag, these were my favorite to pick, not sure why but it was fun finding a plant that you could scoop 15-20 beans. You should know I know virtually nothing about gardening, really nothing so everything for me is novel and exciting. My husband whom I never really complain about (I will say he was getting on my nerves around the beans) was not enjoying this part of the picking experience until he realized who could pick rocks, there were tons of big rocks all over the place he grabbed a bunch to add to our landscaping. We figured we were doing them a favor as some of these were quite big and for tilling it seemed they would be dangerous (we told them when we checked out we took a bunch of rocks they were totally fine with it).

Next to the beans, was broccoli and cabbage we did not pick this mainly because we did not need any but we were surprised how blue the broccoli was, I mean really blue.

Onto the raspberries we picked the most of these it took us a while as we sort of made the mistake of stopping at the first row which was sort of picked over.

Yum! These will be gone in no time!

Tart cherry trees, really made me wish I had a plan for these, I will be more prepared in a future visit.

After this we drove over to the Lavender farm to see what they had going on, it was a lovely unpaved rural road covered in trees. The farm was quite happening they had a lecturer on herbs and lots of kids running around and rolling gardens, it was quite peaceful and fragrant.

I picked a "bunch" of lavender, a bunch as described was what you could fit between your thumb and middle finger as if making a circle, you could pack it in. This translates to a TON of lavender for 5.00 plus the 3.00 admission fee, a bargain at 8.00. I thought it would be 10 minute task, was I wrong. I got my instructions, a basket and a pair of scissors and proceeded to spend about an hour cutting, and I gave up before I filled my allotted amount, I have a lot of lavender, a lot!

OOOOH...Pretty Lavender!

I will share more on my trip to the lavender farm this week along with a show and tell of my Lavender wands I have already made. I am now planning a trip back hopefully with a few girlfriends and going to prep to hopefully start my lavender patch.