It’s cold and gray, and winter feels especially chilly in our old farmhouse. We bundle up in sweatshirts and spend most evenings gathered around the wood stove, soaking in the warmth. I’ve also spent an impressive amount of time buying flower seeds for next spring—soooo many flower seeds. Somewhere between talking things through with Jeff and sharing a bottle from our dwindling supply of French wine we brought back from Europe, an idea began to take shape… lavender.

While we were living in Germany, we made a trip to the Provence region of southern France just to see the lavender fields in bloom. It was very much a bucket-list moment for me—and slightly less so for Jeff… which you can probably tell from the look on his face.

Guidance from Ben Beale pointed us toward planting perennial crops in the fields closer to the water. As we dug deeper into what it would take to grow grapes on the farm, we realized that the sandy soil in parts of those same fields might be perfectly suited for lavender as well. I reached out to several lavender growers across Maryland and began narrowing down the varieties that seem to perform best in our climate. Before long, our first 200 tiny lavender plants arrived and are currently tucked into the greenhouse, busy growing roots. This spring, we’ll plant a few hundred plants of different varieties to see what thrives, with plans to expand again in the fall and the following spring.

Jeff has pointed out that we may be slowly recreating France on the farm—and he’s not wrong.