Castle Creek Farm Hosts Two-Day Lavender Thyme Faire | Farm Shows, County Fairs, Events and Conventions

DILLSBURG, Pa. — For the 11th year, Lisa and Brad Weaver of Castle Creek Farm hosted their Lavender Thyme Faire, boasting a dozen lavender-themed vendors, live demonstrations and speakers, and lavender plants for sale June 14 and 15.

The Weavers are intentional with the small scale of their event, according to Lisa.

“We wanted to keep it as a ‘faire’ not a festival, just to keep it as a low-key, relaxing quiet time here on the farm,” she said. “We want people to enjoy the atmosphere and peacefulness of the farm and promote natural living and wellness. The Faire is small enough that you can visit with each vendor and experience all of the workshops.”

The family-friendly event offered many places to sit and relax in the serene setting for those listening to hymns and classical music played outdoors on a piano while sipping a lavender lemonade.

Open year-round, Castle Creek Farm is tucked into a residential neighborhood along Siddonsburg Road. Upon arriving at the farm, visitors are greeted on one side by alpacas, goats, mini horses, donkeys, ducks and chickens, and on the other side by a lush lavender field and honeybee hives.

In addition to the two-day festival, the farm is available for wedding and event rentals and has a cottage available for overnight stays through Airbnb.

The farm also offers a self-serve retail store open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. that is stocked with hundreds of unique handmade items such as bar soaps, herbal tea blends, herb seasoning packets, honey and beeswax products, alpaca socks and old-fashioned candies to name a few.

Castle Creek Farm creates all of its 200-plus products in small batches and sells the products at Roots Farm Market in Lancaster County (every Tuesday), 32nd Street Mercantile in Camp Hill, and Artisan Village in Bird-in-Hand — in addition to their website and on Amazon.

Married for 25 years, Lisa and Brad said the festival started with just two dozen people attending and currently draws between 1,200 to 1,500. Some travel as far as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as neighboring states such as New Jersey and Maryland.

They said the farm is approximately 30 acres, but much of it is wooded. Lavender is just one small part of their agritourism offerings.

“There are so many things you can do with lavender … we wanted to help others learn how to use lavender, and not just have a pretty flower in your garden,” said Lisa.

Two information-packed afternoon sessions were offered. Sue Morris of Sue’s Salves discussed how she crafts botanical perfumes and Lorie Middendorf of The Seasonal Herbal demonstrated how to use steam distillation to create lavender essential oil.

The first afternoon session — based on Morris’ self-published book, “Scents of Self” — discussed how essential oils can be used to treat various systems of the body. Sue develops personalized botanical perfumes based on each person’s astrological birth charts, temperament and preferences.

Sitting with each customer for about 20-30 minutes, and charging $50 per session, Morris casts a person’s birth chart and connects the placements of the sun, moon and rising sign to the corresponding essential oils to create a unique scent.

“The outcome is to create a personalized scent, that is a scent of who you are, and that nobody else will wear or have the scent, with the ultimate goal to feel joy,” Morris said. “If you have a scent and it reminds you at the deepest core level of who you are, and it expresses who you are aromatically, it’s a really powerful thing.”

Since beginning her journey with perfumery about seven years ago, Morris has created 650 individual scents with no duplicates.

Morris said the sense of smell is the oldest and most powerful sense because of its primal nature and tie to survival. Scent protected our ancestors from danger and sickness, such as the smell of smoke/fire or rancid food. Morris’ research revealed the olfactory (scent) system is tied to the limbic system, which is responsible for forming memory and emotion.

Morris started crafting herbal skin care products with herbs from her garden in 2000, expanding her business beyond salves to include aromatherapy products, herbal tinctures, massage oils and botanical perfumery.

She worked as a nutritionist for 25 years while her business grew. In 2003, Morris won first place in the Ben Franklin Technology Partners Big Idea Business Contest for Sue’s Salves, promoting the idea of plant-based skin care long before herbal products were mainstream.

Her 100% essential oil perfumes are crafted in the same way commercial perfumes are created with a blend of top notes (smelled first, some examples could be pine or citrus), middle notes (the heart, more complex and evaporate slower), and base notes (which last the longest, sometimes days).

In the second afternoon session, Middendorf of The Seasonal Herbal demonstrated how to use steam distillation to create essential oils using only water and heat. In her demonstration, she used an ounce of dried lavender.

Middendorf said steam distillation can be used to pull essential oils from many types of biomasses (organic matter) such as grasses, herbs, bark, flower pedals, leaves and the like. In her demonstration she used an upright, all-glass vertical unit that included a hot plate, boiling flask, biomass flask, distill head, condenser, receiver and a chilling station.

“You’ll see the water come down and the essential oil floating on top,” Middendorf said.

She explained the distillation process to onlookers. “The hot plate heats up, the water fills up in the condenser and works its way through the system,” Middendorf said. “The steam produced by the boiling water comes up through the biomass, it filters through the holes that are in the plant material … the steam collects and the droplets move down. I will put ice in the water bath so it cools off. That’s what pulls the essential oils from the water and the hydrosol into the water.”

Other methods of extracting essential oils that were discussed by Middendorf included: pressing/expression, chemical extraction, petroleum solvents, maceration, enfleurage (using odorless fats that are solid at room temperature to capture the fragrant compounds) and cold press extraction.

In all methods, Middendorf emphasized the importance of using distilled water for essential oil and hydrosol production.

In addition to the Faire, the farm is open annually each summer for lavender harvesting and lavender make-and-take workshops such as wreath-making.

For more information and to view recipes, visit their website at CastleCreekFarm or search for them on Facebook.