How Lavender is Planted, Harvested and Distilled

okay so we're out harvesting lavender today uh it's kind of a little challenging this year the plants are so big our harvester has a hard time handling them has not been the case but they're getting older in age so they're just starting to get really big so anyways it's uh patient's test this year so anyways uh i figured i'd do a video on lavender production plant harvest distill the whole thing so right over there is uh some stuff we planted last year and uh let's go uh take a look at how we did that [Music] so today we're out plant lavender adding more of a certain variety that we already have so it starts a couple months prior to today with this they take a cutting off of the mother plant and the greenhouse and they grow it into that it's a couple months of growth on there so [Music] yeah so here we are this will have you know quite a bit of a head start especially when you bring it out here put it in the field you just can't do start from seed it doesn't work so um yeah transplanter up there they come in trays of 50 or 75 50 is the majority of them pull them out put them in with the transplanter and better save that put that in later um when you drop them in the transplanter it goes into a thing called a wolf that's shaped kind of pointed and it goes into the ground opens up and uh kind of goes like this drops opens up then the press wheels on the back close the trench and pack the uh transplant in [Music] so yeah one reason you see the wheels on the tractor the tires are spread out so wide in order for that to go into the ground and open up and go where you have it set the ground has to be soft i mean soft soft very soft um so you have to have the tires spread out that wide to not so you're not driving on where you have already tilled it up made it soft too plain we've experimented in the past by running the tile tires in really narrow uh just doesn't work just you know the way it goes they are planted on three foot for so they're in the row three foot centers six feet apart the rows are six feet apart different parts of the world i was in france touring a farm and they plant on 18 inch spacing [Music] i guess wherever you go it's different this works just fine here [Music] also while i was there we we have some lavender under uh drip irrigation and some under pivot while i was there i was uh touring a farm and we were up in the like we were like 4 400 feet elevation and i says uh what do you do for irrigation and he says rain so he gave me how much rainfall they get a year and i came back home and i says uh why are we putting drip tape down and we can just run a circle over it and pretty much do what they're doing with the pivot instead of rain so save some input costs there that was uh that was a fun trip to go over there and check it out so these will grow pretty good this year we probably won't be you know you might trim them back this year i won't get any any production off of them so over there and we have some over there and more over here those are going on four i think four years old over there on that stuff fourth season so um yeah it's a it's been a learning curve but we're gonna we got it figured out it's been fun so um it's pretty it's pretty uh it's pretty trouble-free it's pretty easy you just ride the transplanter drop the plants in the transplanter for the most part you don't have to do much uh just pull it out and put it in um so you have one guy on there kind of moving trays around um you know putting fresh trays in front of people putting them in the transplanter uh the uh the other people you see sometimes you get something they skip one or you know the transplanter doesn't drop it in right so they're just back here following putting skips in making sure the plants upright not laying over stuff like that so uh it's pretty uh it's pretty fun uh averaging about 15 to 1600 plants per hour right now so moving along pretty good by the end of the day today i will plant uh let's see about 300 trays at 50 each so about 15 000 plants and we'll be out of that variety cruising along at a whopping half mile an hour it's as fast you can't go any faster than that so [Music] that's gilly you've seen him in some other videos so over here we got the uh just a little field cultivator with the rolling harrow that's what we use to loosen loosen it up before we plant uh try to capture some moisture so we don't get too far ahead i just keep one pass ahead of them um also two on the transplanter we're putting down just a little little dash of water with each plant that's just to help it out so uh yeah what else can i talk about about this starting to rain so hopefully that doesn't shut us down we ran into some other uh same variety just a different what's been a different growth stage we're getting them in these these plants right here actually um on the planter there's these brushes to keep the uh um the uh the wolf clean the part that goes into the ground while the plants are [Music] just a little bit too bushy and they get hung up in those brushes so what we will be doing is pulling those brushes off and we might have to stop and clean the transplanter off a little more often but it's better it's better than planting them by hand so here's what it is uh so yeah you're always uh doing something yeah like i said let's do this just keep one pass ahead of them at a time not that big a deal so so uh we're actually planting into a spot that already had lavender in it um that was just a variety that nobody wasn't a sought after variety so we took it out and got the variety that everybody wants and we're going from there so this uh this little field cultivator and arrow works really good for a rolling harrow works really good for this just small enough you don't need the big iron out for this this works quite well so we on our pivot we run variable rate irrigation which has a solenoid on each sprinkler and we can come and ride a program so when we're harvesting or like right now we only want to water what we've planted uh we can come in write the prescription and it will only water where we want it to uh you know [Applause] [Applause] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] right [Music] you [Music] okay so now that we've seen how we plant it here we are harvesting as you can tell we're having to take half this one half of the plant or the hedge and then we have to come back and take the other half this is so big it's all this will not fit through the harvester um yeah i think the uh the hedgerows over here are a little bit bigger than they are in france where the harvester was made so so what happens is wow let me show you here see we're only taking from the top down and then we'll come back and you adjust the harvester the other way and you take it from over there it's been a struggle but it's a good struggle to have so what it does is there's two forks well you kind of see they look like that and they have a chain on each one and there's a sickle right right at the top it's really hard anyways there's a sickle it gathers it cuts it pinches it in the conveyor dumps it in the hopper and then there's a chain on the floor in here and it just kind of tumbles it like a round baler so pretty it's pretty interesting um [Music] yeah sometimes you'll catch a row we'll rip a plant out it gets kind of ugly sometimes so uh yeah that's uh that's harvesting i would walk up there but um you can hardly walk through here it just there's no [Music] i don't know why i tried to walk in there so as you can see we're kind of like i said we're taking half of it we'll come back and get the other half it's just kind of the only way it works right now so uh yeah well let's uh let's go take a look at how they uh how we unload it and then we'll head to the head to the still so here we are getting ready to jump it has a uh like a forklift mask right here lifts the whole hopper up [Music] and there's a door holds down don't mind all that ah it happens it's so big and bulky it's harder [Applause] so it's like a heart getting that to load in there all right so here's the harvesting head like i said a little better description than my fingers have the gathering chains pulls it up into the middle or the sickle down in there cuts it and then these chains here or not chains these belts they just pinch it there's no bottom to it it just pinches it and takes it up the uh up into the hopper so hey pretty simple i mean nothing fancy so anyways all right well i'm gonna help him clean this up and we'll head to the head to the boiler head to the still and check that out so here you are back at the shop [Music] this is where we distill it so we transfer it from the trucks to these little tubs um it is packed in evenly throughout the whole trailer you can't have any spots that are more dense or as light it has to be pretty consistent all the way through steam comes from the boiler this hose into this manifold here and there's pipes that are on the length of the trailer uh they're about an inch diameter and they have [Music] like eighth inch holes every four or five inches maybe now i'm even closer than that anyways down the whole thing and they're capped on the end and then your steam rises through and as it travels through [Music] here's some little here's some lavender bud [Music] it uh breaks that over kind of bursts that open it captures the oil that is there and the oil or the steam that is yeah so the steam when it comes up [Music] has oil in it and we go into the building this is pretty much the same one here same setup this one's just a little different um yeah so we'll walk in there we'll check it out i'll show you from there so now we're in here at the uh at the at the still got the boiler the separation towers cooling towers so that's that was outside your steam comes in there comes down this tower and as uh once it gets inside here there is a whole bunch of pipes about two inch diameter and they run up and down and then cold water comes and works its way to the top and then there's a thermostat that controls the temperature of that we're going to shut this off there now i can hear so as the steam comes in it has to be cooled back down to liquid and it has to be cooled to a certain temperature so there's a thermostat down here and it controls the water going in the cold water it's fed from a tank over here as yellow as it starts cooling back down your uh steam and oil mixture is all now liquid it comes out right here follows it down and into this tower well you got your temperature probe right here you want to keep that very consistent so that's where the electronic thermostats come in it is controlling the temperature of that water coming out in order to do so you take your cold water and it rises so by the time that cold water which is going in it 50 degrees maybe colder than that comes out at the top up there this pipe is so hot you can't even touch it and then that water returns to this tank over here which is the feed tank for the boiler and then feeds that anyways so once your oil your water oil mixture comes into the bottom of this and it separates out inside here there is about four or five plates of expanded sheet metal welded at an angle and that's for any the oil and the water to catch on and it kind of breaks it apart then you have the oil is probably about here then the oil you know just fills up and runs out this tube into the jar then this here is what is called hydrosol see the steam finally broke through the seam finally broke through the trailer so now it's just starting to make oil and start dripping there so this here is the hydrosol and that is the steam essentially the steam turned back into water and it has a little bit of lavender smell to it and that just just piped in it runs out outside into the drain ditch so yeah that's uh that's how it's done

Channel: Tom Downs Farms

Views: 8,820

Keywords: lavender, essential oils, harvesting, planting, John Deere, farming, agriculture, organic, distillery, oils, whole health, mom life, smell good, medicine, machinery, caseih, tractor, diesel, equipment, harvest

Id: _fYlYI3f6BM

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022