You usually see lavender essential oil in its bottle, but you don’t always see how it got there. During the distillation process, lavender is produced into three different products, which doesn’t let any of the plant go to waste.
“There’s one main product that is our essential oil that we get, but there’s also two co products,” said Caitlin McHenry Director of Agriculture. “Lavender hydrosol, which is the leftover distilled water and all of the leftover plant material which becomes a lavender mulch. So those are the three products that we get from the distillation process. And from there, the essential oil can go into multiple products. So that would include bug sprays, candles, lotions.”
The whole distillation process takes around an hour. Lavender Hill Farm uses a copper still, which they call penny. First you fill the basket and light the still.
“Now that it’s lit, right now, we’re just getting that water to a boil.” Said McHenry. “There’s about five gallons of water in that, bottom section we call the pot. There’s a screen at the bottom that prevents the lavender from falling down into the boiling water. And water boils at about 212 degrees. That’s plenty hot enough for essential oil, which boils at up 180 degrees to start vaporizing into a steam itself.
“As that steam rises up, it’s going to really have to work its way through all of that packed lavender. That’s how we packed it down so tightly. And when it has to take its time on those buds, it heats them up to the point that they actually burst open and release that essential oil that we’re trying to get at.”
Once the lavender burst, the steam heads into the onion and through a pipe into the condenser. Where all the science happens with a little bit of magic.
“The sweating on the outside is going to happen on the inside of this coil. It’s going to work its way down. Come out as a liquid that we call lavender distillate, which is still not our pure essential oil yet. It did start with water at the beginning of the process.”
And since lavender and oil do not mix, the separation process is simple.
“All of the distillate goes straight down and actually passes that oil layer. And then releases the distillate in the separator. And oil can climb around it and make it into the neck of the jar. Close to swapping our oil jar as well.”
The lavender distillation byproducts have many benefits to you and your yard.
“Some amazing properties due to that lavender oil content. So, it’s anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-itch and you can put it on pretty much any skin abrasions or irritation. So, bug bites, bee stings, poison ivy, shingles, acne, eczema, sunburns. And you can even use it as a surface cleaner for its antimicrobial properties.
“We haven’t cooked everything out of the plant material, there’s a lot of that oil content in there for some of that camphor left in all of the leftover plant material, and camphor is that part that will help repel mosquitoes, deer, ticks, squirrels, and all sorts of pests. So the benefits are that you can use our leftover lavender as a lavender mulch.”