We have finally uploaded the winner and the best of the runners up.  They can be found on our photo galleries tab on the home page.  There really is so much talent its often very hard to pick a winner.  We look for photos that celebrate the experience of being on the farm and ones which we could possibly commercialise if we ever got organised enough to do it properly!  The photos in the top 12 could all be winners in their own right and the ones in the other category (best of the rest) were photos that we loved but we had to make some tough choices.  If your photo was not chosen it simply means that we had to cut out about 85% of photos submitted to make it a manageable upload and as we will be running the competition again next year you can always have another go – who knows – you might be the one that captures something special to make you our winner next year.

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

Tao Wei winner of 2010 Mayfield Lavender photo competition

Congratulations to Tao Wei who won the £200 top prize for this fab photo of the girl jumping in our lavender field. We loved the composition and the mood it conveyed.
We feel that it embodies lots of the emotions that we identify with for our lavender farm and think it is a worthy winner.

Well its all finished for 2011.  We will just spend a few days tidying up the field but the hard task of cutting all the lavender is now complete.  We will shift our focus to our new project for a few months and see what progress can be made.

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

Best wishes

Brendan

Maybe we will see you there.

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

First of all a really big thank you to everyone who supported us this year.  It was a challenging season but as with previous years it brings its ups as well as its downs.  The lavender staged a late recovery albeit not as profuse as in previous years but it means that the season was extended by a months or so as well.  Anyway we have cut about 60% of the lavender now and we are aiming to cut the balance as soon as have the time to get it completed.  The colour has now totally faded so we have shut the gate and closed for the season.  We will open again in December if we are not snowbound and we will have some lovely Christmas gifts for sale.

In the meantime we will be working on our new venture – which is the renovation of a delapidated nursery in Driftbridge, Ewell, Epsom.  We have acquired 11 acres of land which has been totally overgrown and we have plans to bring it back to life.  This is quite a challenge in terms of time as well as physical and financial resources but we remain foolishly optimistic!

We will keep you posted.

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

We are beginning the harvest today.  Lets hope it stays dry.  We will begin with the Mailette and then the Folgate and then the Grosso (well thats the plan anyway!).  It normally takes us a week but we are not going to distill all of the lavender this year so it should be a bit faster since we are not bagging the crop for transportation to the still.

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

Well the lavender has endured another challenging year – and so have we!  The early emergence of the lavender buds followed by the cruel frost that destroyed 95% of these tentative buds was a heart stopping moment – but nature’s resilience led to a later blooming and the timing of the season was almost exactly 6 weeks later than the previous year.  We did notice that the flowers were not so profuse and although still beautiful the intensity was not quite as stunning as last year.

So now is the time to consider cutting the plants and distilling them for the beautiful oil.  In theory the Folgate should have been harvested 6 weeks ago but the unmovable commitment of school holidays has meant that we have had to abandon the farm and leave it in the capable hands of Debbie who has continued unperturbed as usual.  We now aim to harvest on the second weekend of September – weather permitting.

We are reducing the hours of opening now as well.  We will open from 10am to 5pm until the harvest is complete.   The farm will then reopen at the beginning of December.  We will update the blog if things change so stay tuned!

In the interim we will be working on our new venture at Driftbridge on the Ewell/Epsom border which is a delapidated old plant nursery (formerly known as Rockham Nursery).  We have been working on this throughout the summer and have been slowly bringing the abandoned greenhouses and polytunnels, orchard and fields back into a useable format.  We will be featuring this renovation project on our website soon and it is a really interesting challenge to think about what we can  do to make this a sensible commercial step rather than one governed by the heart alone!

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan

Best wishes
Lorna and Brendan

Well its the 15th of July and the lavender is finally looking very pretty.  Its a bit different to last year as the flowering is not as short or as intense so it means that it will continue to look really pretty for longer than previously. As a result we dont plan to do any harvesting until the end of August.

So hopefully you will be able to make it and if the forecast is to be believed it might be a good idea to pack an umbrella just in case there is a shower.

You can see some lovely shots of our farm on http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=mayfieldlavender&f=hp and a visitor has just added a new short video on youtube  - you can see some clips on http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mayfield+lavender&aq=f

Hope to see you all soon

Best wishes

Lorna and Brendan