PENINSULA PROFILE: An ?ahh?-some life for lavender farmer transplanted from California
But Quevedo, who had come up from San Juan Capistrano, Calif., to visit her dear friend Liz Simmons in Sequim, did not mind. Quite the contrary. And when Simmons told her about a small lavender farm for sale just outside of town, a seed was planted.
Quevedo watered the seed, just a bit, by visiting the farm: Lost Mountain Lavender, a verdant 3 acres where, beside the 1,200 lavender plants, fruit trees, flowers and evergreens grow. The Olympic Mountains rise high above the little field. Birds sing. A slight breeze stirs the rows of fragrant herbs.
In other words, this is one peaceful spot.
So even though Quevedo, 51, had ?never in a million years thought of lavender farming,? her heart opened up.
?The minute I walked out here,? she recalls, ?I thought: I could do this.?
This sudden thing happened last summer. By December, Quevedo and her mate, Ray Veihl, had become the owners of Lost Mountain Lavender and were making plans to bring it back into the fold known as the Lavender Farm Faire.
This three-day event starting Friday has as its centerpiece the Heritage Lavender Farm Tour (SequimLavenderFarms.org), and Lost Mountain is again one of the seven fields on the circuit.
Quevedo had lived in San Juan Capistrano most of her life; she and Veihl raised her two daughters there. They?re now 21 and 22 and out of the house, so the couple had decided it was time to sell their place and downsize. These plans did not, however, include moving to the far corner of Washington state to start a new line of work.
After seeing the Lost Mountain farm, Quevedo went back home and told Veihl about it being on the market. She didn?t expect a positive response, since neither of them had experience with farming.
Veihl is a builder, while Quevedo managed a private school lunch program in San Juan Capistrano. She loved gardening, loved being outdoors, but her Orange County, Calif., hometown is known now for its traffic, not for its wide-open spaces.
When Quevedo broached the lavender farming idea, she thought Veihl might shake his head, as in ?come on. That?s nuts.?
Instead, ?he just looked at me. He didn?t say, ?That?s a terrible idea.??
She couldn?t get Lost Mountain out of her mind, although part of her wanted to. So the next thing Quevedo did was tell Veihl: ?You need to come see ? and then tell me I?m crazy.? Then they could move on.
But somehow, he saw the same thing she did. He felt the same way she felt.
?The minute he came here,? Quevedo remembers, he turned to her and ?he said: Buy it.?
Perhaps the ?sensible? thing would have been to keep doing what they were doing back in California.
For eight years, Quevedo had worked at St. Margaret?s School, where she put together the menus for 400 children, worked with suppliers and the health department and coordinated a volunteer lunch crew.
?You can talk yourself out of anything,? Quevedo says. ?We could have made up a million excuses.?
But they made no excuses. Instead, Quevedo moved to Sequim while Veihl, who is still at work on a major building project, began commuting back and forth between San Juan Capistrano and Lost Mountain Lavender.
Together, they dived in to the details of running a lavender business: making soaps and lotions and ?champagne? bath salts. Barbara Hanna, owner of Lost Mountain Lavender for seven years, provided all of her recipes for culinary lavender products, the foot-massage bar scented with lavender and all manner of other goods.
Quevedo, meanwhile, added a few of her own products such as a lavender yoga-mat spray. She?s a lover of the local yoga classes, including one at Pacific Elements, just up Lost Mountain Road (www.Pacific-Elements.com).
Veihl, who fell for the Olympic Peninsula just as his partner did, is learning and working beside her.
?He actually loves making soap,? says Quevedo.
Another of his contributions to the farm?s Cottage Gift Shop is a new product, ?chocolate-dipped lavender lip balm.?
Lost Mountain Lavender?s recent history, however, hasn?t been as harmonious. Hanna sold the farm in fall 2010 to Bud and Katherine Griffin, who stayed only a year before deciding the lavender life wasn?t for them. Lost Mountain was not on the Lavender Farm Faire tour in 2011.
Quevedo decided to bring Lost Mountain back onto the tour, along with Jardin du Soleil, another farm that was off the list last year and back on this July. And though she?s been busy with the light traffic of customers in the gift shop, the you-pick visitors to the field and the shoppers on the farm?s website, Quevedo knows this lavender weekend thing is a whole other ballgame.
Hanna, now marketing and communications director for the city of Sequim, has been enormously helpful, Quevedo says.
The two women connected right away via email, exchanging messages about products and packaging, but then realized they had to meet.
?We were trying to figure out how to transfer the Facebook page over. It was just easier to sit down together,? said Hanna.
?She?s really fun. I?m excited that she wants to keep it going,? she added.
Hanna still loves Lost Mountain Lavender. Her seven years there were ?a really wonderful time for me,? she said. But she knew when she was ready to do something else ? just as Quevedo and Veihl knew.
Quevedo arrived at Lost Mountain after the farm had become part of the Sequim Lavender Farmers Association, so she didn?t have to choose between it and the area?s other organization, the Sequim Lavender Growers Association.
The separate groups last year, expanded the third weekend in July to two farm tours and two vendor fairs. The Sequim Lavender Farmers Association hosts the Heritage Farm Tour and ?Lavender in the Park? at Carrie Blake Park, 202 N. Blake Ave., while the Growers Association coordinates a ?U-tour? of farms across the Dungeness Valley as well as the Street Fair on Fir Street in downtown Sequim.
The proliferation of events can get confusing for visitors and locals, but Hanna and other community leaders have coalesced it all under one Web umbrella: www.VisitSunny Sequim.com.
Meanwhile, Quevedo?s fondest hope is that Lost Mountain will be the same mellow, tucked-away haven it has been in years past. She wants those who come to this farm, during the big lavender weekend or at some other time of year, to inhale the scent of lavender and exhale their stresses.
?I want this to be the ?aahh? farm,? Quevedo says.
So this weekend, she?s keeping things low key: just four local art vendors, one good food purveyor in Jeremiah?s BBQ, a wine and beer garden by Bella Italia and solo musicians Ches Ferguson and Lee Tyler Post.
Ferguson, well-known for his years with Deadwood Revival, plays a variety of instruments, ranging from cedar flutes to 12-string guitar; he?ll be at the farm from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Then Post will offer his rock and soul music from 2:30 p.m. till 5:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Quevedo smiles with gratitude for engaging the two musicians, each of whom has a devoted following.
The renewed Lost Mountain Lavender farm also offers Quevedo?s creation: a meditation garden. It?s on the path to the ?sample garden,? where 80 varieties of lavender grow ? a diversity that astonished Quevedo as much as it impresses her visitors.
?I hope people come and just enjoy the day,? she says. ?They can pick lavender, and I have blankets so they can go sit in the orchard,? under the plum, pear, apple and cherry trees.
Quevedo admits to missing her two daughters ? but they?re coming up for festival weekend, along with Quevedo?s parents, her niece and her friend Simmons, since ?she got me into this,? Quevedo says, smiling and looking out at her green and purple field.
And as the spring has turned to summer, this place continues to feel right. When you?re out there with your hands in the soil, she says, ?you feel connected. I can be out all day weeding and feel totally de-stressed.?
Of course, Quevedo can only imagine what it will be like this weekend, the busiest of the year for Sequim?s lavender community. She feels welcomed by her fellow farmers, who she says have been generous in sharing their knowledge.
And there?s another festive event coming to this particular farm. Quevedo and Veihl, though together for a decade and a half, aren?t married. People often ask when they will ever tie the knot.
Quevedo has an answer for them.
?We probably will get married here,? she says, among the trees and flowers.
Last modified: July 14. 2012 5:47PM
Source: http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012307159988
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