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Mad Lavender Farm

An experience you'll come back to.

Adrienne Crombie

Inspire U2 Think

April 14, 2022 by Adrienne Crombie Leave a Comment

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Sandy Castelleni, the remarkable woman behind “InspireU2Think“, a Hunterdon County based business that is modeled with the idea of giving back. She started her line producing non-toxic soy based candles and has expanded it to include body balms and roll-ons, distributed at shops throughout Somerset, Hunterdon and Union counties.

When we were starting Mad Lavender Farm, I was on the lookout for local artisans and vendors to partner with to make products from our lavender to start to stock the shelves of our Tiny Shop. I spied Sandy’s candles at gift shops and feed stores and I loved her product right away. They were elegant in their simplicity, small batch, homemade and the label indicated that from every sale a percentage was donated to a charitable organization. I contacted Sandy and she met with me to decide upon our product line and designed labels unique to Mad Lavender Farm. Our chosen non-profit is the Sierra Club, to support the environment and our sales have generated about $400 annually to that end.

Sandy’s intention, when she started her business, what to spread a little more light in the world. We love her vision and her product and are so proud to  partner with her to spread a little more light AND lavender in the world.

 

 

Filed Under: Event, Partners

Making Dreams Come True

March 10, 2022 by Adrienne Crombie Leave a Comment

Every year since we started growing lavender in 2014 we have visioned and prepared for a new installation on the farm. In 2018 our dream of erecting a tipi came true. We ordered the lodge poles and canvas for a 26 foot tipi from Nomadic Tipi Makers in Oregon. We leveled the ground and built a wood platform to receive it, sealed the 30 foot lodge poles with 3 coats of turpentine and linseed oil, viewed the instructional video countless times and organized a tipi raising party to raise it and wrap it. Voilá, we had a magnificent tipi. It was a long overdue gift to my inner child who always wondered what it would be like to be inside this wonderful cone shaped space that was home to the original people.

This month, March 2022, we dismantled our beloved tipi. The combination of wind, rain and mold has taken it’s toll and it is time to turn a new page. Our hearts are sore and we know so many of you grieve with us. We’d like to share with you some precious memories and photos that capture those moments.. Over the years our tipi has sheltered our goat yoga parties, picnics and workshops from summer rain. Kirt & Laura of Creative Frequencies (now permanently based in Hawaii) blessed us with otherworldly sound healing sessions in the tipi. Kelly Kinney gifted us with a  Women’s New Moon Circle that was just magical.

Some folks go on vacation. We invested in a magical experience right here on our farm.

Next chapter in our Mad Lavender odyssey is our vision for a Green Witches Garden that will be planted in the 26 foot circle footprint that was our tipi, replete with medicinal herbs, a pond and a waterfall.

And so, the journey continues.

More to come!

Tipi Frame
Lodge poles set in place.
Covering the tipi
Covering the tipi.
tipi at night
Tipi illuminated at night.
Magic Circle
Kelly Kinney presiding at her Women’s New Moon Circle in the tipi.
baby goats
Kids Goat Yoga party in the tipi.

Filed Under: Event

Mad Lavender Goat Yoga Team

March 7, 2022 by Adrienne Crombie Leave a Comment

The air is warming a bit, Spring is on the way and pretty soon we’ll be enjoying Goat Yoga again on Mad Lavender Farm. I’d like to introduce you to our incredible team of goat yoga teachers; Lea Ostner, Jenn Stas, Ava Marino and Shannon Keelyn. Goat yoga teachers are a very special breed. They must have a big call to adventure, an unflappable inner calm, a love of goats (naturally) and a sense of mischief to match. Folks of all ages and levels of yoga experience attend our sessions and so our teachers need to be responsive to all their needs. It also takes a big dose of creativity to run a goat yoga session because goats are unpredictable and they don’t always follow the “lesson plan.” In addition to all that, Ava, Shannon and Lea bring their talents in playing sound bowls to produce our Sound Bath Goat Yoga sessions. On the continuum of super chill to crazy fun, Sound Bath Goat Yoga brings it all together. Jenn Stas is the G.O.A.T. at Partner Goat Yoga, possibly the best date you’ll have this summer.

We are so lucky to have these amazing, talented and warm hearted women on our team. It makes all the difference when you are working with people who truly love what they do. Big, big shout out to you all. We are so looking forward to making it happen with you all again in 2022!

Sound Bath Goat Yoga sessions start again in May. If you would like to book a private goat yoga event, please check our website for available dates.

Bachelorette Goat Yoga Party
LOVE pose at a Goat Yoga Bachelorette Party.

Filed Under: Event

Composting, Feeding Chickens and Keeping It Out of the Waste Stream!

May 31, 2021 by Adrienne Crombie Leave a Comment

One of the many advantages of small town living is that community comes naturally. With just a little pro-action and organization, we can start being the change we want to see in the world and experience the results on a small scale.

Case in point, the folks at Frenchtown Fresh, a family run vegetarian juice bar and restaurant on Race Street in the heart of Frenchtown, decided they’d like to see their food waste go to good use. Proprietor Betty Anne Bechtold knew that we kept a flock of chickens on Mad Lavender Farm. She suggested that we might like to pick up their 5 gallon buckets of scraps from their juice bar and feed them to our chickens. My husband Don and I loved the idea, as it really helps to support the “zero waste ideal” that we work toward on the farm. Feeding the chickens healthy scraps rounds out their diet nicely. Betty Anne and I tag team the effort; she drops off her buckets with us on her way home from work. We drop the empty buckets back off in Frenchtown.

 

Our hens love the scraps from Frenchtown Fresh Juice Bar.
Our hens love the scraps from Frenchtown Fresh Juice Bar.

The scraps that are not suitable for the chickens go into our compost heap. Because we add a lot of straw from our goat stalls into the compost, the food scraps heat up the mix and help to break the straw down more quickly into compost.

 

A 5 gallon bucket of scraps is a great addition to our compost pile.
A 5 gallon bucket of scraps is a great addition to our compost pile.

We started composting years ago and I cannot imagine throwing my food into the waste stream anymore! When we dine out at restaurant, we always take our scraps home for the chickens and/or the compost pile. Imagine what a truly sustainable system would look like in our towns, where organic matter was routinely diverted out of our waste stream and used to regenerate our soil and to better support organic farming. Healthy soil, rich in micronutrients, does not require the heavy doses of pesticides currently used by conventional farming methods to try to control insects. We face enormous challenges in shifting to more sustainable practices in our communities and a grassroots effort, involving incremental changes, can help to start to make the difference.

Filed Under: Partners

Shaman Birdy

May 30, 2021 by Adrienne Crombie Leave a Comment

Mad Lavender Farm is a “build it and they will come” kind of place. We knew we had a gem of a farm in a great location and we knew we wanted to also grow a community of spiritually minded people. The magic is in discovering who will come.

Leslee Penny came to visit the farm in 2019. It was a casual visit without an agenda other than a curiosity she had about farms in this area. She introduced herself and as we chatted, our common interests became apparent. Leslee felt an energy about Mad Lavender Farm that we hear about quite often; that there is a feeling of peace and serenity and that this is a special place. We are located at a particularly high altitude geographically on a road that was a Lenni Lenape trail and the indigenous people surely must have been drawn to the natural springs that are in proximity to our land. (Imagine a time before the concept of “private property” when the abundance of the earth was accessible to all, revered and respected by humans).

Leslee was clear that she wanted to be connected to our farm and hoped that we would be open to hosting her offerings in spiritual practice. A little bit about Leslee: as a teenager she trained in martial arts, meditation and Eastern philosophy and became proficient in Taekwondo. Eventually married and happily settled with a family, Leslee was in a severe car accident resulting in a near-death experience that rocked her world. She saw that illnesses like cancer were rife in her family and friends and Leslee found herself looking to alternative medicine for ways to heal all the hurt she saw around her and within. She resumed her training, taking a deeper dive into Eastern and indigenous medicine and other healing modalities.

Twenty years later, Leslee in an instructor for Sound Healing Meditation, Tai Chi and hypnosis. Affectionately known as Shaman Birdy, she works as a shamanic practitioner, bringing her knowledge of all these disciplines to her workshops. She now devotes herself to spiritually helping others heal their pain, find their true self and take their life in the direction they were meant to go.

We are truly blessed to have Leslee Penny at Mad Lavender Farm. Check out her workshops and events under Spiritual Practices on our calendar. Coming up on Saturday June 5th is her Cacao Fire Ceremony as well as her Shamanic Prayer Arrow Ceremony. We are doubly blessed to partner with both Clean Plate Kitchen and Leslee  Penny on the evening of Saturday, June 19th for a Sound Bath & Farm Dinner. The ticket includes a vegetarian dinner from Clean Plate, followed by a Sound Healing by Leslee Penny in the tipi. Not to be missed!

Tools of the shaman

Filed Under: Partners

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