Yep, you read the correctly. Last week I took a little foray into farm life.

Well, lavender farming, that is.

Hehehe.

My friend Rachel had a deal for entry to Seven Oaks Lavender Farm, so last Friday we headed off to the farm, which is about an hour southwest of Northern VA. The drive is VERY pretty, and we thought it’d be a fun place to take some pictures (in addition to cutting some lavender!).

We were right! The actual area with lavender bushes is actually quite small, so that was a smidge disappointing, but we still had fun clipping lavender and enjoying the site. The entire farm smelled absolutely INCREDIBLE right from the get-go. Mmmm.

We weren’t the only ones enjoying the sights and smells, either! In addition to the families making their way through the lot (lots of moms with their daughters — super cute!), Seven Oaks raises adorable little bunnies you could pet, there was a Boston Terrier on watch, and…

BEES!!!

Oh man, there were bees ERRRRRVERYWHERE. They pretty much ignored us the entire time, so it was mainly fine, but every now and then there was a super shiny big black one that got a little too close and scared the living daylights outta me. Whoosh.

Thankfully, I survived, and we still ended up with a very nice selection of lavender clippings to take home with us. We also got to peruse the farm’s lavender shop for a bit, which was really nice (and blessedly air conditioned!).

We didn’t end up purchasing anything, but it was really interesting to see all the cool things that they use lavender for! There was everything from lavender cupcakes to sachets for your dresser to dryer packs to tags to affix to your dog’s collar. They even had lavender granola!

It was a great way to spend some time enjoying “real” Virginia — complete with farmlands and mountain backdrops and the like. I definitely recommend it, especially if you’ve got a little girl — as long as she isn’t allergic to bees! 🙂

Sean and I are off to IRELAND tonight (squeeee!) so I’ll be fairly incommunicado for the next 10 days — though, given the infrequency of my blogging lately, you probably won’t even notice, hahaha. At any rate, I am super excited and will hopefully come back with lots of glorious photos of the Irish countryside, and a belly full of more shepherd’s pie than I can handle. See you on the flipside!